Researchers at QuTech have made an important advance towards functional quantum computers. They have demonstrated a fully controllable chip with ten qubits that can store quantum information for up to one minute. Controlling such a large number of qubits with long memory times is an important step forward for chip-based qubits and might pave the way to large multi-qubit quantum systems. They have also prepared 7-qubit entanglement.
The technology uses single nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond with nearby Carbon-13 nuclear spins. This spin-based qubit-system has many advantages, but controlling individual spins within these complex and strongly-interacting spin systems is a significant challenge. So far, these systems have been limited to a few qubits, with entangled states of just three spins demonstrated. (QuTech)