The Hanyuan-2 atomic quantum computer developed by CAS Cold Atom Technology. Photo: downloaded from the official WeChat account of the Science and Technology Daily.

A Chinese quantum technology company, CAS Cold Atom Technology from Wuhan, Central China's Hubei Province, on Thursday unveiled the world's first dual core neutral atomic quantum computer, the "Hanyuan-2," marking China's neutral atomic quantum computing technology entering a new stage of dual core collaboration from the previous single core era, according to a report from the Science and Technology Daily on Thursday. 

According to the report, a senior expert from the company Ge Guiguo said the quantum computer is based on China's self-developed neutral atom array technology. It integrates 100 atoms of rubidium-85 and 100 atoms of rubidium-87 to build a dual core system with a total of 200 qubits.  

A qubit, short for "quantum bit," is the basic unit of information in quantum computing. Unlike a classical bit, which can represent either a 0 or a 1, a qubit can exist in a combination of both states at the same time through a property known as superposition, according to a definition on the Microsoft website. 

Ge said that it is the first time in the world that a quantum processor has moved from a "single core" to a "dual core" architecture, marking a major breakthrough in quantum computing design.

According to the company, the two cores of the Hanyuan-2 are both independent and complete neutral atom qubit arrays. They can operate in parallel to greatly improve computing efficiency, or work in a "main core plus auxiliary core" mode to build more stable logical qubits, helping solve technical challenges in single core systems such as limited qubit scalability and interference between nearby qubits, per the Science and Technology Daily. 

The Hanyuan-2 adopts a standard cabinet style integrated design and only requires a small laser cooling system to operate. With total power consumption below 7 kilowatts, it does not require a complex ultra-low temperature cooling environment and can be quickly deployed in ordinary indoor settings, greatly reducing the cost and technical barriers for practical quantum computing applications, the report said. 

Neutral atom quantum computing, as the report explains, has become one of the world's key areas in quantum computing hardware development due to its strong scalability, long coherence time and high control accuracy.


Global Times