What happens if there is no attenuation of electrical energy during transmission?

What if a computer had exponential speed and perfect accuracy?

Professor Duncan Haldane once gave a standard answer to this question. And in the autumn of 2016, the physicist and two other companions were awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Physics for "discovering the topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter"!

To put it simply, through rigorous experiments, they found that even the smallest microscopic matter can exhibit macroscopic properties and have topological phases.

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

It is a well-known fact that mathematicians often look at problems differently than the average person, and they are often accustomed to looking at the essence through phenomena. Topology is the study of the properties of geometry or space that remain unchanged after a continuous change of shape.

One of the most classic examples is that for a topologist, a doughnut and a coffee cup look the same because they both have a hole.

Because there's only one hole, you can turn the donut into a coffee cup in a smooth deformation process, and vice versa...... Even though this may seem incomprehensible or even inexplicable to the average person, in fact, because of this mathematical method, scholars in other fields have discovered many interesting things.

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

However, although people have been accustomed to applying topology to solving problems in the macroscopic world, they have been at a loss as to whether topology can be applied to subatomic particles such as electrons and photons.

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

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

Even the subatoms of these microscopic worlds are topological and logical!

This theory obviously has no impact on everyday life, but for the field of electronic engineering, it does open the door to a new world!

In the wonderful quantum world, these properties exhibit amazing stability and some remarkable properties at a particular stage of matter. A prime example of this is topological insulators.

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 is also driving research into quantum computing.

According to the principle of quantum computers, information is stored in something called a qubit through the property that subatomic particles can be in different states at the same time. It is precisely because of this feature that quantum computers can solve problems at an exponential rate compared to traditional computers.

The problem, however, is that subatomic particles that store data are very fragile and, unlike stable atoms, even a slight disturbance can change the state in which it is located.

This is the so-called "decoherence" in quantum mechanics - any environmental influence can lead to the collapse of the entangled state of the qubit!

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

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

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

Jinling Institute for Advanced Study, a laboratory on the third basement floor.

The empty room, which had been used as a backup sample room, was now being filled with a large amount of newly acquired equipment.

These include multi-functional physical property measurement systems, step meters, vibrating sample magnetometers, high and low temperature magnetoresistance testers, and in-situ freeze dryers.

In addition to these indispensable equipment for the study of carbon materials, there is also a light-curing 3D printer with a maximum accuracy of 8 microns, which is mainly used to print plastic molds for experiments.

A thumb-sized film was carefully placed into the magnetron sputtering atomic layer deposition equipment, and Lu Zhou carefully checked the data on the experiment form and set the new experimental parameters on the computer.

After all this work, he finally breathed a sigh of relief and typed the enter button on the keyboard.

The green signal light comes on, and the equipment in the lab starts running.

Returning to the office chair next to him with coffee and sitting down, Lu Zhou glanced at his watch, and was thinking about what to use to pass the boring time for a while, when Xiao Ai controlled the drone and swayed over from the side.

Xiao Ai: [Master, master! Just now, in a moment! A super surprising thing happened! φ(≧ω≦*)】

His eyes focused on the air half a meter in front of the small TV, Lu Zhou raised his eyelids and said with some surprise.

"You've upgraded?"

Xiao Ai: [Huh? You know it all?! Σ(°△°|||) ︴】

Lu Zhou: "......"

Has this guy been upgraded or downgraded......

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

As a branch of the system's tasks, the accumulation of experience in artificial intelligence and informatics are synchronized. At the moment when Xiao Ai's level was raised to LV4, his informatics level was also raised from LV4 to LV5.

At the moment of upgrading, even if you do not enter the system space, you can still see the dialog prompt......

【……】

[G. Informatics: LV5 (0/300,000)]

After confirming the changed attribute panel, Lu Zhou touched his chin thoughtfully.

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

However, now Lu Zhou didn't have too much attention to Xiao Ai, and after entering the system space, he just glanced at his attribute panel and the progress bar of branch technology, and then turned his consciousness back to the real world.

When he opened his eyes, he saw that the small TV staring at the quadcopter had been dangling in front of him for a long time.

Xiao Ai: [Master, master, don't you praise Xiao Ai? (*/ω＼*)】

Lu Zhou: "Well, well done. ”

Xiao Ai: [It's perfunctory! QAQ】

“…… It seems like the time is almost up. ”

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

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

Seeing this, Lu Zhou immediately ordered.

"Xiao Ai, turn on the in-situ freeze dryer."

Xiao Ai: [Roger!] （○｀3′○）】

Although extremely reluctant, Xiao Ai obediently complied.

It's just that I don't know if it's his delusion, but I always feel that this little guy's reaction seems to be getting more and more emotional...... Or in other words, more and more like people?

Lu Zhou couldn't say whether this was a good thing or not.

At the end of the day, the way AI processes information is completely different from the human brain, one is determined by logic, and the other is governed by emotion.

Maybe its existence will give birth to a whole new species?

Of course, it's too early to say that.

As its "guardian", Lu Zhou can only say that he has fulfilled his responsibilities and taken one step at a time.

At least judging from the current performance, the little guy is still quite well-behaved and obedient, playing the role of a little assistant in life and research, and absolutely obeying his orders without discounting.

It seems that your worries are a little unnecessary?

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, lyophilized the carbon-based chip sample, and then carefully observed the film-like chip with the help of a metallographic microscope, and recorded the experimental data in a notebook on the side.

Now he has more than 30,000 points, and according to the price code issued by the system, he needs 120,000 points to exchange for a full set of quantum computer technology.

However, in fact, there is a lot of water in this valuation.

If you break down the problem and ask the unsolved problem on the basis of the problems that have already been solved by the academic community, the points consumed can be reduced by more than five times!

So far, he has spent 20,000 points to overcome several key bottlenecks in his research, and the rest is based on his knowledge of carbon materials, Mott insulators, and Majorana fermions, and some generalization work done on this basis by consulting some previous research results.

For example, a topological insulator carbon material containing a Majorana fermion, and a superconductor layer with a single atom width superimposed on top of it without affecting the stability of the Majorana fermions.

In this particular topological phase material, subatoms can be protected.

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 ordinary qubits, allowing our quantum computing to process the questions we want to answer in a more precise and efficient way.

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

It is precisely this work that gives him the opportunity to put his points to good use.

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

Carefully completing the last step of all the test work, Lu Zhou placed a layer of translucent graphene sheet as thin as a cicada's wings on the circuit mold prepared in advance.

It was as if he was looking at a perfect work of art, and a heartfelt smile appeared on his face.

"All performance tests are in line with expectations."

"The appearance is impeccable, it can be called perfect!"

“…… Sure enough, Majorana fermions are the perfect choice for building quantum computers! ”

All that's left is to verify whether the hard work he has worked these days, and the 20,000 points he has spent, is worth it.

Pressing the button to turn on the power, Lu Zhou's heart almost rose to his throat.

It's almost a momentary thing.

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

【HelloWorld】

Looking at the characters beating on the screen, Lu Zhou's heart suddenly became happy, his fists clenched tightly, and he almost didn't jump up in excitement.

"It worked!"

subconsciously shouted out the excitement in his heart, but Lu Zhou was startled by his behavior, and hurriedly checked the operation status of the equipment.

When he saw that the stable operation of this layer of "thin film" chip did not cause the "collapse of the qubit entanglement state" because of his cheers of more than 80 decibels, Lu Zhou's face finally showed a sincere and reassuring smile.

It seems that this time......

It's really done!