QUANTUM WIRES

What is a Quantum wire?

A quantum wire is a nanostructure, with the diameter of the order of a nanometer (10-9 meters). Alternatively, quantum wires can be defined as structures that have a thickness or diameter constrained to tens of nanometers or less and an unconstrained length. At these scales, quantum mechanical effects are important which coined the term "quantum wires". Many different types of quantum wires exist, including metallic (e.g., Ni, Pt, Au), semiconducting (e.g., Si, InP, GaN, etc.), and insulating (e.g., SiO2, TiO2). In condensed matter physics, a quantum wire is an electrically conducting wire, in which quantum effects are affecting transport properties. Due to the quantum confinement of conduction electrons in the transverse direction of the wire, their transverse energy is quantized into a series of discrete values E0 ("ground state" energy, with lower value), E1,...

T-SHAPED QUANTUM WIRES

Resistance of a Quantum wire: Resistance-free current flow would have enormous benefits for the electronics industry and is usually associated with superconductivity. But 'ballistic quantum wires' may offer an alternative. These tiny structures are almost completely free of the defects - such as impurities and dislocations - that lead to resistance in conventional conductors The classical formula for calculating the electrical resistivity of a wire:

is not valid for quantum wires (where is the resistivity, l is the length, and A is the cross-sectional area of the wire). Instead, an exact calculation of the transverse energies of the confined electrons has to be performed to calculate a wire's resistance. Following from the quantization of electron energy, the resistance is also found to be quantized. The importance of the quantization is inversely proportional to the diameter of the nanowire for a given material. From material to material, it is dependent on the electronic properties, especially on the effective mass of the electrons. In simple words, it means that it will depend on how conduction electrons interact with the atoms within a given material. In practice, semiconductors show clear conductance quantization for large wire transverse dimensions (100 nm) because the electronic modes due to confinement are spatially extended. As a result their Fermi wavelengths are large and thus they have low energy separations. This means that they can only be resolved at cryogenic temperature (few kelvins) where the thermal excitation energy is lower than the inter-mode energy separation. For metals, quantization corresponding to the lowest energy states is only observed for atomic wires. Their corresponding wavelength being thus extremely small they have a very large energy separation which makes resistance quantization perfectly observable at room temperature.

Types of Quantum Wires:

 Alumina quantum wire  Bismuth quantum wire  Boron quantum wire  Cadmium selenide quantum wire  Copper quantum wire  Gallium nitride quantum wire  Gallium phosphide quantum wire  Germanium quantum wire  Gold quantum wire  Indium phosphide quantum wire  Magnesium oxide quantum wire  Manganese oxide quantum wire  Nickel quantum wire  Palladium quantum wire  Platinum quantum wire  Silicon quantum wire  Silicon carbide quantum wire  Silicon nitride quantum wire

 Silver quantum wire  Titanium dioxide quantum wire  Zinc oxide quantum wire

Carbon nanotubes as quantum wires: It is possible to make quantum wires out of metallic carbon nanotubes, at least in limited quantities. The advantages of making wires from carbon nanotubes include their high electrical conductivity (due to a high electron mobility), light weight, small diameter, low chemical reactivity, and high tensile strength. The major drawback (as of 2005) is cost. It has been claimed that it is possible to create macroscopic quantum wires. With a rope of carbon nanotubes, it is not necessary for any single fiber to travel the entire length, since quantum tunneling will allow electrons to jump from strand to strand. This makes quantum wires interesting for commercial uses. In April 2005, NASA invested $11 million over four years with Rice University to develop quantum wire with 10 times better conductivity than copper at one-sixth the weight. It would be made with carbon nanotubes and would help reduce the weight of the next generation shuttle; but can also have wide ranging applications.

Applications: a) Optoelectronics, microelectronics, field emission devices, photonics, clothing fabric, and electronic device applications b) Quantum wires still belong to the experimental world of laboratories. However, they may complement or replace carbon nanotubes in some applications. Some early experiments have shown how they can be used to build the next generation of computing devices. c) To create active electronic elements, the first key step was to chemically dope a semiconductor quantum wire. This has already been done to individual quantum wires to create p-type and n-type semiconductors. d) The next step was to find a way to create a p-n junction, one of the simplest electronic devices. This was achieved in two ways. The first way was to physically cross a p-type wire over an n-type wire. The second method involved chemically doping a single wire with different dopants along the length. This method created a p-n junction with only one wire.

e) After p-n junctions were built with quantum wires, the next logical step was to build logic gates. By connecting several p-n junctions together, researchers have been able to create the basis of all logic circuits: the AND, OR, and NOT gates have all been built from semiconductor quantum wire crossings. f) It is possible that semiconductor quantum wire crossings will be important to the future of digital computing. Though there are other uses for quantum wires beyond these, the only ones that actually take advantage of physics in the nanometer regime are electronic. g) Quantum wires are being studied for use as photon ballistic waveguides as interconnects in quantum dot/quantum effect well photon logic arrays. Photons travel inside the tube, electrons travel on the outside shell. h) When two quantum wires acting as photon waveguides cross each other the juncture acts as a quantum dot. i) Conducting quantum wires offer the possibility of connecting molecular-scale entities in a molecular computer. Dispersions of conducting quantum wires in different polymers are being investigated for use as transparent electrodes for flexible flat-screen displays. j) Because of their high Young's moduli, their use in mechanically enhancing composites is being investigated. Because quantum wires appear in bundles, they may be used as tribological additives to improve friction characteristics and reliability of electronic transducers and actuators. k) Because of their high aspect ratio, quantum wires are also uniquely suited to dielectrophoretic manipulation.

QUANTUM TUNNELING
What is Quantum Tunneling? Quantum tunnelling refers to the quantum mechanical phenomenon where a particle "passes through" some sort of barrier which has higher energy than the particle.Classically, this type of event is impossible and observations of quantum tunnelling are part of the body of experimental evidence that backs quantum mechanical theory and the particle-wave duality of matter. Quantum tunnelling is an evanescent wave coupling effect that occurs in the context of quantum mechanics. Other names for this effect areWave-mechanical tunnelling, Quantum-mechanical tunnelling and the Tunnel effect.

History:
By 1928, George Gamow had solved the theory of the alpha decay of a nucleus via tunnelling. In classical mechanics, the particle is confined to the nucleus because of the high energy requirement to escape the very strong potential. Under this system, it takes an enormous amount of energy to pull apart the nucleus. In quantum mechanics, however, there is a probability the particle can tunnel through the potential and escape. Gamow solved a model potential for the nucleus and derived a relationship between the half-life of the particle and the energy of the emission. Alpha decay via tunnelling was also solved concurrently by Ronald Gurney and Edward Condon. Shortly thereafter, both groups considered whether particles could also tunnel into the nucleus. After attending a seminar by Gamow, Max Born recognized the generality of quantum-mechanical tunnelling. He realized that the tunnelling phenomenon was not restricted to nuclear physics, but was a general result of quantum mechanics that applies to many different systems. Today the theory of tunnelling is even applied to the early cosmology of the universe.

Concept:
For these effects to occur there must be a situation where a thin region of "medium type 2" is sandwiched between two regions of "medium type 1", and the properties of these media have to be such that the wave equation has "traveling-wave" solutions in medium type 1, but "real exponential solutions" (rising and falling) in medium type 2. In optics, medium type 1 might be glass, medium type 2 might be a vacuum. Inquantum mechanics, in connection with motion of a particle, medium type 1 is a region of space where the particle's total energy is greater than its potential energy, medium type 2 is a region of space (known as the "barrier") where the particle's total energy is less than its potential energy. If conditions are right, amplitude from a traveling wave, incident on medium type 2 from medium type 1, can "leak through" medium type 2 and emerge as a traveling wave in the second region of medium type 1 on the far side. If the second region of medium type 1 is not present, then the traveling wave incident on medium type 2 is totally reflected, although it does penetrate into medium type 2 to some extent. Depending on the wave equation being used, the leaked amplitude is interpreted physically as traveling energy or as a traveling particle, and, numerically, the ratio of the square of the leaked amplitude to the square of the incident amplitude gives the proportion of incident energy transmitted out the far side, or (in the case of the Schrdinger equation) the probability that the particle "tunnels" through the barrier. The scale on which these "tunnelling-like phenomena" occur depends on the wavelength of the traveling wave. For electrons, the thickness of "medium type 2" (called in this context "the tunnelling barrier") is typically a few nanometres; for alpha-particles tunnelling out of a nucleus, the thickness is much less; for the analogous phenomenon involving light, the thickness is much greater

Schematic representation of quantum tunnelling through a barrier:

The energy of the tunneled particle is the same, only the quantum amplitude (and hence the probability of the process) is decreased.

. With the Schrodinger's wave-equation, the characteristic that defines the two media discussed above is the kinetic energy of the particle if it is considered as an object that could be located at a point. In medium type 1 the kinetic energy would be positive, in medium type 2 the kinetic energy would be negative. There is some inconsistency in this, because particles cannot physically be located at a point: they are always spread out ("delocalized") to some extent, and the kinetic energy of the delocalized object is always positive. Although the phenomenon under discussion here is usually called "quantum tunnelling", it is the wave-like aspects of particle behavior that are important in tunnelling theory, rather than effects relating to the quantization of the particle's energy states. For this reason, some writers prefer to call the phenomenon "wave-mechanical tunnelling".

Applications:
Quantum tunnelling is the cause of such effects as the cold emission of electrons which is relevant to semiconductors andsuperconductor physics. Phenomena such as field emission, important to flash memory, are explained by quantum tunnelling. Tunnelling is a source of major current leakage in Very-large-scale integration (VLSI) electronics, and results in the substantial power drain and heating effects that plague high-speed and mobile technology.

Another major application is in electron-tunnelling microscopes (see scanning tunnelling microscope) which can resolve objects that are too small to see using conventional microscopes. Electron tunnelling microscopes overcome the limiting effects of conventional microscopes (optical aberrations, wavelengthlimitations) by scanning the surface of an object with tunnellingelectrons. Quantum tunnelling has been shown to be a mechanism used byenzymes to enhance reaction rates. It has been demonstrated thatenzymes use tunnelling to transfer both electrons and nuclei such as hydrogen and deuterium. It has even been shown, in theenzyme glucose oxidase, that oxygen nuclei can tunnel under physiological conditions.

QUANTUM CRYPTOGRAPHY
What is Quantum cryptography?
Quantum cryptography is the use of quantum systems to do cryptographic tasks. The most famous example (but by no means the only one) is quantum key distribution (QKD) which uses quantum mechanics to guarantee secure communication. It enables two parties to produce a shared random bit string known only to them, which can be used as a key to encrypt and decrypt messages. An important and unique property of quantum cryptography is the ability of the two communicating users to detect the presence of any third party trying to gain knowledge of the key. This results from a fundamental aspect of quantum mechanics: the process of measuring aquantum system in general disturbs the system. A third party trying to eavesdrop on the key must in some way measure it, thus introducing detectable anomalies. By using quantum superpositions or quantum entanglement and transmitting information in quantum states, a communication system can be implemented which detects eavesdropping. If the level of eavesdropping is below a certain threshold, a key can be produced that is guaranteed to be secure (i.e. the eavesdropper has no information about), otherwise no secure key is possible and communication is aborted. The security of quantum cryptography relies on the foundations of quantum mechanics, in contrast to traditional cryptography which relies on the computational difficulty of certain mathematical functions, and cannot provide any indication of eavesdropping or guarantee of key security. Quantum cryptography is only used to produce and distribute a key, not to transmit any message data. This key can then be used with any chosen encryption algorithm to encrypt (and decrypt) a message, which can then be transmitted over a standard communication channel. The algorithm most commonly associated with QKD is the one-time pad, as it is provably secure when used with a secret, random key.

Quantum key exchange

Quantum communication involves encoding information in quantum states, or qubits, as opposed to classical communication's use of bits. Usually, photons are used for these quantum states. Quantum cryptography exploits certain properties of these quantum states to ensure its security. There are several different approaches to quantum key distribution, but they can be divided into two main categories depending on which property they exploit.

Prepare and measure protocols

In contrast to classical physics, the act of measurement is an integral part of quantum mechanics. In general, measuring an unknown quantum state changes that state in some way. This is known as quantum indeterminacy, and underlies results such as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, information-disturbance theorem and no cloning theorem. This can be exploited in order to detect any eavesdropping on communication (which necessarily involves measurement) and, more importantly, to calculate the amount of information that has been intercepted.

Entanglement based protocols

The quantum states of two (or more) separate objects can become linked together in such a way that they must be described by a combined quantum

state, not as individual objects. This is known as entanglement and means that, for example, performing a measurement on one object affects the other. If an entangled pair of objects is shared between two parties, anyone intercepting either object alters the overall system, revealing the presence of the third party (and the amount of information they have gained). These two approaches can each be further divided into three families of protocols; discrete variable, continuous variable and distributed phase reference coding. Discrete variable protocols were the first to be invented, and they remain the most widely implemented. The other two families are mainly concerned with overcoming practical limitations of experiments. The two protocols described below both use discrete variable coding. On May 18th 2010, "The Register" published news of what has been claimed as the first successful attack against a commercial system based on quantum cryptography, exploiting the fact that these systems accept an error rate of less than 20% during quantum key exchange.

Commercial QC providers :
 Id Quantique, Geneva Switzerland  Optical fiber based system  Tens of kilometers distances  Magiq Technologies, NY City  Optical fiber-glass  Up to 100 kilometers distances  NEC Tokyo 150 kilometers  Qinetiq Farnborough, England  Through the air 10 kilometers.  Supplied system to BBN in Cambridge Mass.

Experimental status:
In recent years, much effort has been devoted to experiments on quantum cryptography, and much progress has been made. In most experiments, polarized photons are representing the qubits: photons are polarized if their electromagnetic field oscillates in a fixed direction of space. Polarization-based encoding works best for free-space communication systems rather than fiber-optic lines. Data are transmitted faster in free-space systems, but they cannot traverse the longer distances of fiber-optic links. In March 2004, NEC scientists in Japan sent a single photon over a 150-km fiberoptic link, breaking the transmission distance record for quantum cryptography.

Quantum cryptographic apparatus constructed at IBM:

Flashes of polarised light, each one tenth of a photon, are generated and measured across a free air optical path of 32 centimetres.

The most commercially viable QKD systems rely on fiber-optic links limited to 100 to 120 km. At longer distances, random noise degrades the photon stream. Quantum keys cannot travel far over fiber optic lines, and, thus, they can work only between computers directly connected to each other.

As of March 2007 the longest distance over which quantum key distribution hasbeen demonstrated using optic fiber is 148.7 km, achieved by Los Alamos/NIST using the BB84 protocol. Significantly, this distance is long enough for almost all the spans found in today's fiber networks. The distance record for free space QKD is 144km between two of the Canary Islands, achieved by a European collaboration using entangled photons (the Ekert scheme) in 2006, and using BB84 enhanced with decoy states in 2007. The experiments suggest transmission to satellites is possible, due tothe lower atmospheric density at higher altitudes. For example although the minimumdistance from the International Space Station to the ESA Space Debris Telescope is about400 km, the atmospheric thickness is about an order of magnitude less than in the European experiment, thus yielding less attenuation compared to this experiment.

Future scope:
Quantum cryptography promises to revolutionize secure communication by providing security based on the fundamental laws of physics, instead of the current state of mathematical algorithms or computing technology. The devices for implementing such methods exist and the performance of demonstration systems is being continuously improved. Within the next few years, if not months, such systems could start encrypting some of the most valuable secrets of government and industry. Future developments will focus on faster photon detectors, a major factor limiting the development of practical systems for widespread commercial use. Chip Elliott, BBN's principal engineer, says the company is working with the University of Rochester and NIST's Boulder Laboratories in Colorado to develop practical superconducting photon detectors based on niobium nitride, which would operate at 4 K and 10 GHz. The ultimate goal is to make QKD more reliable, integrate it with today's telecommunications infrastructure, and increase the transmission distance and rate of key generation. Thus the Long-term goals of quantum key distribution are the realistic implementation via fibers, for example, for different buildings of a bank or company , and free space key exchange via satellites. Quantum cryptography already provides the most advanced technology of quantum information science, and is on the way to achieve the (quantum) jump from university laboratories to the real world.