Integrated information storage and transfer with a coherent magnetic device.

ABSTRACT

Quantum systems are inherently dissipation-less, making them excellent candidates even for classical information processing. We propose to use an array of large-spin quantum magnets for realizing a device which has two modes of operation memory and data-bus. While the weakly interacting low-energy levels are used as memory to store classical information (bits), the high-energy levels strongly interact with neighboring magnets and mediate the spatial movement of information through quantum dynamics. Despite the fact that memory and data-bus require different features, which are usually prerogative of different physical systems--well isolation for the memory cells, and strong interactions for the transmission--our proposal avoids the notorious complexity of hybrid structures. The proposed mechanism can be realized with different setups. We specifically show that molecular magnets, as the most promising technology, can implement hundreds of operations within their coherence time, while adatoms on surfaces probed by a scanning tunneling microscope is a future possibility.