Microsoft quantum computing claim still lacks evidence

Chetan Nayak leads Microsoft’s quantum computing effort.Credit: John Brecher for Microsoft Anaheim, California A Microsoft researcher today presented results behind the company’s controversial claim last month to have created the first ‘topological’ qubits — a long-sought goal of quantum computing. Inside Microsoft’s quest for a topological quantum computer In front of a packed room at a meeting of the American Physical Society (APS), Chetan Nayak, a theoretical physicist leading Microsoft’s quantum computing effort in Redmond, Washington, explained how the company is developing topological qubits, which would be the building blocks for a noise-resistant quantum computer. Physicists in the audience told Nature’s news team they are still unsure whether Microsoft really has made the first topological qubits, however. “It’s a hard problem,” says Ali Yazdani, an experimental physicist at Princeton University in New Jersey. To anyone trying to make topological qubits, he says, “good lu ... Read full article.