'Magic dust' could be the foundation for future supercomputers

Researchers have found a new way to process large-scale data using a kind of 'magic dust' made of quantum particles called polaritons.

These polariton particles are essentially half light and half are matter. Scientists have proven that they will be an effective key to solving complex mathematical problems.

The group of international researchers said the idea could pave the way for the emergence of a new supercomputer, capable of dealing with previously unresolved issues in the field of biology and talent. main and space tourism.

One of the researchers, Professor Pavlos Lagoudakis of Southampton University in the UK, said: "We have only just begun to explore the potential of polaritons to solve complex problems. Currently, we are upgrade your device to hundreds of intersections and at the same time test its basic computing power. The ultimate goal is to create quantum circuits that operate at all environmental conditions. "

Because modern supercomputers have very powerful sources of power, scientists have encountered some problems, requiring finding the simplest way to solve the problem.

Magic dust - new energy for supercomputers.(Photo: Cambridge University).

Researchers comparing this problematic treatment is like finding the lowest point in hilly terrain with countless valleys and rivers. How can you determine the lowest point if you don't walk up on the top of the mountain and then go back down?

While supercomputers can help explorers walk faster than ever, polaritons bring a new approach: they act as a guide, guide explorers to reach the point. the lowest quickly - save time around searching.

This is really great, but the researchers say it takes several years to turn the first hypotheses into a technique that can be applied in experimental data.

People create polaritons by projecting laser light into stacked layers of atoms, including gallium, arsenic, indium and aluminum. This causes the electrons to absorb and emit light with a specific color and create polaritons.

Here, electrons and light waves coexist in a new type of quasiparticle (a quantum of energy - in a lattice or other system - with position and momentum, in addition to some quasiparticle aspects. can be thought of as a molecule - some are called pseudobulbs ).

Polariton is 10,000 times lighter than electrons and can be arranged to clump together (they now exist in a strange state called Bose-Einstein condensation ). And the researchers were able to measure polaritons due to their combination and glow.

Scientists put polaritons into an optimized classical model called an XY model . This model is simple enough to use but also flexible enough to apply to many problems of different supercomputers.

The team has demonstrated that the ability of polariton groups to accumulate at one point can point the way to finding the fastest and most effective solutions to solve the problems.

Although it still takes a while to apply to practice, the team thinks that this approach is very promising and deserves to be studied more carefully.

One of the researchers - Natalia Berloff of Cambridge University in England said: "A few years ago, the purely theoretical proposals of this approach were rejected by three scientific journals. Yes. who said: is anyone so crazy to do this? So we did it ourselves and now we have proved our proposal with experimental data ".

This research has been published in Nature Materials.