A QUANTUM trick could pave the way for the world’s smallest fridge – one built on the atomic scale. The small but mighty cooler could brush the ultimate chill of absolute zero to keep quantum computers running smoothly, according to a team of theoretical physicists.
Blueprints for the device, designed by Noah Linden, Sandu Popescu and Paul Skrzypczyk at the University of Bristol, UK, suggest that the fridge would consist of two quantum bits, or qubits, which interact with a third qubit in such a way that it would cool.
Each qubit has two possible energy states: high, or “1”, and…
