Physicists from the Gröblacher lab at TU Delft have built a device that can link different quantum devices and qubits to each other. This device, a silicon chip with vibrations traveling through it, functions as a network between quantum devices. This marks the first time that scientists are able to store as many qubits as they’d like within a very compact area on this type of chip. They’ve published their findings in Science Advances.

The network that Simon Gröblacher and first co-authors Amirparsa Zivari and Niccolò Fiaschi built consists of waves travelling through a quantum chip. These waves are called phonons; mechanical vibrations inside the chip. Phonons are useful particles for connecting different types of quantum devices, because they can couple to almost all other types of quantum systems, such as to photons (light particles) or electrons. You can imagine phonons as the vibrations made by a drum, Fiaschi explains: “If there were no phonons, the drum would be perfectly still. If you start adding phonons, you’re adding energy to the system and the drum starts to vibrate, as if it were creating a quantum sound.”

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