Saturday, November 20, 2010

Quantum Simulator and Supercomputer at the Crossroads !!


Scientists in an international collaboration measure for the first time a many-body phase diagram with ultracold atoms in optical lattices at finite temperatures.

Transitions between different phases of matter are a phenomenon occurring in everyday life. For example water -- depending on its temperature -- can take the form of a solid, a liquid or a gas. The circumstances that lead to the phase-transition of a substance are of fundamental interest in understanding emergent quantum phenomena of a many-particle system. In this respect, the ability to study phase transition between novel states of matter with ultracold atoms in optical lattices has raised the hope to answer open questions in condensed matter physics. MPQ-LMU scientists around Prof. Immanuel Bloch in collaboration with physicists in Switzerland, France, the United States and Russia have now for the first time determined the phase-diagram of an interacting many-particle system at finite temperatures.

Employing state-of-the art numerical quantum "Monte Carlo" methods implemented on a supercomputer, it was possible to validate the measurements and the strategies used to extract the relevant information from them. This exemplary benchmarking provides an important milestone on the way towards quantum simulations with ultracold atoms in optical lattices beyond the reach of numerical methods and present day super computers.

In the experiments, a sample of up to 300.000 "bosonic" rubidium atoms was cooled down to a temperature close to absolute zero -- approximately minus 273°C. At such low temperatures, all atoms in the ultracold gas tend to behave exactly the same, forming a new state of matter known as Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). Once this state is reached, the researchers "shake" the atoms to intentionally heat them up again, thereby controlling the temperature of the gas to better than one hundredth of a millionth of a degree. The so-prepared ultracold -- yet not as cold -- gas is then loaded into a three-dimensional optical lattice. Such a lattice is created by three mutually orthogonal standing waves of laser light, forming "a crystal of light" in which the atoms are trapped. Much like electrons in a real solid body, they can move within the lattice and interact with each other repulsively. It is this analogy that has sparked a vast interest in this field, since it allows for the study of complex condensed matter phenomena in a tunable system without defects.

When being loaded into the optical lattice, the atoms can arrange in three different phases depending on their temperature, their mobility and the strength of the repulsion between them. If the strength of the repulsion between the atoms is much larger than their mobility, a so-called Mott-insulator will form at zero temperature in which the atoms are pinned to their lattice sites. If the mobility increases, a quantum phase transition is crossed towards a superfluid phase in which the wave functions of the atoms are delocalized over the whole lattice. The superfluid phase exists up to a transition temperature above which a normal gas is formed. This temperature tends to absolute zero as the phase transition between the superfluid and the Mott-insulator is approached -- a feature which is typical in the vicinity of a quantum phase transition.

In order to determine the phase of the atoms in the experiments, they are instantaneously released from the optical lattice. Now, according to the laws of quantum mechanics, a matter wave expands from each of the lattice sites, much like electromagnetic waves expanding from an array of light sources. And as in the latter case, an interference pattern emerges that reflects the coherence properties of the array of sources.

It is this information of the coherence properties that the scientists are looking at in order to read out the many-body phase of the atoms in the artificial crystal: The normal gas in the lattice shows little coherence and almost no interference pattern would be visible after releasing the atoms. The superfluid, however, does exhibit long-range phase coherence which results in sharp interference peaks. By determining the temperature of the onset of these defined structures for various ratios of interaction strength and mobility, the researchers could map out the complete phase boundary between the superfluid and the normal gas.

Read more: Quantum Simulator and Supercomputer at the Crossroads

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Racetrack' Magnetic Memory Could Make Computer Memory 100,000 Times Faster !!


Imagine a computer equipped with shock-proof memory that's 100,000 times faster and consumes less power than current hard disks. EPFL Professor Mathias Kläui is working on a new kind of "Racetrack" memory, a high-volume, ultra-rapid non-volatile read-write magnetic memory that may soon make such a device possible.

Annoyed by how long it took his computer to boot up, Kläui began to think about an alternative. Hard disks are cheap and can store enormous quantities of data, but they are slow; every time a computer boots up, 2-3 minutes are lost while information is transferred from the hard disk into RAM (random access memory). The global cost in terms of lost productivity and energy consumption runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars a day.

Like the tried and true VHS videocassette, the proposed solution involves data recorded on magnetic tape. But the similarity ends there; in this system the tape would be a nickel-iron nanowire, a million times smaller than the classic tape. And unlike a magnetic videotape, in this system nothing moves mechanically. The bits of information stored in the wire are simply pushed around inside the tape using a spin polarized current, attaining the breakneck speed of several hundred meters per second in the process. It's like reading an entire VHS cassette in less than a second.

In order for the idea to be feasible, each bit of information must be clearly separated from the next so that the data can be read reliably. This is achieved by using domain walls with magnetic vortices to delineate two adjacent bits. To estimate the maximum velocity at which the bits can be moved, Kläui and his colleagues* carried out measurements on vortices and found that the physical mechanism could allow for possible higher access speeds than expected.

Their results were published online October 25, 2010, in the journal Physical Review Letters. Scientists at the Zurich Research Center of IBM (which is developing a racetrack memory) have confirmed the importance of the results in a Viewpoint article. Millions or even billions of nanowires would be embedded in a chip, providing enormous capacity on a shock-proof platform. A market-ready device could be available in as little as 5-7 years.

Racetrack memory promises to be a real breakthrough in data storage and retrieval. Racetrack-equipped computers would boot up instantly, and their information could be accessed 100,000 times more rapidly than with a traditional hard disk. They would also save energy. RAM needs to be powered every millionth of a second, so an idle computer consumes up to 300 mW just maintaining data in RAM.

Because Racetrack memory doesn't have this constraint, energy consumption could be slashed by nearly a factor of 300, to a few mW while the memory is idle. It's an important consideration: computing and electronics currently consumes 6% of worldwide electricity, and is forecast to increase to 15% by 2025.

Read more: Racetrack' Magnetic Memory Could Make Computer Memory 100,000 Times Faster !!