Physics Department - Society of Physics Students Seminar, Queens Campus

The advances in computing hardware in the past four decades are well described by Moore’s law, which states the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. However, this type of computing, which is based on the laws of classical physics, is soon to hit a fundamental limit as the sizes of the computing components are so small that their dynamics will be governed by quantum theory instead of classical physics.

One way to overcome this limit is actually to take advantage of the peculiar quantum phenomena on the atomic scale to perform a fundamentally different type of computing – quantum computing. Once built, a quantum computer can solve certain types of problems extremely faster than their classical counterparts.

In this talk, the basic concepts in quantum computing will be first presented. This will be followed by the introduction of a special type of superconducting circuit – Josephson junctions. The main part of the talk will focus on how the superconducting circuits can be thought of as “atoms” and how these artificial atoms can be used to build a quantum computer. The implications of these results in quantum computing will be discussed in the end.

Come join us! Food and drinks will be served.