GoKawiilQuantum computers remain highly vulnerable to errors and tiny disturbances from their surroundings. The longer a quantum operation takes to complete, the more time there is for those errors to build up. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have now developed a method that can perform a broad range of advanced quantum operations more than a thousand times faster. The advance tackles a major obstacle in the field and could help move quantum computing closer to becoming fault-tolerant.
Quantum computers could eventually transform areas such as drug discovery, energy technology, cryptography, artificial intelligence, and logistics. Before that can happen, however, these machines need to become much more dependable.
Why Quantum Computers Are So Error-Prone
A major challenge is that quantum computations can be disrupted by extremely small environmental effects. Electrical noise, cosmic radiation, and overheating can all introduce errors while information is being processed.
Traditional computers can experience errors too, but decades of development have produced reliable error correction methods that can quickly detect and repair them. Quantum systems are much harder to protect because the information they use is extraordinarily delicate.
"The fundamental building blocks of quantum computers, known as qubits, are so sensitive that even the smallest disturbance can cause the quantum state to deviate from the target, resulting in the loss of information. If too many errors accumulate before they can be corrected, the computation can fail," says Lei Du, researcher in Applied Quantum Physics at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, and lead author of the theoretical study published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
A Different Way to Protect Quantum Information
To make quantum computing more resilient and eventually fault-tolerant, researchers are investigating new ways to shield quantum information from errors. One promising strategy uses so-called bosonic quantum codes*.
Instead of assigning quantum information to individual qubits, this approach stores it in microwave fields inside superconducting circuits.
"Rather than storing quantum information in individual qubits, bosonic codes encode information in the microwave fields found within superconducting circuits. This approach has been shown to provide stronger protection against certain types of errors," explains Tangyou Huang, researcher in Quantum Technology at Chalmers and co-author of the study.
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