A scheme to reduce the errors that plague quantum computers is a step closer to reality, researchers at Google have announced.
A scheme to reduce the errors that plague quantum computers is a step closer to reality, researchers at Google announced today. Instead of ordinary bits that can be set to 0 or 1, a quantum computer uses qubits that can be set to 0 and 1 at the same time. But they are fragile. One tactic for protecting the information carried by one qubit is to spread it out over many others. Now, the Google team has shown it can reduce errors by spreading the information over more and more qubits.
A full-fledged quantum computer could perform certain tasks, such as cracking current internet encryption schemes, that overwhelm a conventional computer. Its qubits can be fashioned of many things, such as ions, photons, and atoms. Google’s qubits are tiny circuits of super-conducting metal that have a lower energy state denoting 0 and a higher one denoting 1. Microwaves can coax a circuit into either state—or into both at once.
The laws of quantum mechanics forbid using the exact same approach in quantum computers. It’s impossible to copy the state of one qubit onto others. Moreover, measuring a qubit in a 0-and-1 state collapses it to either 0 or 1.involves subtle workarounds, where a qubit’s information is never measured directly, and, instead of being copied, the original qubit’s state is expanded through a phenomenon called entanglement.
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