SCIENCE AT THE SHINE DOME canberra 30 April – 2 May 2003
Symposium: Nanoscience – where physics, chemistry and biology collide
Friday, 2 May 2004
Professor Robert Clark
Federation Fellow, University of New South Wales
Director, Centre for Quantum Computer Technology
Robert Clark was appointed Director of the Australian Research Council Special Research Centre for Quantum Computer Technology in 2000. Before that he was Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of New South Wales, where he founded and established the National Magnet Laboratory and Semiconductor Nanofabrication Facility. These facilities provide an Australian capability to fabricate sophisticated semiconductor nanostructure devices and to measure their quantum properties. He has been a member of the Editorial Board of the international journal Solid State Communications since 1993 and was the Australian Representative for Nanotechnology to the International Union of Vacuum Science, from 1995-2000. In 1994 he was elected Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, Indiana University, USA for his research achievements and in 1998 was awarded the Walter Boas Medal, the highest award of the Australian Institute of Physics. In 2001 he was elected to the Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science and he was recently awarded an inaugural Federation Fellowship.
Pushing nanoscience to the limit – a solid state quantum processor
Abstract:
Quantum computers, combined with specific quantum algorithms, have the potential to solve important problems that are not possible to solve using the most powerful conventional machines. This has moved the scientific agenda of quantum mechanics from providing a description of the microscopic world to applying the rules that govern the properties of matter at the quantum level to design and build the basic building block of a machine that offers unprecedented computing power.
A key architecture proposed for a quantum computer uses properties of single atoms precisely engineered into a semiconductor host as the quantum bits (qubits). Fabrication of the key functional element, the quantum equivalent of a transistor, has pushed nanotechnology to the limit. Control and readout of the qubits similarly involves the use of the most advanced quantum-limited measurement technology.
I will give an overview of the extreme nanoscience initiatives involved in the Australian effort to construct and test the key functional element of a scaleable silicon quantum processor. This work will be placed in context with the international roadmap for quantum computing, involving many other implementation strategies. I will briefly discuss the role of basic research organisations, industry and government in this high-risk venture.
