quantum computers tagged posts

Quantum magic state cleanup cuts errors 40-fold in first successful hardware test

New error-correction technique could dramatically improve the reliability of quantum computers
Details of magic state cultivation. Credit: Science (2026). DOI: 10.1126/science.aee7961

Qubits, the quantum equivalent of digital bits, are fragile and prone to errors. That makes building reliable quantum computers extremely difficult. One fix has been to use traditional magic state distillation, which filters out flaws, but it is extremely resource-intensive.

Another potential solution is magic state cultivation, which cleans up a noisy magic state (a specially prepared quantum state that is needed for advanced calculations) directly inside a protected qubit. But this approach has never been tested successfully on real hardware.

However, in a first for quantum computing, Google Quantum AI researchers have demonstrated magic state cultivation on Willow, a superconducting proces...

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Silicon qubits surpass 99.99% gate fidelity while operating three at once

A path toward larger quantum processors
Rendered illustration of five silicon spin qubits controlled in parallel through a shared microwave line. Credit: RIKEN

Silicon spin qubits are a promising platform for building scalable quantum computers as they are compatible with the semiconductor manufacturing technologies used to produce today’s computer chips. However, they have an important weakness: silicon spin qubits typically lose accuracy when several qubits are under parallel control. To be useful, quantum computers will need to operate many qubits simultaneously without compromising the accuracy of their operations.

Now, in a study published in Nature Physics, researchers from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science and collaborators have addressed this challenge by achieving high-fidelity control of multiple sili...

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Smart cable sharing gives quantum computers a big boost

An artist’s rendering of time multiplexing of control signals to a quantum computer.
The control signals for single-qubit gates (short blocks) and two-qubit gates (long blocks) travel through common cables (tunnels) to switches, which distribute them among the qubits (spheres) based on switching signals (diamonds). By ordering the control signals in a clever way, akin to playing Tetris, traffic jams in the flow of control signals can largely be avoided and programs on the quantum computer can be executed almost as fast as if each qubit had its own cable for control signals.
Credit: Chalmers University of Technology | Boid

A major obstacle in the development of powerful quantum computers is the growing number of cables required to control a computer as the number of qubits increases...

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Dual-rail superconducting qubits generate high-fidelity logical entanglement, study finds

The realization of high-fidelity entangled states with dual-rail superconducting qubits
Dual-rail superconducting qubit chip. Credit: Wenhui Huang.

Quantum computers, systems that process information leveraging quantum mechanical effects, could outperform classical computers on some advanced tasks. These systems rely on qubits, the fundamental units of quantum information, that become linked via an effect known as quantum entanglement and share a unified quantum state.

Qubits are known to be highly sensitive to slight changes or disturbances in their surrounding environment, also referred to as noise. Noise can prompt them to lose quantum information via a process called decoherence, which in turn leads to errors.

In recent years, quantum scientists and engineers have introduced various approaches aimed at mitigating or correcting quantum errors, with the goal of re...

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