Superconducting computers could switch magnets in a trillionth of a second, using the quantum properties of electrons to store and process data without wasting energy as heat. Today’s superconducting logic circuits—which carry current with zero resistance—are held back by a missing piece: a memory that works at cryogenic temperatures without destroying their energy advantage. Standard magnetic memories are too slow and generate too much heat. This project attacks that bottleneck by exploiting a fundamental effect in superconductors: the way paired electrons (Cooper pairs) can transfer their quantum coherence into adjacent magnetic layers, creating spin torques that flip a magnet’s orientation in picoseconds. If PICaSSO succeeds, it would lay the groundwork for a fully integrated superconducting memory-logic system. That could shrink the energy footprint of data centres, where cooling and power already strain national grids, and enable ultra-fast, low-power computing for applications like quantum error correction or high-performance simulation. The work is fundamental science—no prototype memory chip will emerge from this grant—but it directly addresses a known engineering dead-end. Past discoveries in superconducting spintronics have already produced ultra-low-energy magnetic read-out devices; this project targets the switching speed needed to make them practical.
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Superconducting logic holds the promise of significant improvement compared to traditional semiconductor logic, both in terms of computational power and energy consumption, due to the lack of ohmic losses when transferring bits. However, most of these advantages are negated by the lack of a suitable cryogenic memory that can be coupled to the superconducting logic. The ambition of superconducting spintronics is to develop a superconducting memory by integrating magnetic and superconducting elements. Recent discoveries have shown new routes for superconductivity and magnetism to co-operate, enabling new device concepts based on the interplay between spin, charge and superconducting phase coherence. This includes the demonstration of ultra-low energy magnetic read-out in the superconducting equivalent of a giant-magneto-resistance valve. The vision of PICaSSO is to achieve the picosecond switching of a magnet via torques directly originating in the superconducting correlation by exploiting two different effects: superconductor-induced magnetic anisotropy and supercurrent-induced spin accumulation. To realise this vision PICaSSO adopts time-resolved methods that will photograph the interplay between spins and superconductivity in different hybrid magnetic-superconducting structures with a time resolution comparable with their fundamental interaction time. This will enable coupling magnets and superconductors at the fastest possible timescale and will allow the first study of transient triplet correlation in s-wave superconductors. The research carried in PICaSSO will lay the foundation for ultrafast superconducting spintronics and will pave the way towards the full integration of superconducting memory and logic devices.
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