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Department of Physics

The Cavendish Laboratory
 

Quantum dot made from an etched silicon nanowire.Quantum computing is a nascent information technology: it aims to harness the massive parallelism offered by quantum entanglement to provide an advantage over classical algorithms and computing. Quantum computers are predicted to have a range of applications including cryptography and the simulation of complex physical and biochemical systems.

Conduction thorugh a silicon quantum dot.Our approach to quantum computing is to use long-lived spin states as the quantum bits. Silicon is an attractive material in which to implement a quantum computer due to, as a result of low spin-orbit and hyperfine interactions, the long coherence times of electron spins. An additional advantage of using silicon is the materials science and technology developed by the silicon-based semiconductor industry, which will be useful in the future development of a large-scale quantum computer. Our projects investigate using the spin of electrons, confined in either dopant atoms or in quantum dots, as quantum bits.