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Worlds Smallest Diamond!
ABC News reports today that Scientists have made the world's smallest diamond ring, which could play a role in the future of computing.
This ring of diamond, 300 nanometres thick and 5 micrometres across, was made by carving out a circular structure in an artificially made diamond. It will be used to access single photons, the basis for developing quantum computers (Source: P Olivero, B Fairchild and S Prawer, School of Physics, University of Melbourne)
At just 5 micrometres across and 300 nanometres thick, the ring will not fit on anyone's finger.
The University of Melbourne researchers hope this ring which was carved from a slither of diamond, will let them manipulate single photons, the smallest 'packet' of light and will help researchers build powerful computers that use the properties of quantum physics.
"For quantum information processing, diamonds have some truly unique possibilities," says Professor Steven Prawer, whose team presented images of the ring at an American Physical Society meeting this month in New Orleans.
Scientists know in theory how quantum computers could take advantage of the rules of physics to carry out enormous numbers of processes at the same time, however, building such a computer in the real world has been an enormous challenge.
Diamonds could overcome some of the obstacles,say these scientists because they offer an ideal way to produce qubits, the quantum equivalent of the 'bits' that store information on standard computers.
How does this work?
Like normal bits, qubits can have two different values, either 0 or 1. But unlike their standard counterparts, qubits can also exist in a 'superposition' of both states at once. The tiny impurities in diamonds meet this criterion, and all the other requirements of qubits, extremely well and therefore diamond offers a fantastic platform in order to make qubits.
This transformation with diamond acting as the catalyst occurs when a single nitrogen atom and a tiny gap disrupt the normal carbon structure of a diamond. Scientists call these nitrogen-vacancy centers, and by shining a laser light onto one, researchers can produce single photons of red light in ways that are easy to manipulate and measure. They can also do this at room temperature, something most other quantum systems can't do.
The researchers have already used these properties of diamonds in the field of quantum cryptography, which aims to allow secure information to be sent and received using the properties of quantum physics.
WOW!
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