Always cool to see stuff from your niche field on hn. Note: this measurement is done at cryogenic temperatures, although somewhat similar molecular spin work (from ~same group [1]) works at ambient.

[1]: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09417-w

Firstly, bravo on your field's publication.

Secondly, condolences for Ryan Murphy for all involved.

Can these erbium qubits be entangled over fiber, controlled by a quantum processor?

I mean I guess that's the pitch - lots of stuff not yet demonstrated though

Speaking to people in the know a little while ago, the main barrier to scaling up quantum computation by interconnecting separate devices was that you couldn't run a quantum network at a high enough bandwidth to be useful. You just couldn't generate coupled states fast enough.

Assuming I've not entirely butchered the interpretation, does this help with that? It sounds to me like the transmission is at a useful frequency, but that says nothing about the bandwidth you can practically achieve.

I really thought they were making up the name 'erbium'. I've been away from a periodic table too long..

Ytterbium, Yttrium, Terbium, and Erbium were all named after a village in Sweden that had a mine: Ytterby

We are happy that Rbium didn't become the next name of choice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ytterby

The mine closed down long ago. Today, it's a relatively expensive location for villas.

Grew up there! Always feelt so strange that those were named after where I grew up.

You should make a separate HN post about this :-)