What if the power is not attenuated during transmission?

What if a computer has exponential speed and perfect precision?

On this issue, Professor Duncan Haldane once gave a standard answer. And in the fall of 2016, the physicist and two other companions won the Nobel Prize in Physics this year for "discovering the topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter!"

In short, they have discovered through rigorous experiments that even the smallest microscopic materials can exhibit macroscopic properties and have topological phases.

This sounds a bit difficult to understand, and if you want to understand it, you have to understand the concept of topology.

It is well known that mathematicians tend to look at problems in a way that is often different from the average person. They are often used to seeing the essence through phenomena. Topology is such a discipline, which studies some properties that geometry or space can remain unchanged after continuously changing shape.

One of the most classic examples shows that for a topologist, donuts and coffee cups look the same because they all have a hole.

Because there is only one hole, you can turn the doughnut into a coffee cup through a smooth deformation process, and the reverse is the same... even though this may seem incomprehensible or even inexplicable in the eyes of ordinary people, in fact, because This mathematical method has been found by scholars in other fields to find a lot of interesting things.

Especially in the field of physics and materials, many of the amazing discoveries of the 1980s were derived from topological methods and provided the theoretical basis.

It has only been for a long time that although people are used to applying topology to solve the problems of the macro world, it is impossible to use topology for subatomic particles such as electrons and photons.

Because they are all affected by the strange laws of quantum physics, their size, position and even form are in an uncertain state.

However, the 16-year Nobel Prize in Physics gave a positive answer to this proposition.

Even the subatoms of these microcosms are subject to topological characteristics!

This theory obviously has no effect on daily life, but for the field of electronic engineering, it really opens the door to the new world!

In the wonderful quantum world, these properties exhibit amazing stability and some remarkable properties at a particular stage of matter. The most typical example of this is the topological insulator.

In particular, this property found in graphene materials directly led to the birth of sg-1 superconducting materials and carbon-based chips.

At the same time, this property also promotes the study of quantum computing.

According to the principle of quantum computers, the main reason is that the subatomic particles can be in different states at the same time, and the information is stored in a qubit. It is also because of this characteristic that quantum computers can solve problems exponentially compared to traditional computers.

The problem, however, is that the subatomic particles that store the data are very fragile, and unlike a stable atom, even a slight disturbance can change its state.

That is to say, the so-called "decoherence" in quantum mechanics can affect the collapse of any quantum entangled state!

If you want to solve the problem, either noise reduction, anti-interference, or both, no matter which technical route you take, you must stabilize the subatomic particles.

This is also one of the core challenges in the development of quantum computers.

At the same time, it is also the subject that Lu Zhou has been studying these days...

Jinling Institute of Advanced Studies, a laboratory on the third floor of the underground.

The empty room that was originally used as a spare sample room is now being filled with a lot of newly purchased equipment.

These include multi-functional physical measurement systems, step meters, vibrating sample magnetometers, high and low temperature magnetoresistance testers, and in-situ freeze dryers. Although not as luxurious as the lineup, it can be said that the sparrow is small. Everything is complete.

In addition to these equipments essential for the study of carbon materials, there is also a light-cured 3D printer with a maximum precision of up to 8 microns, which is mainly used to print plastic molds used in experiments.

A thumb-sized film was carefully placed in a magnetron sputtering atomic layer deposition apparatus. Lu Zhou carefully set new experimental parameters on the computer against the data on the experimental table.

After doing all this work, he finally breathed a sigh of relief and knocked the Enter button on the keyboard.

The green signal light illuminates and the equipment in the lab begins to operate.

Taking the coffee back to the office chair next to it, Lu Zhou looked at the watch and was thinking about what to use to boring for a while. At this time, Xiao Ai controlled the drone and swayed from the side.

Xiao Ai: [Master owner! Just in the moment! A super surprise happened! Φ(≧≦*)?]

The line of sight was focused in the air half a meter before the small TV. Lu Zhou lifted his eyelids and said something accidentally.

"Are you upgrading?"

Xiao Ai: [诶? Do you know? ! Σ(°△°)_]

Lu Zhou: "..."

Is this guy upgraded or downgraded...

Sighing in his heart, Lu Zhou ignored it and closed his eyes into the system space.

Branch technology as a branch of system tasks, the accumulation of experience in artificial intelligence and the experience of informatics are synchronized. At the moment when Xiao Ai's level rose to lv4, his informatics level was also raised from lv4 to lv5.

At the moment of the upgrade, even if you don't enter the system space, you can see the dialog box prompting...

[...]

[g. Informatics: lv5 (0/300,000)]

After confirming the property panel after the change, Lu Zhou thoughtfully touched the chin.

Sure enough, as he speculated, the accumulation of progress bars can be accelerated by observing the various behaviors of players in the virtual reality world. In other words, the fact that the experience of the artificial intelligence branch is actually a sociological experience?

However, now Lu Zhou does not have much thought on Xiao Ai's body. After entering the system space, he only took a look at his own property panel and the progress bar of branch technology, and then turned his consciousness back to the real world.

Open your eyes and see that the small TV staring at the four-rotor has been shaking in front of him for a long time.

Xiao Ai: [Master owner, don’t you boast a little AI? (*/\*)]

Lu Zhou: "Well, it’s beautiful."

Xiao Ai: [Good perfunctory! Qaq

"...the time seems to be almost the same."

Pretending not to see the dialog box on the small TV, Lu Zhou looked down at the time on the watch and whispered to himself.

As if to confirm his sentence, the signal light jumped from green to red on the instrument not far away.

Upon seeing it, Lu Zhou immediately ordered it.

“Xiao Ai, open the in-situ freeze dryer.”

Xiao Ai: [Received! (○`3'○)]

Although extremely reluctant, Xiao Ai still obediently did.

Just don't know if it is his illusion. I always feel that the reaction of this little guy seems to be more and more emotional... or in other words, more and more like a person?

Lu Zhou also said that this is not a good thing.

After all, the way artificial intelligence processes information and the human brain are completely different sets of rules. One is that logic determines emotions, and the other is that emotions dominate logic.

Maybe its existence will give birth to a brand new species, maybe?

Of course, it is too early to say this now.

As its "guardian", Lu Zhou can only say that he has fulfilled his responsibilities and took a step by step.

At least in terms of current performance, the little guy is quite well-behaved. He plays the role of a small assistant in both life and research, and he is absolutely obedient to his orders.

My own worry seems to be a bit redundant?

With the help of Xiao Ai, Lu Zhou transferred the sample from the magnetron sputtering atomic layer deposition equipment to the in-situ freeze dryer, freeze-dried the carbon-based chip sample, and then applied the film to the film by means of a metallographic microscope. The chip was carefully observed and the experimental data was recorded on the side of the book.

Now he has more than 30,000 points. According to the price tag issued by the system, he needs to convert 120,000 points for a full set of quantum computer technology.

In reality, however, this valuation actually contains a lot of water.

If you split the problem and put forward unresolved questions based on the problems that have been solved by the academic community, the points consumed can be cut by five times!

So far, he has spent 20,000 points to overcome several key bottlenecks in the research, and the rest is his understanding of carbon materials, Mott insulation, Mayorana Fermi By consulting some of the research results of predecessors, and on the basis of some of the promotional work done.

For example, a topological insulator carbon material containing Majorana fermions, and a layer of monoatomic width superconductors superimposed thereon without affecting the stability of the Mayorana fermions.

Subatoms can be protected in this particular topological phase material.

In other words, the qubits formed under this topological phase do not change due to some small or local interference. It is far more stable than normal qubits, allowing our quantum calculations to handle the answers we want in a more precise and efficient way.

These jobs have saved at least 100,000 points for Lu Zhou.

It is also these jobs that give him the opportunity to use the points on the blade.

This is also a manifestation of the phrase "knowledge is power."

Carefully completed the final step of all the test work, Lu Zhou placed a thin, flap-like translucent graphene sheet on a pre-prepared circuit mold.

It was like looking at a perfect piece of art, and his face showed a sincere smile.

“The performance tests are in line with expectations.”

“The sale is also impeccable and perfect!”

"...and surely the Mayorana Fermi son is the perfect choice for making quantum computers!"

The rest is to verify the efforts of these days, and the 20,000 points he spent, is worth it.

Pressing the power button, Lu Zhou’s heart almost mentioned the blind eye.

Almost a moment.

At the same time that he pressed the button, the pre-programmed program was run on this film. The signal processed and output by the logic circuit is transmitted to the display screen, and a line of clear characters is quickly displayed on the display screen.

[helloworld]

Looking at the characters beating on the screen, Lu Zhou’s heart suddenly felt a joy, his fists were pinched, and he almost didn’t get excited.

"Successful!"

Subconsciously shouted out the excitement in my heart, and as a result, Lu Zhou was shocked by his own behavior, and quickly checked the operation of the equipment.

When I saw this layer of "thin film" chip that was running stably, and did not cause "the collapse of the quantum bit entangled state" because of the cheer of more than 80 cents, Lu Zhou’s face finally showed his sincerity and reassurance. Smile.

It seems this time...

It is really!