Developers claim that the refrigerator could play a significant role in enhancing the reliability and performance of quantum computation.
Scientists have successfully created the coldest refrigerator yet, which can potentially improve the functioning of quantum computers.
Quantum bits, the basic units of quantum computers, need to be kept near absolute zero temperatures in order to function without errors.
This new cooling technology might bring us closer to realizing the full potential of quantum computing, according to researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden and the University of Maryland in the United States.
The existing cooling systems allow qubits to reach temperatures around 50 millikelvins above absolute zero, while the new refrigerator achieved a temperature of 22 millikelvins in an experiment, which is a factor of 10,000 times colder than room temperature.
The closer we can get to absolute zero, or zero Kelvin, which is equivalent to minus 273.15 degrees Celsius, the more reliable quantum computation becomes.
As temperatures decrease, reaching absolute zero becomes increasingly difficult.
The team emphasizes that the quantum refrigerator operates on its own and is fully autonomous, unlike dilution refrigerators that require constant external control.
Once set up, the refrigerator utilizes three qubits and operates based on the interaction of warm and cold environments to remove heat from the target qubit, which is the part of the quantum computer that needs to be cooled.
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Quantum thermodynamics, a field that combines quantum physics and thermodynamics, has been primarily theoretical until now.
The team behind this refrigerator hopes that the development will lead to the creation of more autonomous quantum machines in the future.
Source: https://www.euronews.com/next/2025/03/20/scientists-develop-record-cold-refrigerator-that-could-unlock-full-potential-of-quantum-co