Australia has emerged for the first time as a serious player in the global race to develop an ion-trap quantum computer.

In an Australian first, physicists at Griffith University’s Centre for Quantum Dynamics have produced what they believe to be basic building blocks of ion trap quantum computer hardware.

The team trapped in a vacuum a string of 10 ions (atoms stripped of an electron) that can be controlled and manipulated by a laser.

Ion Trap technology is widely considered the frontrunner in the race to build a quantum computer. Physicists believe each ion would behave in a similar way as a 'bit' of information in a traditional computer.

Researchers Dr Erik Streed and Dr Dave Kielpinski said while the achievement put Australia on the map as a contender, the science was in its infancy.

"Quantum computing was where traditional or 'classical' computing was in the 1930s," Dr Streed said.

"Computers used to weigh several tonnes and comprise thousands of vacuum tubes, but could only carry out the most basic addition," he said.

"That's where we are today."

The Australian Research Council has allocated $570,000 to the project over the next three years, joining government agencies worldwide in watching ion-trap technology closely.

The reason behind the global fascination in this strangest of sciences lies in the massive finance, national security, military and mining applications the technology could have.

Theorists predict an advanced quantum computer could break encrypted codes indecipherable to conventional computers, posing huge challenges to international defence, online banking and finance.

"Quantum computers aren't designed to make word processing faster. Their application is for solving 'needle in a haystack' type problems that require massive amounts of data to be processed quickly," Dr Kielpinski said.

"Already Wall Street is using basic quantum encryption to protect financial transfers."

"It's exciting for Australia; this has been achieved in only a handful of labs around the world. But we have to keep it in perspective. What we're working on creating here is a 'baby' quantum computer," Dr Kielpinski said.

"This level of computing power may still be decades in the future, but Australia now has a horse in the ion-trap race," Dr Kielpinski said.

A beginners' guide to Quantum Computing:

The fundamental difference between quantum computing and classical computing is that while a classical computer bit has a value 0 or 1 at any given time, quantum bits or 'qubits' can exist in a 'superposition' of 0 and 1 at the same time.

Physicists believe this gives quantum computers potential processing speed far exceeding the maximum possible in classical computing.

Quantum computing has become a key challenge for Australia, with the Australian Research Council in 2000 funding the establishment of a joint national Centre for Quantum Computer Technology, with facilities in NSW, Victoria and Queensland.

The science behind the discovery:

The ion string was produced by making ions from atoms of ytterbium, a rare metallic element, and trapping these in a vacuum.
 
By bombarding these atoms with precisely the right frequency of laser light, physicists can move and control these ions, in a similar way to how bits of information are moved around in a traditional computer.

They foresee that many parallel strings of ions could eventually be harnessed together on a single chip, to produce a processor with computing potential far exceeding any available today.