NREL: Asymmetry may be key to super-fast quantum computers needing little electricity to operate

By: InnovatioNews Tuesday August 13, 2013 0 comments Tags: Dirac Point, Golden, Jun-Wei Luo, NREL

GOLDEN - New research at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) shows a class of materials being eyed for the next generation of computers behaves asymmetrically at the sub-atomic level.

NREL said the research is a key step toward understanding the topological insulators that may have the potential to be the building blocks of a super-fast quantum computer that could run on almost no electricity.

NREL scientists contributed first-principles calculations and co-authored the paper, "Mapping the Orbital Wavefunction of the Surface States in 3D Topological Insulators" appearing in the current issue of Nature Physics. 

A topological insulator is a material that behaves as an insulator in its interior but whose surface contains conducting states.

In the paper, researchers explain how the materials act differently above and below the Dirac Point and how the orbital and spin texture of topological insulator states switched exactly at the Dirac Point.

The Dirac Point is the place where two conical forms - one representing energy, the other momentum - come together at a point.

In the case of topological insulators, the orbital and spin textures of the sub-atomic particles switch precisely at the Dirac Point, a phenomenon that occurs because of the relationship between electrons and their holes in a semiconductor, NREL said.

A quantum computer is a machine with the potential of loading the information from a data center into the space of a laptop and processing data much faster that today's best supercomputers.

"The energy efficiency should be much better," said Jun-Wei Luo, NREL scientist, one of the paper's co-authors. "Instead of being confined to the on-and-off switches of the binary code, a quantum computer will act more like the human brain, seeing something but imagining much more.

"This is entirely different technology."

For more information, visit www.nrel.gov.