The principle of the fabrication of a "quantum egg-box" with a novel masked ion-beam technology, developed by the researchers. It allows to produce at the same time hundreds of thousands of traps for fluxons, magnetic flux quanta, in a superconductor.
Magnetic quantum objects in superconductors, so-called "fluxons", are particularly suitable for the storage and processing of data bits. Computer circuits based on fluxons could be operated with significantly higher speed and, at the same time, produce much less heat dissipation. Physicists around Wolfgang Lang at the University of Vienna and their colleagues at the Johannes-Kepler-University Linz have now succeeded in producing a "quantum egg-box" with a novel and simple method. They realized a stable and regular arrangement of hundreds of thousands of fluxons - a groundbreaking progress for circuits based on fluxons. The results appear in the new journal "Physical Review Applied" of the renowned "American Physical Society". Speeding up data processing in computers goes hand in hand with a greater heat generation, which limits the performance of fast computers. Researchers have therefore long been trying to develop digital circuits based on superconductors - those puzzling materials that can transport electricity completely without loss when cooled below a certain critical temperature. Magnetic quantum objects in superconductors Inside a superconductor, a magnetic field can exist only in small quantized pieces, the fluxons. These are particularly suitable for the storage and processing of data bits. In a homogeneous superconductor, the fluxons are arranged in a hexagonal lattice. Using modern nanotechnology, researchers at the University of Vienna and the Johannes-Kepler-University Linz have now succeeded in building artificial traps for fluxons. By means of these traps the fluxons are forced into a predefined formation. The importance of the non-equilibrium
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