MSE Researchers Develop Acoustic Alternatives to Quantum Computing

Materials science and engineering researchers at the University of Arizona are using soundwaves to search through big data with more stability and ease. In a paper published in Nature Research’s journal Communications Physics, they have demonstrated the possibility for acoustic waves to do the work of quantum information processing without the time limitations and fragility.

“We could run our system for years,” said Keith Runge, MSE's director of research and one of the paper’s authors. “It’s so robust that we could take it outside to a tradeshow without it being perturbed at all – earlier this year, we did.”

Research assistant professor Arif Hasan led the project. Other MSE co-authors include research assistant professor Lazaro Calderin; undergraduate student Trevor Lata; Pierre Lucas, professor of materials science and engineering and optical sciences; and Pierre Deymier, MSE department head, member of the Applied Mathematics Graduate Interdisciplinary Program, and member of the BIO5 Institute.

The team is working with Tech Launch Arizona, the office of the UA that commercializes inventions stemming from research, to patent their device and is investigating commercial pathways to bring the innovation to the public. Once the system is refined, they plan to resize it from the tabletop down to the microscale, ready to deploy on computer chips in data centers around the world.