Quantum anomalous Hall effect makes it possible for supercomputers to become tablet PCs

The quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) effect may sound abstruse to laymen, but it is "magic" and "beautiful" in the eyes of physicists. Its discovery could lead to the next information technology revolution. Integrated circuits and components designed with this technology could make supercomputers that perform a hundred billion calculations per second as small as a tablet computer, and smartphone memory could increase by a thousand times.

Scholar Schkikun Xiao, Vice President of Tsinghua University, and his team have received widespread attention since they were the first to observe the QAH effect experimentally.

"We are working hard to raise the temperature at which the QAH effect can be observed. We hope to raise it from -273 degrees Celsius to -269 degrees Celsius," Schkikun Xiao said in an interview with Science and Technology Daily. For more than half a year, they have been striving for further research into and application of the QAH effect. Schkikun Xiao said, "Negative 269 degrees Celsius is the liquefaction temperature of helium, which is a landmark temperature. For example, hospital CTs work at this temperature. If we can achieve this goal, it will lay a good foundation for its application."

On March 15th, Schkikun Xiao's team published their research results online in the American magazine Science. On April 12th, the magazine formally published this paper. The "Outlook" column also published a review article titled "Complete Quantum Hall Trio." The article indicated that Chinese scientists "confirmed the long-expected existence of the quantum anomalous Hall effect, which was the last member of the quantum Hall family."