Specifically, they considered the addition of qubits that change between two quantum states when they absorb or release a microwave photon-an individual quantum particle of the microwaves that course through the circuit.
Negatively curved space full#
They’ve laid a theoretical framework for adding qubits-the basic building blocks of quantum computers-to serve as matter in a curved space made of a circuit full of flowing microwaves. 3, 2022, the same collaboration between the groups of JQI Fellows Alicia Kollár and Alexey Gorshkov, who is also Fellow of the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science, expands the potential applications of the technique to include simulating more intricate physics. Now, in a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters on Jan.
Our three-dimensional world doesn’t even have enough space for a two-dimensional negatively curved space. In particular, the team looked at hyperbolic lattices that represent spaces-called negatively curved spaces-that have more space than can fit in our everyday “flat” space. A previous collaboration between researchers at JQI explored using labyrinthine circuits made of superconducting resonators to simulate the physics of certain curved spaces (see the previous story for additional background information and motivation of this line of research). Understanding curved spaces is important to expanding our knowledge of the universe, but it is fiendishly difficult to study curved spaces in a lab setting (even using simulations). Something as straightforward as defining a straight line requires careful consideration. When space curves (as happens dramatically near a black hole), sizes and directions defy normal intuition. One of the mind-bending ideas that physicists and mathematicians have come up with is that space itself-not just objects in space-can be curved.