National Institute of Standards and Technology scientists have succeeded in storing information in in single beryllium ions for 10 seconds –more than 100,000 times longer than in previous experiments on the same ions.

They achieved this by using a different pair of the ions’ internal energy levels to represent 1 and 0 than was used in the group’s previous quantum computing experiments.

This new set of quantum states is unaffected by slight variations in magnetic fields, which previously caused memory losses in ions stored in electromagnetic traps.

The new approach enables qubits to maintain superpositions over 1 million times longer than might be needed to carry out the information processing steps in a future quantum computer. The advance is, therefore, an important step toward the goal of designing a fault-tolerant quantum computer because it significantly reduces the computing resources needed to correct memory errors.

NIST scientists also demonstrated that pairs of entangled ions can retain their quantum states for up to about 7 seconds.

Source: National Institute of Standards and Technology news release