What if the electricity did not decay during the transmission process?
What if a computer had exponential speed and perfect accuracy?
Professor Duncan Haldane once gave a standard answer to this question. In the fall of 2016, this physicist and two other colleagues won the Nobel Prize in Physics for "discovering topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter"!
Simply put, through rigorous experiments, they discovered that even the smallest microscopic matter could show macroscopic properties and have topological phases.
This sounded a bit difficult to understand, but one had to understand the concept of topology.
It was common knowledge that mathematicians often looked at problems differently from ordinary people. They were often used to looking at the essence through phenomena. Topology was such a discipline. It studied the properties of geometric figures or spaces that could remain unchanged after continuous changes in shape.
The most classic example was that for a topologist, a donut and a coffee cup looked the same because they both had a hole.
Because there was only one hole, you could turn a donut into a coffee cup through a smooth deformation process, and vice versa … Even though this might seem a bit difficult to understand in the eyes of ordinary people, in fact, because of this mathematical method, scholars in other fields had discovered many interesting things.
Especially in the field of physics and materials, many amazing discoveries in the 1980s originated from the method of topology, which provided a theoretical basis.
However, even though people were used to applying topology to solve problems in the macroscopic world, they were at a loss as to whether topology could be applied to subatomic particles such as electrons and photons.
Because they were all affected by the strange laws of quantum physics, their size, position, and even shape were in a state of uncertainty.
However, the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics gave a positive answer to this proposition.
Even the subatomic particles in the microscopic world had topological properties!
This theory obviously had no impact on daily life, but for the field of electronic engineering, it opened the door to a new world!
In the wonderful quantum world, these properties showed amazing stability and some significant characteristics at a special stage of matter. The most typical example was topological insulators.
Especially the discovery of this property in graphene materials, which directly led to the birth of SG-1 superconducting materials and carbon-based chips.
At the same time, this property also promoted the research of quantum computing.
According to the principle of quantum computers, subatomic particles could be in different states at the same time, and information was stored in something called a qubit. Because of this characteristic, quantum computers could solve problems at an exponential speed compared to traditional computers.
However, the problem was that the subatomic particles that stored data were very fragile. Unlike stable atoms, even the slightest disturbance could change their state.
This was the so-called "decoherence" in quantum mechanics — any environmental influence could lead to the collapse of the entangled state of a qubit!
In order to solve the problem, it was either noise reduction or anti-interference, or both. No matter which technical route was taken, the subatomic particles had to be stabilized.
This was also one of the core problems in the development of quantum computers.
At the same time, it was also the topic that Lu Zhou had been researching for the past few days …
Jinling Institute for Advanced Study, third floor underground laboratory.
The empty room that was originally used as a spare sample room was now filled with a large number of newly purchased equipment.
This included a multifunctional physical property measurement system, a step meter, a vibrating sample magnetometer, a high and low temperature magnetoresistance tester, and an in-situ freeze-dryer. Although it was not a luxurious lineup, it could be said that it had all the essentials even though it was small.
In addition to these essential equipment for the research of carbon materials, there was also a photo-curing 3D printer with a maximum accuracy of 8 microns. It was mainly used to print plastic molds needed for experiments.
A thumb-sized film was carefully placed into the magnetron sputtering atomic deposition equipment. Lu Zhou carefully compared the data on the experimental form and set new experimental parameters on the computer.
After finishing all of this work, he finally breathed a sigh of relief and hit the enter button on the keyboard.
The green signal light lit up, and the equipment in the laboratory began to run.
Lu Zhou took his coffee and sat down on the office chair next to him. He glanced at his watch and was thinking about what to do to pass the time. Suddenly, Xiao Ai controlled the drone and flew over.
Xiao Ai: [Master, Master! Just a second ago! Something extremely surprising had happened! Φ (≧ ω ́ *)]
Lu Zhou's eyes focused on the small TV. He raised his eyelids and spoke with surprise.
"You leveled up?"
Xiao Ai: [Huh? You know everything?! Σ (° △ ° | | |)]
Lu Zhou: "…"
Did this guy level up or level down …
Lu Zhou sighed and ignored it. He closed his eyes and entered the system space.
The technology branch was a branch of the system mission, and the accumulation of artificial intelligence and information science experience were synchronized. The second Xiao Ai's level reached level 4, his information science level also increased from level 4 to level 5.
Even if he didn't enter the system space, he could still see the dialog box …
[…]
[G. Information science: Level 5 (0/300,000)]
Lu Zhou looked at his characteristic panel and rubbed his chin.
Just like he guessed, by observing the behavior of players in the virtual reality world, he could speed up the progress bar. In other words, the experience required for the artificial intelligence branch was sociological experience?
However, Lu Zhou didn't pay too much attention to Xiao Ai. He entered the system space and looked at his characteristic panel and the progress bar of the technology branch. He then returned his consciousness to the real world.
When he opened his eyes, he saw the small TV staring at the four rotor blades in front of him for a long time.
Xiao Ai: [Master, Master, aren't you going to praise Xiao Ai? (*/ω\ *)]
Lu Zhou: "Yeah, nice job."
Xiao Ai: [So perfunctory! QAQ]
"… It's about time."
Lu Zhou pretended not to see the dialog box on the small TV. He looked at the time on his watch and muttered to himself.
As if to confirm his words, the signal light on the instrument not far away jumped from green to red.
Lu Zhou immediately ordered.
"Xiao Ai, turn on the freeze dryer."
Xiao Ai: [Roger that! (○ `3 ′ ○)]
Even though Xiao Ai was extremely reluctant, he still listened to Lu Zhou's orders.
He didn't know if it was an illusion, but he felt like this little guy was becoming more and more emotional … Or, in other words, more and more human-like?
Lu Zhou didn't know if this was a good thing or not.
After all, the way artificial intelligence processed information was completely different from the way the human brain processed information. One used logic to determine emotions, while the other used emotions to determine logic.
Maybe its existence would give birth to a new species?
Of course, it was too early to say this.
As its "guardian", Lu Zhou could only say that he had to do his part and take it one step at a time.
At least for now, the little guy was quite obedient. Whether it was in life or research, it played the role of a small assistant. It also absolutely obeyed Lu Zhou's orders.
Maybe I'm worrying too much?
With the help of Xiao Ai, Lu Zhou transferred the sample from the magnetron sputtering atomic layer deposition device to the freeze dryer. He then frozen-dried the carbon-based chip sample. He then used a metallographic microscope to carefully observe the thin-film chip and recorded the experimental data in a notebook.
He now had more than 30,000 general points. According to the price offered by the system, it would cost 120,000 general points to exchange for a full set of quantum computer technology.
However, in fact, this price was actually a lot of overstated points.
If the problem was broken down and based on the problems that had already been solved by the academic community, the consumption of general points could be reduced by more than five times!
So far, he had spent 20,000 general points to overcome several key bottlenecks in his research. The rest of the general points were based on his own understanding of carbon materials, Mott insulators, and Majorana fermions. He also used the research results of some predecessors to complete some promotional work.
For example, topological insulator carbon materials that contained Majorana fermions, as well as superconducting layers of one-atom-wide superconductors without affecting the stability of Majorana fermions.
In this special topological phase material, subatoms could be protected.
In other words, the qubits formed under this topological phase would not change because of some small or local interference. It is far more stable than ordinary qubits, and it allows our quantum computing to deal with the questions we want the answer to in a more accurate and efficient way.
This work saved Lu Zhou at least 100,000 general points.
Because of this work, he had the opportunity to use general points where it mattered the most.
This was a manifestation of the saying "knowledge is power".
Lu Zhou carefully completed the last step of all the experimental work. He placed a thin layer of translucent graphene sheet on the circuit mold that he had prepared in advance.
It was like he was looking at a perfect piece of art. He had a sincere smile on his face.
"All performance tests are in line with expectations.
"The appearance is also impeccable, it's perfect!
"As expected, Majorana fermions are the perfect choice for making quantum computers!"
All that was left was to verify whether the 20,000 general points he spent over the past few days were worth it.
When Lu Zhou pressed the power button, his heart almost jumped out of his throat.
This happened almost instantaneously.
The moment he pressed the button, the preset program completed its operation on the film. The signal processed by the logic circuit was transmitted to the display. Soon, a line of clear characters appeared on the display.
[Hello World]
When Lu Zhou saw the characters jumping on the screen, he suddenly felt happy. He clenched his fists and was so excited that he nearly jumped up.
"I did it!"
As a result, Lu Zhou was shocked by his own behavior. He quickly checked the operation of the equipment in a hurry.
When Lu Zhou saw that the "thin-film" chip was running stably, he finally had a sincere smile on his face. It didn't cause the "qubit entanglement state" to collapse because of his over 80 decibels cheer. Lu Zhou finally had a heartfelt smile on his face.
Looks like this time …
I really did it!
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