Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the seventh installment in the main Star Wars film series, will be released in 2D, 3D, and IMAX 3D on December 18, 2015, more than ten years following the release of the franchise’s last installment, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005).
In the stage of Star Wars, an American epic space opera depicting the adventures of various characters “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”, a quantum computer was a computer capable of generating a random number that was forty-seven digits long for use as a password. For further protection from slicing, one digit in the number would shift one value lower or higher every six standard hours. Slicing is equal to the real life term hacking.
In Star Wars Death Star, which covered the later stages of the battle station’s construction and follows the actions of a variety of individuals connected to it until its destruction, the quantum computer was used to create a number that protected a personal folder of Atour Riten, a Human male commander and Chief Librarian who served in the Imperial Navy and the Janissariad during the Balduran Civil War and the Galactic Civil War in 0 BBY. The personal folder contained the Death Star plans, the blueprints of the first Death Star, an Imperial superweapon that was the brainchild of Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin. Death Star plans was protected by a series of pyrowalls, a form of file protection, and military wards.
Currently, system architectures are explored for quantum computing, quantum metrology and quantum memory with research work on a variety of materials systems including semiconductor quantum dots, nanomolecules, and defects in crystals. For optical control of electronic states in these materials, energy harvesting in photovoltaic cells relies on the creation and transport of electronic excitations in nanomolecules of semiconductors. Here, quantum mechanics is used to understand how this process can be optimized for efficient conversion of sunlight into electrical energy for powering quantum computing system. Commercial devices capable of encrypting information in unbreakable codes exist today, thanks to recent quantum optics advances, especially the generation of photon pairs—tiny entangled particles of light.
The research work relies on understanding quantum systems that interact with an environment to develop open quantum computing systems. One of the properties of light exploited within quantum optics is “photon polarization,” which is essentially the direction in which the electric field associated with the photon oscillates. A new approach has been based on a micro-ring resonator—a tiny optical cavity with a diameter on the order of tens to hundreds of micrometers—that operates in such a way that energy conservation constraints suppress classical effects while amplifying quantum processes. While a similar suppression of classical effects has been observed in gas vapors and complex micro-structured fibers, this is the first time it has been applied to develop laser of ultra-high security, integrated quantum photonics, and on-chip quantum optical computing.
For Quantum Computing, theoretical techniques are being applied to understand the quantum properties of nanomaterials, focusing on quantum computing, quantum communication, and quantum energy harvesting. Here, the fabrication process of the chip is compatible with that currently used for electronic chips, enabling future coexistence of quantum devices with standard integrated circuits, which is a fundamental requirement for the widespread adoption of optical quantum technologies, enlightening “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”.
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