The European Research Council (ERC) supports pioneering research by outstanding scientists in Europe. The ERC Starting Grants provide successful young researchers with highly endowed project budgets. Experimental physicist Martin Ringbauer joined the Department of Experimental Physics at the University of Innsbruck in 2018 as an Erwin Schrödinger Fellow. He now receives the prestigious grant from the European Research Council and will continue to advance his research on the development of novel quantum computers.
As we all learn from early on, digital computers work with zeros and ones, also known as binary information. This approach has worked well. In fact, it has been so successful that computers now power everything from coffee machines to self-driving cars. It is difficult to imagine a life without them.
Building on this incredible success, today’s quantum computers are also developed with binary information processing in mind. “The building blocks of quantum computers, however, are more than just zeros and ones,” explains Martin Ringbauer, an experimental physicist from Innsbruck, Austria. “Restricting them to binary systems prevents these devices from living up to their true potential.”
A team of scientists has now succeeded in developing a quantum computer that can perform arbitrary calculations with so-called quantum digits, thereby unlocking additional computational power with fewer quantum particles. This group is led by Thomas at the Department of Experimental Physics at the University of Innsbruck.
Storing information in zeros and ones is not the most efficient way of doing calculations, but it is the simplest way. Simple typically also means reliable and robust to errors, which is why binary information has become the unchallenged standard for classical computers.
However, the situation is quite different in the quantum world. For example, in the Innsbruck quantum computer, information is stored in individually trapped Calcium atoms. Each of these atoms naturally has eight different states, In which two states stores the information. Indeed, almost all existing quantum computers have access to more quantum states than they actually use for computation.
A natural approach for hardware and software
The physicists from Innsbruck now designed a quantum computer that can make use of the full potential of these atoms, by computing with audits. Contrary to the classical case, using more states does not make the computer less reliable in this instance. As long as we can remember, computers have worked with zeros and ones. Since this binary paradigm has been extremely successful for classical computers, which now shape every aspect of our lives, it has also become the basis for the development of a new generation of computers based on quantum physics. “Today’s quantum computers, however, could do much more than just zeros and ones,” explains Martin Ringbauer. The Innsbruck quantum computers work with individual trapped ions, each of which naturally have eight energy levels that could be used for computing. However, quantum information is usually stored in the form of quantum bits, using only two of these levels and can be manipulated using focused laser beams. “By restricting our quantum computers to only two levels, we give up valuable computing resources.”
“Quantum systems naturally have more than the two states. We showed that we can control them all equally well,” says Thomas.
On the flip side, many of the tasks that need quantum computers, such as problems in physics, chemistry, or material science, are also naturally expressed in the language. Rewriting them for can often make them too complicated for today’s quantum computers. “Working with more than zeros and ones is very natural, not only for the quantum computer but also for its applications, allowing us to unlock the true potential of quantum systems,” explains Martin.
“Working with more than zeros and ones is very natural, not only for the quantum computer but also for its applications, allowing us to unlock the true potential of quantum systems.” — Martin Ringbauer
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