Quantum computing may actually be useful
In recent years, quantum computers have lost some of their luster. In the early 1990s, it seemed that they might be able to solve a class of difficult but common problems — the so-called NP-complete...
View ArticleSupran works to light up the grid, one quantum dot at a time
This is the latest in a series of profiles of the MIT Energy Fellows — graduate students who are supported by MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) members to participate in faculty-led research and become...
View ArticleCan fluid dynamics offer insights into quantum mechanics?
In the first decades of the 20th century, physicists hotly debated how to make sense of the strange phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as the tendency of subatomic particles to behave like both...
View ArticleThe quantum singularity
Quantum computers are computers that exploit the weird properties of matter at extremely small scales. Many experts believe that a full-blown quantum computer could perform calculations that would be...
View ArticlePaola Cappellaro: a quantum engineer on the frontier of knowledge
"Quantum engineering" is not yet a household term, but its possible impact on life in the 21st century is enormous. This emerging discipline has the potential to revolutionize computing, precision...
View ArticleLong live the qubit!
A quantum computer is a device — still largely theoretical — that could perform some types of calculations much more rapidly than classical computers. While a bit in a classical computer can represent...
View ArticleHippie days
Every Friday afternoon for several years in the 1970s, a group of underemployed quantum physicists met at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, in Northern California, to talk about a subject so peculiar it...
View ArticleQuantum computing with light
Quantum computers are largely theoretical devices that would exploit the weird properties of matter at extremely small scales to perform calculations, in some cases much more rapidly than conventional...
View ArticlePaola Cappellaro wins AFOSR Young Investigator Award
Controlling and manipulating nature at the quantum level is one of the greatest challenges in both theoretical and experimental physics. The most prominent application is quantum information...
View ArticleScott Aaronson wins NSF’s Alan T. Waterman Award
Today, the National Science Foundation (NSF) named two young scientists — Scott Aaronson of MIT and Robert Wood of Harvard University — as recipients of this year’s Alan T. Waterman Award.The annual...
View ArticleWhat lies ahead for science and science writing?
The MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing turns 10 this year, and this Saturday saw many of the program’s 61 alumni back on campus to catch up and reminisce with fellow graduates, professors and...
View ArticleClarice Aiello: Finding quantum gold in diamond’s defect
The kind of diamond Clarice Aiello values does not come in a dazzling pear or square cut, swaddled in black velvet on a counter at Tiffany’s. Instead, it exists as a millimeter-sized chunk on a sturdy...
View ArticleSingle-photon transmitter could enable new quantum devices
In theory, quantum computers should be able to perform certain kinds of complex calculations much faster than conventional computers, and quantum-based communication could be invulnerable to...
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10-year-old problem in theoretical computer science falls
Thomas VidickPhoto: M. Scott Brauer Interactive proofs, which MIT researchers helped pioneer, have emerged as one of the major research topics in theoretical computer science. In the classic...
View ArticleA one-way street for spinning atoms
Elementary particles have a property called “spin” that can be thought of as rotation around their axes. In work reported this week in the journal Physical Review Letters, MIT physicists have imposed a...
View ArticleWatching electrons move at high speed
Topological insulators are exotic materials, discovered just a few years ago, that hold great promise for new kinds of electronic devices. The unusual behavior of electrons within them has been very...
View ArticleProving quantum computers feasible
Quantum computers are devices — still largely theoretical — that could perform certain types of computations much faster than classical computers; one way they might do that is by exploiting “spin,” a...
View ArticleResearch update: Multiple steps toward the ‘quantum singularity’
In early 2011, a pair of theoretical computer scientists at MIT proposed an optical experiment that would harness the weird laws of quantum mechanics to perform a computation impossible on conventional...
View ArticleResearchers build an all-optical transistor
Optical computing — using light rather than electricity to perform calculations — could pay dividends for both conventional computers and quantum computers, largely hypothetical devices that could...
View ArticleMIT researchers to play key roles in new Center for Integrated Quantum Materials
MIT physics professor Raymond C. Ashoori and a team of MIT researchers will play key roles of the Center for Integrated Quantum Materials, led by Harvard University and funded with a $20 million...
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