Quantum computing's reliability boosted by 160 times due to recent breakthrough, drawing inspiration from Schrodinger's cat paradox.
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Get a load of this! Alice & Bob, the badass quantum computing company from Paris, has knocked it outta the park again by enhancing the stability of their freakin' cat qubits. This could potentially make tomorrow's quantum computers as reliable as your trusty old desktop PC.
Fault tolerance is the real challenge in quantum computing. The qubits—the quantum versions of bits—are finicky, constantly losing quantum information due to interference from their environment. That's where the need for fault-tolerant technologies comes in.
Scientists have been working overtime to reduce errors associated with bit-flipping, where a qubit switches the probabilities of measuring 0 or 1. But, previously, reducing bit-flip errors would increase the risk of phase-flipping, where a qubit switches its probabilities of being positive or negative.
These so-called "cat qubits" are named after Schrodinger's famous cat thought experiment. They mimic the superposition principle, which suggests a cat in a box with a randomly active poison could be both dead and alive until observed.
In a nutshell, cat qubits aim to reduce bit-flips by avoiding the need for extensive error correction. They've been studied by various research teams, with qubits from the labs of the scientists at Alice & Bob even making it to the Ocelot Chip, manufactured by Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Alice & Bob's scientists have shown that cat qubits could already achieve a bit-flip lifetime of 138 milliseconds. But in a fresh study uploaded to the pre-print arXiv database on Feb. 28, the team managed to stabilize cat qubits, providing better bit-flip protection, up to 160 times, resulting in a cat qubit lifetime of a whopping 22 seconds. Phase-flip rates remain relatively unchanged.
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- Cat qubits inspired by 'Schrodinger's cat' thought experiment may pave the way for powerful quantum computers by 2030.
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The team achieved this by compressing the quantum states of cat qubits, resulting in a smaller overlap between the two states. They demonstrated that squeezing these cat qubits led to a significant reduction in bit-flip error rates, as photon numbers increased.
This research showcases a powerful technique, as it doesn't require any modifications to the circuit design, thus making error correction less resource-intensive. The next stage for Alice & Bob is to create universal fault-tolerant quantum computing, where both bit-flips and phase-flips can be effectively managed. This could lead to useful applications in various fields like chemistry and materials science.
- Significant advancements in quantum computing are being made by Alice & Bob, as they have recently managed to stabilize 'cat qubits', reducing bit-flip errors up to 160 times, potentially leading to quantum computers as reliable as desktop PCs by 2030.
- This research in stabilizing 'cat qubits' could pave the way for a new era in quantum technology, featuring error-correcting techniques that require fewer resources, enabling powerful quantum computers to be created from hundreds, not millions, of qubits.
