In what may provide a potential path to processing information in a quantum computer, researchers have switched an intrinsic property of electrons from an excited state to a relaxed state on demand using a device that served as a microwave "tuning fork."
The team's findings could also lead to enhancements in magnetic resonance techniques, which are widely used to explore the structure of materials and biomolecules, and for medical imaging.
The international research team, which included scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), demonstrated how to dramatically increase the coupling of microwaves in a specially designed superconducting cavity to a fundamental electron property called spin—which, like a coin, can be flipped.
By zapping an exotic silicon material developed at Berkeley Lab with the microwaves, they found that they could rapidly change the electron spins from an excited state to a relaxed, ground state by causing the electrons to emit some of their energy in the form of microwave particles known as photons.
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