Physicists at the University of Basel have succeeded in cooling a nanoelectronic chip to a temperature lower than 3 millikelvin. The scientists used magnetic cooling to cool the electrical connections as well as the chip itself.
Physicists have developed a new technique that uses electrical voltages to control the electron spin on a chip. The newly-developed method provides protection from spin decay, meaning that the contained information can be maintained and transmitted over comparatively large distances, as has been demonstrated by a team from the University of Basel’s Department of Physics and the Swiss Nanoscience Institute.
Professor Daniel Loss from the University of Basel’s Department of Physics and the Swiss Nanoscience Institute has been awarded the King Faisal International Prize for Science 2017. The King Faisal Foundation awarded Loss the renowned science prize for his discovery of a concept for development of a quantum computer based on the intrinsic angular momentum of electrons.
Calculation with electron spins in a quantum computer assumes that the spin states last for a sufficient period of time. Physicists at the University of Basel and the Swiss Nanoscience Institute have now demonstrated that electron exchange in quantum dots fundamentally limits the stability of this information.