Purdue Scientists Build Quantum Gate

Scientists at Purdue University say they are “among the first” to build what they are calling “a transistor-like gate for quantum information processing.” The gate, which could play a role within a quantum computer that is similar to the gates used in today’s computers, processes information in qudits.

A qudit differs from a qubit in that it supports more than just the 0 and 1 states. The researchers report that the new gate “… creates one of the largest entangled states of quantum particles to date.” According to the press release, the research team “… achieved more entanglement with fewer photons by encoding one qudit in the time domain and the other in the frequency domain of each of the two photons. They built a gate using the two qudits encoded in each photon, for a total of four qudits in 32 dimensions, or possibilities, of both time and frequency.”

The team says their next step is to use the gate in quantum communications tasks, such as high-dimensional quantum teleportation.