Faculty @ NEST, Istituto Nanoscienze-CNR and Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa
Friday July 1 – 12.00 BST
Observation of quantum enhanced information erasure
We study Information erasure is one of the basic operations that allow computers, classical and quantum alike, to work. Recent research has elucidated the microscopic mechanisms that are the basis of the physics of information erasure and their energetic cost. Experiments have been carried either in the classical regime (e.g., using optically trapped colloidal particles), or in the quantum regime (e.g., using nanomagnets). Here we employ a quantum annealer to experimentally study the process of information erasure in a macroscopic register whose degree of quantumness can be tuned. This allowed the unprecedented possibility to observe the genuine impact that quantum phenomena have on the physics of information erasure. We report evidence of a triple quantum advantage: the quantum assisted erasure is more effective, faster and more energy efficient. We also observe that the quantum enhancement is so strong that it enables a cooperative erasure of the information individually carried by each qubit forming the register, and that happens with an energy dissipation close to the Landauer bound. We thus demonstrated an effective and energy efficient method to prepare ensembles of qubits in a state of high purity and long time duration, which is a promising tool for quantum computing applications.