Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition

Friday 10 June 2011

The Department of Physics is proud to be presenting an exhibit on Quantum Computing at this summer’s Royal Society Summer Science exhibition. Co-hosted by Professor Jim Al-Khalili and Professor Ben Murdin, the exhibit describes how quantum physics describes wave-particle behaviour of electrons in silicon devices.

Wave-particle duality is the principle in quantum physics that very small objects like electrons can sometimes behave like particles and sometimes behave like waves.  When we observe waves we see effects that we don’t normally associate with moving objects, such as interference and superposition of different frequencies (like when you play an octave chord).

The Surrey exhibit explains how scientists have made electrons in a silicon chip behave like waves in just these kinds of ways – effectively allowing them to spread out so that they are in more than one place once. Visitors can learn how scientists are making use of this quantum weirdness to develop a new kind of powerful computer. Just like Schrödinger’s famous cat in the box, which is both dead and alive simultaneously, this research shows the equivalent of Schrödinger’s cat in a silicon chip.

For further information about the Royal Society exhibition see here.