(Yicai) Aug. 15 — A scientific research team, led by renowned Chinese physicist Pan Jianwei, has developed a new approach to rearrange and assemble thousands of atoms into the largest array of atoms in the world with the help of artificial intelligence, laying a key technological base for quantum computing and simulations.
Pan, Lu Chaoyang, and their colleagues at the University of Science and Technology of China used AI to assemble defect-free two- and three-dimensional atom arrays with up to 2,024 atoms with a constant-time cost of 60 milliseconds, according to a research paper recently published in US scientific journal Physical Review Letters. In comparison, existing systems could only rearrange hundreds of atoms.
Assembling increasingly larger-scale defect-free optical-tweezer-trapped atom arrays is essential for atom-based quantum computing and simulation, the team noted. However, traditional rearranging methods are limited by time complexity, atomic losses, and computational speed, restricting their ability to assemble larger arrays, they added.
The new approach marks a significant leap forward in computing efficiency and experimental feasibility within atom-related quantum physics, a reviewer of the research paper pointed out, adding that it provides a clear, practical benefit that will be of interest to the growing field of atom array experiments.
The Chinese team used an AI model to calculate the holograms for real-time atom rearrangement to address previous issues. With precise controls over both position and phase, a high-speed spatial light modulator moves all the atoms simultaneously, and the protocol can be used to generate defect-free arrays of tens of thousands of atoms and become a useful toolbox for quantum error correction.
To show off their new system, the team also created a cartoon video about Schrödinger’s cat, in which they used up to 549 atoms in a 230 × 230-micrometer array and imaged their positions by detecting the atoms’ fluorescence in response to laser pulses, according to Physics Magazine, an online magazine from the American Physical Society.
Editor: Martin Kadiev