Items tagged with "quantum computing"
Ions clear another hurdle toward scaled-up quantum computing
Scientists at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) have been steadily improving the performance of ion trap systems, a leading platform for future quantum computers. Now, a team of researchers led by JQI Fellows Norbert Linke and Christopher Monroe has performed a key experiment on five ion-based quantum bits, or qubits. They used laser pulses to simultaneously create quantum connections between different pairs of qubits—the first time these kinds of parallel operations have been executed in an ion trap.
Ion experiment aces quantum scrambling test
Researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute have implemented an experimental test for quantum scrambling, a chaotic shuffling of the information stored among a collection of quantum particles. Their experiments on a group of seven atomic ions, reported in the March 7 issue of Nature, demonstrate a new way to distinguish between scrambling—which maintains the amount of information in a quantum system but mixes it up—and true information loss.
JQI scientists Monroe and Gorshkov are part of a new, $15 million NSF quantum computing project
NSF has announced a $15 million award to a collaboration of seven institutions including the University of Maryland. The goal: Build the world’s first practical quantum computer.
Complexity test offers new perspective on small quantum computers
State-of-the-art quantum devices are not yet large enough to be called full-scale computers. The biggest comprise just a few dozen qubits—a meager count compared to the billions of bits in an ordinary computer’s memory. But steady progress means that these machines now routinely string together 10 or 20 qubits and may soon hold sway over 100 or more.
Quantum simulators wield control over more than 50 qubits
Two independent teams of scientists, including one from the Joint Quantum Institute, have used more than 50 interacting atomic qubits to mimic magnetic quantum matter, blowing past the complexity of previous demonstrations. The results appear in this week’s issue of Nature.
Atomic cousins team up in early quantum networking node
Large-scale quantum computers, which are an active pursuit of many university labs and tech giants, remain years away. But that hasn’t stopped some scientists from thinking ahead, to a time when quantum computers might be linked together in a network or a single quantum computer might be split up across many interconnected nodes.
Tiny magnetic tremors unlock exotic superconductivity
Deep within solids, individual electrons zip around on a nanoscale highway paved with atoms. For the most part, these electrons avoid one another, kept in separate lanes by their mutual repulsion. But vibrations in the atomic road can blur their lanes and sometimes allow the tiny particles to pair up. The result is smooth and lossless travel, and it’s one way to create superconductivity.
Trapped ions and superconductors face off in quantum benchmark
The race to build larger and larger quantum computers is heating up, with several technologies competing for a role in future devices. Each potential platform has strengths and weaknesses, but little has been done to directly compare the performance of early prototypes. Now, researchers at the JQI have performed a first-of-its-kind benchmark test of two small quantum computers built from different technologies.
Beating the heat
Harnessing quantum systems for information processing will require controlling large numbers of basic building blocks called qubits. The qubits must be isolated, and in most cases cooled such that, among other things, errors in qubit operations do not overwhelm the system, rendering it useless. Led by JQI Fellow Christopher Monroe, physicists have recently demonstrated important steps towards implementing a proposed type of gate, which does not rely on super-cooling their ion qubits.
$31M Grant Targets Quantum Computing’s Error Control Challenge
A team of researchers led by Duke University and the University of Maryland has been tapped by the nation’s “Q Branch” to take quantum computing efforts to the next level using one of the field’s leading technologies—ion traps.