{"id":657886,"date":"2026-08-26T18:34:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T18:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/657886\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T18:34:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T18:34:13","slug":"physicists-use-sound-waves-to-keep-quantum-information-from-slipping-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/657886\/","title":{"rendered":"Physicists Use Sound Waves to Keep Quantum Information from Slipping Away"},"content":{"rendered":"

A team of physicists at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences has found that a steady stream of sound waves can shield a fragile quantum bit from its own noisy surroundings, nearly tripling how long it holds information. The breakthrough paves a path toward sound-based quantum networks on chips as well as hybrid quantum systems that combine many different types of qubits.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Cornell<\/a><\/p>\n

Cornell et al. demonstrate all-mechanical coherence protection of a silicon-vacancy spin in diamond. Image credit: Cornell et al., doi: 10.1038\/s41567-026-03369-2.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne emerging type of quantum network uses the spin of an electron, associated with impurity in diamond, as quantum memory; and sound particles called phonons as information carriers between qubit nodes,\u201d said Harvard researcher Eliza Cornell and her colleagues.<\/p>\n

\u201cPhonons offer several advantages over more traditional approaches to quantum networking that use light as information carriers at the chip scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst, phonon wavelengths at a given frequency are much shorter than light wavelengths, enabling devices with far smaller footprints and tighter integration.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSecond, phonons couple easily both to solid\u2011state spins and to electromagnetic fields, making them attractive components in hybrid quantum systems that employ more than one type of qubit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut working with phonons has unique challenges, mainly related to memory.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cQuantum memories need to be protected from their environment in order to extend their coherence, or their ability to retain memory for a sufficiently long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut existing approaches that rely on microwave pulses to de-couple memories from their environment do not work well on qubits housed in phononic cavities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Cornell and co-authors solved this bottleneck by demonstrating a unique \u2018all-mechanical coherence protection\u2019 of a silicon-vacancy spin in diamond.<\/p>\n

Rather than traditional microwave pulses, they applied a continuous mechanical driving field made of phonons to change the qubit into a different state, called a \u2018dressed\u2019 qubit.<\/p>\n

Called \u2018dressed,\u2019 these states are less sensitive to the low\u2011frequency noise in the environment.<\/p>\n

Because spin coherence is protected here by a continuous mechanical field that is compatible with phononic cavities, the approach is designed to work within the same structures that would eventually be used to connect stationary nodes in a quantum network.<\/p>\n

Phonons would carry out two jobs in this type of network: transmitting quantum information and also protecting it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are solving two problems. We want the spin to have strong interaction with phonons, and we want the spin to have a long coherence time,\u201d Dr. Cornell said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur paper demonstrates a method of extending the coherence time that is compatible with the silicon-vacancy center being in a cavity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s paper<\/a> was published on July 15 in the journal Nature Physics.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

E. Cornell et al. All-mechanical coherence protection and fast control of a spin qubit. Nat. Phys, published online July 15, 2026; doi: 10.1038\/s41567-026-03369-2<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A team of physicists at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences has found…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[77],"tags":[61098,18,19,17,278045,6448,12917,133,4279,15428,278046,190041],"class_list":["post-657886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-diamond","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-phonon","tag-quantum-computer","tag-qubit","tag-science","tag-silicon","tag-sound","tag-sound-wave","tag-spin"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117163254168453718","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}