Research group works on quantum computing
THE Western Cape may have experienced a heatwave in October, but the Cape Peninsula University of Technology’s (CPUT) Bellville campus underwent a cold spell.
Physicist Dr Kessie Govender, the leader of its Quantum Physics Research Group, succeeded in cooling a cloud of rubidium atoms to around 17 micro Kelvins, which is approximately -273ºC below 0.
The research group managed to obtain an approximately 3mm square cloud of cold Rubidium 87 atoms at around noon.
The group includes doctoral students Adrian Wyngaard and Rory Pentz, and Master’s student Victory Opeolu – all of whom were actively involved in the project.
“We are one of a few groups to achieve this in South Africa, possibly Africa. The other research group that claims to have cold atoms is the group at UKZN (University of KwaZulu-Natal). However, no reported measurements of temperature or cloud parameters have been published by them, as far as I know,” said Govender about this first step in developing components for quantum computing locally.
Govender started the Quantum Physics Research Group in 2015 to investigate the laser cooling of atoms and the development of quantum information processing components.
“There are many platforms for doing quantum computing, and we’ve chosen one particular platform where we use lasers to cool down atoms.
“You can do a lot of things with cold atoms. For example, you can make atomic clocks, which is something I want to do because we work closely with the satellite programme on campus, F’SATI.
“The idea is to shrink it down to be used in a nano-satellite. Data is sent from one satellite to the next, but all the data needs to be tagged with a time stamp. While everything does have a margin of error, the atomic clock’s margin of error is a lot smaller than any other kind.”
Over the past three years, the Quantum Physics Research Group has built and grown their own electronic set-up. Next, it has to think about how to expand the system.
“We still need to characterise the cloud and do experiments on them, move them into little traps. Then we have to move on to creating a Bose-Einstein Condensate.”