Quantum criticality could be a boon for qubit designers.
Researchers studying the strange behavior of metal alloys called heavy fermions have made a surprising discovery that could be useful in safeguarding the information stored in qubits. They examined the behavior of an intermetallic crystal of cerium, palladium and silicon as it was subjected to extreme cold and a strong magnetic field.
Quantum computing needs a well-defined quantum state for qubit information storage, but current implementations suffer of high “decoherence”.
They discovered the quantum behavior of the material fits in two unique ways, one in which electrons compete to occupy orbitals and another where they compete to occupy spin states. (Rice University)
