Encryption is the medium to keep secret information secure, which includes credit cards, state secrets and other confidential data. This practice exclusively relies on factorization of large number. The traditional encryption schemes could now become obsolete as some researchers from MIT and University of Innsbruck in Austria have led to an idea of quantum computing that uses atomic-scale units to encrypt more efficiently. The results of the new research were published on Friday in the journal Science.

MIT scientists have created first five-atom quantum computer that uses qubits. Presently, it takes about 12 qubits to factor the number 15, but the new technique could do same by only five qubits, each represented by a single atom. In conventional computing, either 0s or 1s represent the numbers, but new system would simultaneously use 0 and 1.

The new system has been designed in a way to be kept stable as laser pulses hold the atoms in an ion trap. More atoms and lasers can be added to build a bigger and faster quantum computer. It will be able to factor much larger numbers that make the system scalable. The new system could be a threat for present factorization-based methods such as RSA.

“In future generations, we foresee it being straightforwardly scalable, once the apparatus can trap more atoms and more laser beams can control the pulses. We see no physical reason why that is not going to be in the cards”, said Isaac Chuang, professor of physics and professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT.

According to Chuang, developing such a system could cost huge amount of money and would take quite some time as well as to finally be put into use. It takes more of engineering efforts with this technique unlike the past methods that relied more on physics.