A research team at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EFPL) developed a 2D quantum cooling system that allowed it to reduce temperatures to 100 millikelvins by converting heat into electrical voltage. Very low temperatures are crucial for quantum computing, as quantum bits (qubits) are sensitive to heat and must be cooled down to less than 1K. Even the thermal energy generated by the electronics needed to run the quantum computer has been known to impact the performance of qubits.
"If you think of a laptop in a cold office, the laptop will still heat up as it operates, causing the temperature of the room to increase as well. In quantum computing systems, there is currently no mechanism to prevent this heat from disturbing the qubits," LANES PhD student Gabriele Pasquale explained.
