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Electron spin

What is "spin" which is important for quantum computers? Let's talk to Professor Kohei Itoh from Keio’s Faculty of Science and Technology.

Electrons have a characteristic known as spin. Spin has a particular direction, and it creates a magnetic field; if a large number of electrons have their spins pointing in the same direction, they create a large magnetic field and you have a macroscopic magnet. In this video, Professor Kohei Itoh of Keio University explains how the spin of individual electrons can be used as qubits.

For a single electron, the spin can be either aligned with the surrounding magnetic field, which we call spin up, or anti-aligned with it, which we call spin down. We can write these states using the ket notation we introduced when we talked about entanglement and Bell pairs, (|uparrowrangle) and (|downarrowrangle). We then assign one of these to be our (|0rangle) state and the other to be our (|1rangle) state, so that we can use them as variables.

電子のスピン

電子はスピン(自転)という性質を持ってます。このスピンには特定の方向があり、それが磁場を形成します。仮に同じ方向を向いた電子がたくさんあれば、それらが大きな磁場を生じさせ巨大な磁石のように振る舞います。この動画では慶應義塾大学の伊藤公平教授が単一電子のスピンがどのように量子ビットとして利用されるのかを説明してくれます。

単一電子では、スピンの向きは周囲の磁場と同じ向きか反対方向に揃えられます。我々はこれをスピンアップスピンダウンとそれぞれ呼びます。以前量子もつれやベルペアの話題の時に紹介したケット表現では(vertuparrowrangle)と(vertdownarrowrangle)のように表すことができます。そしてこれらをそれぞれ(vert0rangle)状態と(vert1rangle)状態として利用することができるので、電子のスピンは量子ビットの表現として使用できるのです。

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Understanding Quantum Computers

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