Quantum Computer Researchers Developing Expertise in Using Bolometers to Measure Qubit Energy

(Phys.org) Physicists at Aalto University and VTT Technical Research Center of Finland have developed a new detector for measuring energy quanta at unprecedented resolution. This discovery could help bring quantum computing out of the laboratory and into real-world applications.
The type of detector the team works on is called a bolometer, which measures the energy of incoming radiation by measuring how much it heats up the detector. Professor Mikko Möttönen’s Quantum Computing and Devices group at Aalto has been developing their expertise in bolometers for quantum computing over the past decade, and have now developed a device that can match current state-of-the-art detectors used in quantum computers.
Measuring the energy of qubits is at the heart of how quantum computers operate. “Bolometers are now entering the field of quantum technology and perhaps their first application could be in reading out the quantum information from qubits. The bolometer speed and accuracy seems now right for it,” says Professor Möttönen.