quantum computer tagged posts

A team of researchers with Google’s AI Quantum team (working with unspecified collaborators) has conducted the largest chemical simulation on a quantum computer to date. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes their work and why they believe it was a step forward in quantum computing. Xiao Yuan of Stanford University has written a Perspective piece outlining the potential benefits of quantum computer use to conduct chemical simulations and the work by the team at AI Quantum, published in the same journal issue.

Developing an ability to predict chemical processes by si...

A group of scientists led by 2018 Australian of the Year Professor Michelle Simmons has achieved the first two-qubit gate between atom qubits in silicon – a major milestone on the team’s quest to build an atom-scale quantum computer. The pivotal piece of research was published today in the journal Nature.

A two-qubit gate is the central building block of any quantum computer – and the UNSW team’s version of it is the fastest that’s ever been demonstrated in silicon, completing an operation in 0.8 nanoseconds, which is ~200 times faster than other existing spin-based two-qubit gates.

In the Simmons’ group approach, a two-qubit gate is an operation between two electron spins – comparable to the role that classical logic gates play in con...

Scientists have developed a faster way to read information out of qubits, the basic building blocks of a quantum computer. The potential computing revolution that quantum computers have long promised is based on their weird property called superposition. Namely, qubits can take both logical states 0 and 1 simultaneously, on top of any value in between. By mastering superpositions of the whole quantum memory, quantum computers can quickly solve problems that would require too much computing time from regular computers working with simply 0s and 1s.

However, qubits are sensitive, and currently hold quantum information for less than a millisecond ...

Layout of IBM’s four superconducting quantum bit device.
Credit: IBM Research

Scientists have now demonstrated for the first time developed a quantum circuit that can solve a problem that is unsolvable using any equivalent classical circuit. Conventional computers obey the laws of classical physics. They rely on the binary numbers 0 and 1. These numbers are stored and used for mathematical operations. In conventional memory units, each bit – the smallest unit of information – is represented by a microscopic dot on a microchip. Each of these dots can hold a charge that determines whether the bit is set to 1 or 0.

In a quantum computer, however, a bit can be both 0 and 1 at the same time. This is because the laws of quantum physics allow electrons to be in multiple places at one time...