Sandia, Harvard researchers created a first quantum computer read more at here www.spinonews.com/index.php/item/1280-sandia-harvard-researchers-created-a-first-quantum-computer

Sandia researchers have demonstrated for the first time on a single chip all the components needed to create a quantum bridge to link quantum computers together.

Sandia researcher Ryan Camacho, said, people have already built small quantum computers. Maybe the first useful one won't be a single giant quantum computer, but a connected cluster of small ones.

Distributing quantum information on a network, could also enable novel forms of quantum sensing since quantum correlations allow all the atoms in the network to behave as though they were one single atom.

Together with Harvard University used a focused ion beam implanter at Sandia's Ion Beam Laboratory designed for blasting single ions into precise locations on a diamond substrate.

Sandia researchers used implantation to replace one carbon atom of the diamond with the larger silicon atom, which causes the two carbon atoms on either side of the silicon atom to feel crowded enough to flee.

Though the silicon atoms are embedded in a solid, they behave as floating in a gas, and therefore their electron response to quantum stimuli are not clouded by unwanted interactions with other matter.

Before this, researchers had to search for emitting atoms among 1,000 randomly occurring defects that is, non-carbon atoms in a diamond substrate of a few microns to find even one that emitted strongly enough to be useful at the single photon level.

Once the silicon atoms are settled on the diamond substrate, laser-generated photons bump silicon electrons into their next higher atomic energy state. When the electrons return to the lower energy state, they spit out quantized photons that carry information through their frequency, intensity and the polarization of their wave.

Camacho said, we did the novel device fabrication and came up with a clever way to count exactly how many ions are implanted into the diamond substrate.