The Memory of an Electron

[bomohwkl]

The memory of one electron

How many atoms is needed to store the information of the whole Library of Congress? Only one, according to University of Michigan professor Philip Bucksbaum. Since electrons, like all elementary particles, are actually waves, Bucksbaum has found a way to phase-encode any number of ones and zeros along a single electron's continuously oscillating waveform.

"Our work in quantum-phase registers is highly experimental, but theoretically there is really no limit to how long a string of 1s and 0s you can store in one," said Bucksbaum..

In practice, Bucksbaum's team is a long way from quantum-phase memory devices. They are sticking with byte-wide vectors encoded with an ultrahigh-speed laser on a single cesium atom. With that setup, the team can store information in quantum-phase bytes instead of on quantum bits, as with most quantum computer designs. So far, all work with quantum computing has used the binary property of electron spin, which is either up or down. "Most other researchers are using the spin of a quantum particle as a storage medium. Quantum-phase data storage is much more flexible but also very new. It may turn out to be a step toward quantum computers, or it could be a complete dead end," said Bucksbaum.

Quantum phase has long been of interest to researchers, because theoretically atoms could take on unfamiliar characteristics by selectively altering the phase of their waveform. For example, with a polymer, changing its constituent atoms' phase could mimic the wave-function phase of a metal, thereby imbuing plastic with the strength of steel.

Quantum phase for data storage was first proposed by Lov Grover at Lucent Technologies Bell Laboratories (Murray Hill, N.J.) in 1997. Bucksbaum's group was the first to test the theory experimentally, and so far it works like a charm.

Waves in bathtub

"Grover speculated that quantum data registers could store and retrieve data by allowing you to search many locations simultaneously; we tested one of his algorithms and confirmed it," said Bucksbaum.

Quantum mechanics holds that electrons behave like the waves sloshing in a bathtub - they exist simultaneously in an infinite number of locations or quantum states within the single wave. In the bathtub example, the surface waves define sets of points, any one of which has a certain probability of being in the wave's location at any one moment.

By sculpting designer wave packets and injecting them into an electron's waveform, Bucksbaum encoded strings of 1s and 0s with laser blasts that reverse the phase from the natural state of the waveform. "Our wave packets enable us to engineer atoms by adjusting the amounts and quantum phases of an atom's electrons," he said.

Usually an electron is bound to an atom but can nevertheless exist in many states simultaneously - like all the points along a wave stretching from one side of a bathtub to the other. All the points are there at once, and all the points along the wave are constantly changing, enabling a specific sequence of waves to encode information.

Bucksbaum used a laser to encode parallel phase reversals along the waveform of an atom's electrons - a pulsating stream of 8-bit phase reversals. A second reference stream enabled the researchers to read back out the original bits by decoding the phase reversals, thereby recovering the stored information like a data register.

"There are an infinite number of individually addressable states - the Coulomb potentials - where quantum bits can be stored," said Bucksbaum. An electron's wave is called a "probability wave," because it is in each possible quantum state simultaneously, each with a certain probability. For instance, the probability that a wave is at the highest point is proportional to the number of places where the waveform is currently hitting its highest point.

For atoms, the infinite number of quantum states comes from the different bound states of the electrons in their orbits. These orbits come in an infinite variety of "quantum jumps" between states - the quantum states are conveniently numbered 1, 2, 3 and so forth. Bucksbaum's laser excited his cesium atom to states 25 through 32 to encode his 8-bit quantum bytes.

Each of these high-energy states has an associated amplitude that can be modulated with ultrashort laser bursts, essentially storing an 8-bit vector into a quantum register. When needed later, the register's value can be read out from the single atom by hitting it again with the laser, this time with a reference encoding.

After the second burst, the atom has been driven to two different states by the two laser pulse streams, causing the two "alternate realities" inside the atom to interfere with each other - like dropping two pebbles into a pond: Both states exist simultaneously along with all the other miscellaneous states (ripples), albeit with a smaller probability..

The interference pattern between the two wave packets enables the 1s and 0s of the original register's value to be decoded, since interference occurs only on positions in the original value that differ from the reference beam.

"The way a data register works is that the electron is simultaneously in many states, meaning the electron is simultaneously occupying many parts of the register, so you can store the whole stream in a single atom," said Bucksbaum.

Bucksbaum has verified the function of his single-atom quantum register with all types of bit patterns, similar to the test patterns used to verify the proper function of a CPU after manufacture. So far he has not found any values that can't be stored and retrieved from a single atom.

"Now we want to find out how long information can be stored," he said.

From
http://lkm.fri.uni-lj.si/xaigor/slo/zna ... ectron.htm

[Vesko]

The original publication of the same text is at http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20000831S0019
You can also see http://www.thiaoouba.com/electron1.htm.
It is mentioned in a footnote in the online edition of the book at http://www.thiaoouba.com/ebook.htm.

Unlike what the article says, there should still be a limit to the capacity of an electron, according to "Thiaoouba Prophecy". And it should be smaller than the Library of Congress, which is not an average city library.

[Vesko]

On a related note:
Before this discovery, I've been aware at information encoding at the atom level, interpreting the two different spin values of the atom as 0 or 1, thus allowing memory storage. An engineer friend of mine has actually been to a live demonstration of such a device in year 2000 in my country.
As far as I remember, the so-called Gendlin effect supposedly discovered by Shimon Gendlin, also producer of those chips for the military and NASA (as my friend has been told at the demonstration), allows the stable keeping of an atom's spin so that spontaneous spin change does not occur (this has been a problem for many years before). See http://compu-technics.com and http://www.atomchip.com. Gendlin himself has said that hard disks, DVDs, or anything else could simply disappear into history very quickly if his device were to be introduced in the mass market, and that it would not be expensive to produce (year 2000) if done in industrial quantities. However, this technology would be dangerous if unleashed, and you can see why. The memory is high-capacity (hundreds of gigabytes -- and that was nothing in comparison with what could be done still in small form factor, Gendlin said), non-volatile (!), with read/write speeds of about a single nanosecond (I think for a block of 64 kilobytes), and able to operate in boiling water and very low temperatures.
My engineer friend was told that Gendlin's company had a contract with NASA to store all their archives in a small briefcase... We are speaking here of the order of petabytes of storage.

[Guest]

See http://compu-technics.com and http://www.atomchip.com.

Are they using quantum phase to store or retrievel data?

[Vesko]

See http://compu-technics.com and http://www.atomchip.com.

Are they using quantum phase to store or retrievel data?

It seems not. From the above article text quote by bomohwkl:

Quantum phase for data storage was first proposed by Lov Grover at Lucent Technologies Bell Laboratories (Murray Hill, N.J.) in 1997. Bucksbaum's group was the first to test the theory experimentally, and so far it works like a charm.

The patent filing date for the Gendlin Effect is November 29, 1996 (see link below), and it must have been proposed and in development a lot earlier than 1997.

http://www.delphion.com/cgi-bin/viewpat ... FORMAT=pdf

[bomohwkl]

Quantum computers can search arbitrarily large databases by a single query
Grover LK
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS
79 (23): 4709-4712 DEC 8 1997

Document type: Article Language: English Cited References: 8 Times Cited: 85

Abstract:
This paper shows that a quantum mechanical algorithm that can query information relating to multiple items of the database can search a database for a unique item satisfying a given condition, in a single query [a query is defined as any question to the database to which the database has to return a (YES/NO answer]. A classical algorithm will be Limited to the information theoretic bound of at least log(2) N queries, which it would achieve by using a binary search

Quantum mechanics helps in searching for a needle in a haystack
Grover LK
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS
79 (2): 325-328 JUL 14 1997

Document type: Article Language: English Cited References: 9 Times Cited: 557

Abstract:
Quantum mechanics can speed up a range of search applications over unsorted data. For example, imagine a phone directory containing N names arranged in completely random order. To find someone's phone number with a probability of 50%, any classical algorithm (whether deterministic or probabilistic) will need to access the database a minimum of 0.5N times. Quantum mechanical systems can be in a superposition of states and simultaneously examine multiple names. By properly adjusting the phases of various operations, successful computations reinforce each other while others interfere randomly. As a result, the desired phone number can be obtained in only O(root N) accesses to the database.

Information storage and retrieval through quantum phase
Ahn J, Weinacht TC, Bucksbaum PH
SCIENCE
287 (5452): 463-465 JAN 21 2000

Document type: Article Language: English Cited References: 14 Times Cited: 74

Abstract:
Information was stored as quantum phase in an N-state Rydberg atom data register. One or more flipped states stored in an eight-state atomic wave packet could be retrieved in a single operation, in agreement with a recent proposal by Grover

[bomohwkl]

The patent filing date for the Gendlin Effect is November 29, 1996 (see link below), and it must have been proposed and in development a lot earlier than 1997.

Gendlin Effect is certainly not phase encoded. I cant even find any information about Gendlin effect on web of science search engine. It mean there is unpublished work on Gendlin effect or there is another name for it.
Gendlin Effect


THat's what i find from the yahoo

When the ferromagnetic material (or, more exactly, thin ferromagnetic films) is in right next to the porous silicon, affected by the external magnetic field crossing all layers of the films, the direction of the magnetic field in the ferromagnetic material changes, for example, from +B0 to –B0, and in the porous silicon a quantum of light is emitted as result of a change of orientation of magnetic dipoles in the ferromagnetic layers, and their effect on thin "wires" (less than 1.5 nm), that are in the porous silicon. This quantum of light can be used to define the characteristics of the ferromagnetic material concerning its magnetic reversal, implemented in the real device, which is the subject of this invention.

Regular silicon will not radiate light because there is a forbidden power zone . Porous silicon, located in right next to the magnetic material emits visible light, which is generated by the change of orientation of magnetic domains in this material from external electromagnetic field. One of the explanations of this phenomenon is that the forbidden power zone is increased and displaced, when electrons are limited by small "wires" formed at the pickling of silicon, and re-orientation of magnetic domains located right next to them renders compressing and expanding effect (according to principles of quantum mechanics, the energy state changes when the position of electrons is localized). This produces light that fades out 0.2ns after the completion of magnetic reversal of domains.

[Vesko]

Quantum computers can search much faster than that (using something like the so-called Shor's algorithm), but to be useful for something beyond a few calculations, they must support enough qubits and also be cheap to produce. A few dozens will be enough to supersede even the most powerful supercomputer today, though, because each qubit can practically stand for a multitude of bits in a contemporary computer (a Turing machine where each bit can be only 0 or 1, in contrast to a quantum one where a single qubit can simultaneously represent numerous states, each state between 0 and 1, inclusive). Today's implemented quantum computers have very limited applicability as they have only several qubits and are highly unstable, being composed of molecules in a test tube. They require very expensive equipment to be programmed (via radio frequencies) and the computation results must be read via medical techniques such as magnetic resonance. And they are also a very young technology -- 20 years vs. 70+ years for the modern computer.

I think that the mass introduction of quantum computing is going to be slow, because today's computers still have a tremendous potential (at least until the Moore's "Law" continues to hold), and are much easier to manufacture. Computers with more than one processor (central processing unit, CPU) have been available for quite some time and with the pending introduction of multi-core processors on the mass market, performance is bound to be able to increase a lot in the future. Optical computers appear to be an area of viable research, too.

By the way, there are also quantum computer simulators available in software for current computers, but they are very slow.

[bomohwkl]

as they have only several qubits and are highly unstable, being composed of molecules in a test tube.

THe inistability is called decoherence usually due to external environment. So how does our astral body avoid decoherence?

One of the interesting paper is

Topologically protected quantum bits using Josephson junction arrays
Ioffe LB, Feigel'man MV, Ioselevich A, Ivanov D, Troyer M, Blatter G
NATURE
415 (6871): 503-506 JAN 31 2002

Document type: Article Language: English Cited References: 25 Times Cited: 26

Abstract:
All physical implementations of quantum bits (or qubits, the logical elements in a putative quantum computer) must overcome conflicting requirements: the qubits should be manipulable through external signals, while remaining isolated from their environment. Proposals based on quantum optics emphasize optimal isolation(1-3 ), while those following the solid-state route exploit the variability and scalability of nanoscale fabrication techniques(4-8 ). Recently, various designs using superconducting structures have been successfully tested for quantum coherent operation(9-11 ), however, the ultimate goal of reaching coherent evolution over thousands of elementary operations remains a formidable task. Protecting qubits from decoherence by exploiting topological stability is a qualitatively new proposal(12) that holds promise for long decoherence times, but its physical implementation has remained unclear. Here we show how strongly correlated systems developing an isolated twofold degenerate quantum dimer liquid ground state can be used in the construction of topologically stable qubits; we discuss their implementation using Josephson junction arrays. Although the complexity of their architecture challenges the technology base available today, such topological qubits greatly benefit from their built-in fault-tolerance.

[Vesko]

I am starting to think that the human astral body is a specimen of God's ultimate technology, and that it has complexity on a par of the entire universe, but on a tiny scale. I am thinking that, because it would have to be extremely difficult to reverse-engineer the astral body -- if it was easy, we would be able to solve all our problems in a short time (a billion years is still a short time for this, if it indeed could be done in a billion years)... My point is, there must be something extremely ingenious and difficult in the physics of consciousness that would ensure that dumb people like we are (I'm speaking of our civilization as a whole, and no, I won't accept retorts like "Speak for yourself, ***!" ) are never able to advance technologically -- I mean, even solely technologically and materially -- to surpass or even come anywhere close to the advanced 9-category aliens described in Michel's book.

[bomohwkl]

Although I don't much about quantum computer. I just wonder how the astral body can build electronic circuits using electrons. I am now think that plamonic is a likely candidate to move data one place to another.
Plasmon: an excited coupled state of a free electron and a photon that can travel at the speed of light.