OK, I’m still a novice in this area, and the course hasn’t reached quantum computers yet…but I can spot something, I feel…
Quantum computers (more specifically, how we build qubits) all require super cooling in order to work. Making expensive, unscalable, systems.
Maybe quantum computers will fulfil IBM’s founder’s original thoughts on computers (that there is maybe a world market for five – although read this with that quote).
We’ve just covered quantum sensing on the course. And that introduced us to the magic of nitrogen vacancies in diamonds (nv-centres). Where impurities in diamonds effectively form a region that exhibits spin.
Specifically we looked at how these can be harnessed in quantum magnetometry (and excitingly to measure magnetic fields from the brain).
One key bit of NV-centres is they operate at room temperature.
I understand you can optically prepare, microwave control, and optically read-out (they shine a different way when in spin-up compared to spin-down) these nv-centres.
Why not use these as qubits? I’m sure there’s technical difficulties, but they may be simpler to solve than cryogenic limitations of today’s qubit implementations – then all we’re left to find are more than the handful of use cases today for quantum computing.
One potential limitation is control of the centres in the diamond (even when building your own). But I’d imagine you can average several to act as one qubit. Or that advances in additive printing will lead to better structures…
It seems I’m not the only one thinking this way, based on this article from a few days ago on the EU’s Quantum Flagship site:
https://qt.eu/news/2024/2024-11-08_Diamonds-are-a-quantum-computers-best-friend
Let’s get entangled…