Re: New Light-Based Computer Runs At Quantum Speeds

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri May 18 2001 - 13:29:49 MDT


John Clark provided a link to:

> New Light-Based Computer Runs At Quantum Speeds:
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/05/010515075526.htm

Does anyone know if this is any different from the work of
Bucksbaum @ U. Mich? See:
  Ahn, J. and Weinacht, T. C., Bucksbaum, P. H.,
  "Information Storage and Retrieval Through Quantum Phase",
  Science 287(5452):463-465 (21 Jan 2000)
  http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/287/5452/463
or
  http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20000831S0019
based on work by Grover @ Bell Labs:
  Grover, L. K.,
  "Quantum Mechanics helps in searching for a needle in a haystack",
  Physics Review Letters 79(2):325-328 (1997)
  http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/quant-ph/9706033

As far as I can tell this is based on pumping the electrons
up to specific energy state and then extracting the information
by dropping the electrons back down to a lower energy state.
(I can only think of electrons as particles due to too much
digital imprinting unfortunately).

Can anyone with a hard physics background comment on the
lifetime of the electrons in an excited (quantum entangled?)
state? My astronomy text says the lifetime is ~10 nsec
before they return to the ground state but does this
change with temperature?

Robert



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