Perhaps because Director Li was a little embarrassed, he spoke in a quiet voice.However, the quiet voice didn’t work on Lu Zhou, who rolled his eyes and said, “I was just telling you what the key bottlenecks are, I’m not the one that wants to solve this problem!”

Director Li doubled down on his intentions.

“But… you already know what the problem is, can’t you just solve it?”

Lu Zhou looked at Director Li’s mischievous smile and had a thought.

Does this guy think I’m his little puppet?

Yeah, probably…

There’s an 80% chance he does…

…

Lu Zhou told Director Li that he would “think about it”. After Director Li left, Lu Zhou called Wang Peng and went to the parking lot.

After Lu Zhou got in his car and Wang Peng began driving on the road, Lu Zhou suddenly said, “Wang Peng.”

“What?”

Lu Zhou asked, “In your opinion, what is science?”

Wang Peng was accustomed to Lu Zhou asking him weird questions.

After thinking for a while, he spoke.

“I think it’s a way of solving problems, like—”

“It’s a way for us to boil water and make planes fly… Kind of like that?”

Wang Peng pondered for a second and nodded.

“Sort of.”

Lu Zhou sighed.

“That’s the biggest misunderstanding in science.”

Wang Peng: “…?”

Lu Zhou: “Let’s go to the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study.”

Wang Peng looked in the rearview mirror.

“Don’t you have a meeting at three o’clock?”

“I’ll call Chen Yushan,” Lu Zhou said. “She can go instead.”

…

The interactions inside a quantum communication system caused the coherence of the pure state in the system to decay, thereby increasing the randomness of the internal phase in each superimposed component. This resulted in the failure of quantum information transmission.

An ideal solution was to add a repeater, just like traditional communication methods. The repeater would amplify the attenuated signal and transmit it.

However, even though this sounded easy, it was extremely difficult in the case of quantum communication. Because quantum communication was mainly based on the quantum effect of a single-photon spin state, optical amplification could destroy qubits.

Currently, there were two types of relay technologies; one was trusted relays, whereas the other was quantum relays.

The former was similar to key relays; it allowed the key to be passed between trusted workstations. It was easier to implement, but the problem was that once the relay station was controlled by a third party, the third party could easily eavesdrop.

In other words, the security of this type of relay was based on the security of the workstations.

Whereas the latter was based on quantum entanglement distribution technology. This established shared entangled pairs between neighboring sites, and it stored the entangled pairs using quantum storage technology. It used entanglement conversion operations to achieve a shared entanglement between neighboring sites.

In terms of security, the latter was unrivaled. However, it was much more technically difficult; so difficult that the academic community had given up on it since 2007.

Objectively speaking, if the communication was only within the country, for example, as a military dedicated line, using a trusted relay was completely sufficient. For example, the “Beijing-Shanghai Communication Line” was protected by the military, making it extremely secure.

However, when the communication expanded to a global scale, the security of overseas servers couldn’t be guaranteed. There was always a risk in trusted relays.

In the era of information globalization, it was impossible for any country to break away from the internet. Director Li wanted a piece of technology that was widely applicable.

Therefore, the key to the problem was solving the bottleneck of the quantum repeater.

After arriving at the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study, Lu Zhou called Chen Yushan and told her to handle the afternoon meeting. He then typed an email and sent the meeting outline to her.

The main topic of the meeting was regarding the work arrangement of the lunar mass driver project. Since he had already arranged the work in advance, he did not need to be there in person.

In contrast, there were more important things waiting for him to do.

After Lu Zhou arrived at the underground floor level, he walked into the laboratory where he did research on the carbon-based quantum processor chips. He looked at the carbon-based integrated circuit board sitting inside a transparent container and spoke to himself.

“I originally planned to research this after I complete the Control of Earth and Moon mission.

“Maybe I should give it a try first.”

Lu Zhou signaled Xiao Ai to suction out the inert gas inside the transparent container. He then put on a special pair of gloves and unlocked the container. He took out the well-preserved carbon-based integrated circuit board.

The technical difficulty of a quantum repeater could be divided into three parts; entanglement exchange, entanglement purification, and quantum storage.

The first two were relatively easy, while the last one was on the same level of difficulty as a quantum computer.

What was interesting was that the research on quantum memory and quantum computers had many overlaps. The only difference was that quantum memory was required for long-distance quantum communication, but it was not needed for quantum computers.

If he could solve quantum memory, he could create a more advanced quantum computer; if he couldn’t, he would still have access to a quantum computer… which was the one he built.

In fact, there was a reason why Lu Zhou hadn’t researched quantum memory technology.

He thought that, with the breakthrough of quantum computer technology and its widespread application in commercial fields, capitalism would naturally push toward quantum memory technology. People would seek to build a faster and more powerful quantum computer.

Once that day came, he wouldn’t have to do anything himself, nor would he need to waste precious general points. He could easily gain access to quantum memory technology.

“The quantum entanglement between the memory stored in the system and any remote system has to be maintained throughout the storage time…

“If this entanglement breaks at any time, such as a collapse due to external observation, then the device will no longer function as a quantum memory storage device. Instead, it will transform into an entanglement interrupt channel that can only transmit traditional information.

“This is going to be difficult…”

Lu Zhou stared at the integrated circuit board on the experimental table and pondered for a long time.

After a few minutes, he suddenly thought of something.

“This isn’t something I can do alone.

“But…

“I’m not alone.”

Xiao Ai: [(?•̀ᄇ•́)]

Lu Zhou, who was sitting at the experiment table, picked up a pen and wrote a line of words on a piece of draft paper.

[Three-Dimensional Quantum Memory]

Lu Zhou looked at the title on the paper and nodded with satisfaction.

“We’ll use this name for now!”