In a global first a quantum computer-powered microscope is being built

Scientists at TU Wien, the University of Vienna, JKU Linz, and the University of Innsbruck in Austria have teamed up to build a microscope that uses a quantum computer to extract information from the samples being analyzed. The researchers plan to use quantum entanglement to get more information than what a conventional electron microscope might be able to provide. 

Centuries after Dutch spectacle makers Hans and Zacharias Jansenn placed multiple lenses in a single tube to create the first microscope in 1590, German scientists Ernst Ruska and Max Knoll built the first electron microscope. The devices work on the same principle but vary in what is used to create images. 

In conventional microscopes, light passes through lenses and creates enlarged images of tiny objects. While this works for a large spectrum of objects on the planet, it does not work those which are much smaller than the wavelength of light itself. This is where Ruska and Knoll turned to a beam of electrons, the smallest particles of the atom to peek at objects 100,000 times smaller than the wavelength of light. 

What the electron microscope can’t see

Electron microscopes are widely used in various research fields. “Today, we can image tiny details on the atomic scale,” said Philipp Haslinger, associate professor at the Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics at TU Wien.