Scientists at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory have successfully produced the Bose glass in a two-dimensional form for the first time. The discovery provides the simplest example of non-disordered bosonic particles in a solid – a phase of matter considered to be exotic. The finding could lead to innovations in quantum computing and our understanding of how many-body systems work.
Unveiling the Bose Glass
The Bose glass, however, belongs to the anomalous phase of matter known as a many-body localized (MBL) phase and does not obey the usual rules of statistical mechanics. In contrast to typical systems, where particles mix and interact with one another, the local indistinguishability of each particle results in a novel phase of matter known as a Bose glass, or insulator.
The researchers achieved this new phase by a method of overlapping several laser beams, quasiperiodic patterning, and forming long-range ordered structural that is similar to crystal but not the periodic one. But then they filled this structure with ultracold atoms, and found that the atoms made the Bose glass: a state in which all of the particles had been pinned to specific positions like a hotel guest who didn’t want to mix it up with others.
Quantum Computing Implications
This visual representation of the Bose glass has important implications for the emerging field of quantum computing. Because the particles in a Bose glass are localized and isolated from each other, any quantum information stored would remain intact for much longer.
Today, one of the principal challenges in building large quantum computers comes from decoherence — essentially when the quantum information stored in a system escapes into its surroundings. Solution: Bose glass — the localization property in this type of glass solves this issue.
A closed system would be isolated from its surrounding and, as the study lead by Professor Ulrich Schneider puts it: “So quantum information stored in a localized system would be protected for much longer.” The announcement Galaad hopes to someday be able to make could revolutionize the way we harness quantum information, and circumvent the challenges of present-day quantum computing.
Conclusion
The observation of the two-dimensional Bose glass is a unique breakthrough in our knowledge of basic scientific laws. This represents a new phase of matter which not only adds a powerful tool to the toolbox for further progress in quantum computing, but also serves as an important stepping stone towards understanding many-body localization and the dynamics of complex quantum systems. This finding is an important step, but much will still need to be learned and understood as these quantum secrets are unlocked.
