Magnetic Vortex Becomes a Quantum Bit ⚡ экспресс
Think of ordinary Abrikosov vortices in superconductors—they leak energy and act like spinning tops that eventually wind down. But in grainy superconducting films, vortices get trapped and suddenly play by quantum rules: they become two-level systems, like natural qubits, with coherence lasting microseconds and relaxation up to fractions of a millisecond. By using circuit QED tricks, researchers can now flip these vortex states and read them out without disturbing them. It’s like artificial atoms born from disorder, paving the way for quantum computers and supersensitive detectors.
Magnetic vortices in superconductors, like whirlpools in water, typically scatter energy and quickly vanish due to internal friction—dissipation. This hampers their use in quantum chips. But in a film of tiny aluminum grains, a vortex gets trapped and resembles a whirlpool in a narrow well—it spins either one way or the other. Quantum nature allows it to spin both ways at once until measured. This double life lasts for milliseconds—an eternity in the micro-world. Scientists have learned to flip the vortices with microwave pulses (spectroscopy) and read out their state without loss. Each vortex carries exactly one quantum of magnetic flux—a billionth of Earth's field. The idea of Alexei Kitaev to use such structures for noise-tolerant quantum computing has been directly confirmed.
🎯 Each such vortex carries just one quantum of magnetic flux—about a billionth of Earth's magnetic field.