Milestone for Optical-Lattice Quantum Computer

U ltracold atoms trapped in an optical lattice—a periodic array of laser-produced trapping sites—could potentially be used to perform quantum computations and should be scalable, according to experts. But until now researchers had failed to accomplish a critical step: quantum mechanically entangling more than two atoms at a time. Now Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China and his colleagues have entangled one-dimensional chains of ten atoms and two-dimensional groups of eight atoms with high reliability [1]. The team has also demonstrated control and imaging of the states of the atoms with single-atom resolution [1]. The results show that several of the required building blocks needed for optical-lattice-based quantum processors are now practical.