Prototype of most advanced of current types of quantum memory presented by two Kazan universities

A paper was published in Scientific Reports in March 2018.

Employees of Kazan Federal University and Kazan Quantum Center of Kazan National Research Technical University demonstrated an original layout of a prototype of multiresonator broadband quantum memory-interface.

Professor Sergey Moiseev, Director of Kazan Quantum Center, explains, “The scheme of multiresonator microwave quantum memory allowed for reaching 16.3% of quantum efficiency at room temperature, which was significantly better than other recent results in the world for microwave quantum memory in electronic ensembles at helium temperatures. We also showed that quantum efficiency of such memory can be over 99% at sufficiently low temperatures used in quantum computer schemes on superconducting qubits.”

This work of Kazan physicists can help create universal memory solutions for quantum computers on superconducting qubits, which is one of the most important tasks in this field today.

Quantum computer, unlike the ones we are used to, operates in qubits which can simultaneously contain logical 0 and 1 due to quantum mechanics effects and laws of quantum physics. Quantum computer with a sufficient number of operational qubits can tackle objectives for which usual binary logic computers need hundreds of years.

In March 2018, a computing system of two superconducting qubits was created in Russia; it can further become the basis for quantum computers and data encryption systems. In the labs headed by Mikhail Lukin (Harvard University) and John Martinis (Google), first prototypes of 500-qubit computers have been assembled. In the nearest future, they are expected to showcase advantages that quantum computing has over classic binary computing.

Co-author of the paper at KFU Oleg Sherstyukov adds, “The main achievements of these past years in quantum computing on superconducting qubits have not only been linked with the increase in the number of interacting qubits but also with a significant lengthening of a superconducting qubit’s lifetime – to 100 microseconds. However, it’s impossible to increase this time further because of fundamental laws of physics. In that regard, the problem of creating multi-qubit microwave quantum memory with a prolonged lifetime has become very pertinent.”

Russian and overseas scientists have been working on this topic for several years now. Professor Moiseev adds that the most promising achievements have been based on the scheme of photon echo on an ensemble of atoms, the one that was proposed and explained by Kazanites. In 2010, employees of Kazan Quantum Center proved that photon echo quantum memory can be created in an optical resonator, which paved the way to multi-qubit integral schemes of quantum memory and its inaugural implementation in microwave frequencies.