The long-standing issue holding back quantum computing—its high propensity for errors—may finally be a thing of the past, as Harvard physicists claim they have overcome what researchers have viewed as one of the technology’s greatest hurdles.
Quantum computers operate by encoding information in units known as qubits, which can possess two data storage states at once and can entangle with other qubits to achieve even more complex performance, unlike the classic binary bits of traditional computers. However, the technology has been relegated to being a laboratory curiosity, as the high error rate in qubits makes quantum computing unreliable for practical applications.
Traditional computers, which use binary bits, are limited compared to quantum computers’ ability to store data in multiple states simultaneously. While doubling bits also doubles a standard computer’s processing power, qubits’ multiple states allow exponential increases in processing power as more qubits are added through quantum entanglement. Theorists estimate that a system operating at just 300 qubits could potentially store more information than there are particles in the universe.
While the amount of data processing that quantum computers are theoretically capable of is enormous, they are highly susceptible to slipping out of their quantum state into decoherence, thus corrupting that data.
Now, a group of Harvard researchers recently revealed their solution to the long-standing quantum error problem in a paper published in Nature.
“For the first time, we combined all essential elements for a scalable, error-corrected quantum computation in an integrated architecture,” said lead author Mikhail Lukin, co-director of the Quantum Science and Engineering Initiative. “These experiments—by several measures the most advanced that have been done on any quantum platform to date—create the scientific foundation for practical large-scale quantum computation.”
The researchers describe their new system as “fault-tolerant,” relying on techniques like physical entanglement, logical entanglement, logical magic, and entropy removal to detect and correct errors. In some instances, it even quantum teleports the quantum state of one particle to another.
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