Enlarge / Microsoft says it sees two clear peaks at the ends of a wire, with a nice energy separation between those and any other energy states. (credit: Microsoft) So far, two primary quantum computing technologies have been commercialized. One type of hardware, called a transmon, involves superconducting wire loops linked to a resonator; it is […]
Enlarge / A cartoon diagram of the trapped ion system. (credit: IonQ) Back in 2020, we talked to the CEO of a quantum computing startup called IonQ that uses trapped ions for its qubits. At the time, the company had just introduced a quantum processor that could host 32 qubits that had impressive fidelity, meaning […]
Enlarge / The atoms (center foreground) alter the laser so it extracts energy from a membrane (blue). (credit: Departement Physik, Universität Basel ) Way back when I was still working in the lab, there was a new lot of buzz about something called “coherent control. ” The basic idea was to take the principles of […]
Enlarge / (l-r) A quantum gas appears first as an elongated rod. As it rotates, it becomes helical, then it breaks up into blobs, each a swirling mass. Between the blobs tiny vortices appear in a regularly repeating series. (credit: MIT/Nature) Physicists at MIT have succeeded in getting “quantum tornadoes” to form in clouds of […]
Enlarge / A representation of the two phosphorus nuclei (Q1 and Q2) with the electron (Q3) that helps mediate their interactions. (credit: Tony Melov / UNSW) Over the last few years, the big question in quantum computing has shifted from “can we get this to work?” to “can we get this to scale?” It’s no […]
Enlarge (credit: NASA ) Quantum radar has been on the… ahem… radar for a while now. Unfortunately, the theoretical and practical results from our explorations of the concept have been underwhelming. But before we get to the disappointments, let me give all you radar enthusiasts a reason for hope. A new paper demonstrates that, under […]
Enlarge / The Aspen-M 40-qubit chip and its housing. (credit: Rigetti) On Wednesday, quantum computing startup Rigetti announced a number of interesting hardware developments. To begin with, its users would now have access to its next-generation chip, called Apsen-M, with 40 qubits and improved performance. While that’s well below the qubit count achieved by IBM, […]
Enlarge / Google’s Sycamore processor. (credit: Google) Recently, when researchers were testing error correction on Google’s quantum processor, they noted an odd phenomenon where the whole error-correction scheme would sporadically fail badly. They chalked this up to background radiation, a combination of cosmic rays and the occasional decay of a naturally occurring radioactive isotope. It […]
Enlarge / Returning champion Aleksander Kubica successful defended his title and won the second annual quantum chess tournament during last week’s Q2B conference on quantum computing. (credit: lucadp/Getty Images) Returning champion Aleksander Kubica successful defended his title and won the second annual quantum chess tournament during last week’s Q2B conference on quantum computing. The tournament […]
Enlarge (credit: IBM) IBM has announced it has cleared a major hurdle in its effort to make quantum computing useful: it now has a quantum processor, called Eagle, with 127 functional qubits. This makes it the first company to clear the 100-qubit mark, a milestone that’s interesting because the interactions of that many qubits can’t […]