According to a paper published in the journal Nature, the quantum computer physicist team of the University of New South Wales in Australia has designed an atomic scale quantum processor that can simulate the behavior of small organic molecules, overcoming the challenge posed by theoretical physicist Richard Feynman about 60 years ago. The school's start-up "silicon quantum computing" company (SQC) announced on June 23 that it had created the world's first atomic level quantum integrated circuit. According to the official website of SQC, the team announced the manufacture of the world's first monatomic transistor in 2012 and proposed to realize atomic level quantum integrated circuits by 2023. Now, this goal has been achieved ahead of schedule. After manufacturing the atomic level integrated circuit used as a simulation quantum processor, SQC team accurately simulated the quantum state of a small organic polyacetylene molecule with this quantum processor, thus proving the effectiveness of their quantum system modeling technology. By accurately controlling the quantum states of atoms, the new processor can simulate the structure and properties of molecules, which is expected to help scientists "unlock" new materials and catalysts in the future. In the paper, the researchers described how they simulated the structure and energy state of the organic compound polyacetylene. Polyacetylene is a repeating chain composed of carbon and hydrogen atoms, in which the single and double bonds between carbon and carbon alternate. The research team has constructed a quantum integrated circuit composed of 10 quantum dot chains to simulate the precise position of atoms in the polyacetylene chain, in which 6 metal gates control the flow of electrons in the circuit. Michel Simmons, the chief researcher and founder of SQC, said that it was no accident to select the carbon chain with 10 atoms, because it was within the size limit that the classical computer could calculate, and the number of independent interactions of electrons in the system was up to 1024. If it is increased to 20 point chain, the number of possible interactions increases exponentially, which makes it difficult for classical computers to solve. "In the 1950s, Feynman proposed that unless you can build matter at the same scale, you cannot understand how nature works." Simmons said, "this is what we are doing. We are actually building it from the bottom up. We simulate polyacetylene molecules by putting atoms into silicon. The precise distance represents carbon carbon single bond and carbon carbon double bond." Simmons believes that this is a major breakthrough. Because there may be a large number of interactions between atoms, it is difficult for today's classical computers to simulate relatively small molecules. The development of SQC atomic level circuit technology will enable the company and its customers to build quantum models for a range of new materials, whether they are drugs, battery materials or catalysts. (Xinhua News Agency)