This is the first in a series of explainers on quantum technology. The other two are on quantum communication and post-quantum cryptography.

A quantum computer harnesses some of the almost-mystical phenomena of quantum mechanics to deliver huge leaps forward in processing power. Quantum machines promise to outstrip even the most capable of todaysand tomorrowssupercomputers.

They wont wipe out conventional computers, though. Using a classical machine will still be the easiest and most economical solution for tackling most problems. But quantum computers promise to power exciting advances in various fields, from materials science to pharmaceuticals research. Companies are already experimenting with them to develop things like lighter and more powerful batteries for electric cars, and to help create novel drugs.

The secret to a quantum computers power lies in its ability to generate and manipulate quantum bits, or qubits.

Today's computers use bitsa stream of electrical or optical pulses representing1s or0s. Everything from your tweets and e-mails to your iTunes songs and YouTube videos are essentially long strings of these binary digits.

Quantum computers, on the other hand, usequbits, whichare typically subatomic particles such as electrons or photons. Generating and managing qubits is a scientific and engineering challenge. Some companies, such as IBM, Google, and Rigetti Computing, use superconducting circuits cooled to temperatures colder than deep space. Others, like IonQ, trap individual atoms in electromagnetic fields on a silicon chip in ultra-high-vacuum chambers. In both cases, the goal is to isolate the qubits in a controlled quantum state.

Qubits have some quirky quantum properties that mean a connected group of them can provide way more processing power than the same number of binary bits. One of those properties is known as superposition and another is called entanglement.

Qubits can represent numerous possible combinations of 1and 0 at the same time. This ability to simultaneously be in multiple states is called superposition. To put qubits into superposition, researchers manipulate them using precision lasers or microwave beams.

Thanks to this counterintuitive phenomenon, a quantum computer with several qubits in superposition can crunch through a vast number of potential outcomes simultaneously. The final result of a calculation emerges only once the qubits are measured, which immediately causes their quantum state to collapse to either 1or 0.

Researchers can generate pairs of qubits that are entangled, which means the two members of a pair exist in a single quantum state. Changing the state of one of the qubits will instantaneously change the state of the other one in a predictable way. This happens even if they are separated by very long distances.

Nobody really knows quite how or why entanglement works. It even baffled Einstein, who famously described it as spooky action at a distance. But its key to the power of quantum computers. In a conventional computer, doubling the number of bits doubles its processing power. But thanks to entanglement, adding extra qubits to a quantum machine produces an exponential increase in its number-crunching ability.

Quantum computers harness entangled qubits in a kind of quantum daisy chain to work their magic. The machines ability to speed up calculations using specially designed quantum algorithms is why theres so much buzz about their potential.

Thats the good news. The bad news is that quantum machines are way more error-prone than classical computers because of decoherence.

The interaction of qubits with their environment in ways that cause their quantum behavior to decay and ultimately disappear is called decoherence. Their quantum state is extremely fragile. The slightest vibration or change in temperaturedisturbances known as noise in quantum-speakcan cause them to tumble out of superposition before their job has been properly done. Thats why researchers do their best to protect qubits from the outside world in those supercooled fridges and vacuum chambers.

But despite their efforts, noise still causes lots of errors to creep into calculations. Smart quantum algorithmscan compensate for some of these, and adding more qubits also helps. However, it will likely take thousands of standard qubits to create a single, highly reliable one, known as a logical qubit. This will sap a lot of a quantum computers computational capacity.

And theres the rub: so far, researchers havent been able to generate more than 128 standard qubits (see our qubit counter here). So were still many years away from getting quantum computers that will be broadly useful.

That hasnt dented pioneers hopes of being the first to demonstrate quantum supremacy.

Its the point at which a quantum computer can complete a mathematical calculation that is demonstrably beyond the reach of even the most powerful supercomputer.

Its still unclear exactly how many qubits will be needed to achieve this because researchers keep finding new algorithms to boost the performance of classical machines, and supercomputing hardware keeps getting better. But researchers and companies are working hard to claim the title, running testsagainst some of the worlds most powerful supercomputers.

Theres plenty of debate in the research world about just how significant achieving this milestone will be. Rather than wait for supremacy to be declared, companies are already starting to experiment with quantum computers made by companies like IBM, Rigetti, and D-Wave, a Canadian firm. Chinese firms like Alibaba are also offering access to quantum machines. Some businesses are buying quantum computers, while others are using ones made available through cloud computing services.

One of the most promising applications of quantum computers is for simulating the behavior of matterdown to the molecular level. Auto manufacturers like Volkswagen and Daimler are using quantum computers to simulate the chemical composition of electrical-vehicle batteries to help find new ways to improve their performance. And pharmaceutical companies are leveraging them to analyze and compare compounds that could lead to the creation of new drugs.

The machines are also great for optimization problems because they can crunch through vast numbers of potential solutions extremely fast. Airbus, for instance, is using them to help calculate the most fuel-efficient ascent and descent paths for aircraft. And Volkswagen has unveiled a service that calculates the optimal routes for buses and taxis in cities in order to minimize congestion. Some researchers also think the machines could be used to accelerate artificial intelligence.

It could take quite a few years for quantum computers to achieve their full potential. Universities and businesses working on them are facing a shortage of skilled researchersin the fieldand a lack of suppliersof some key components. But if these exotic new computing machines live up to their promise, they could transform entire industries and turbocharge global innovation.

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Explainer: What is a quantum computer? | MIT Technology Review

In late October 2019, Google CEO Sundar Pichai likened the latest result from the companys quantum computing hardware lab in Santa Barbara, California, to the Wright brothers first flight.

One of the labs prototype processors had achieved quantum supremacyevocative jargon for the moment a quantum computer harnesses quantum mechanics to do something seemingly impossible for a conventional computer. In a blog post, Pichai said the milestone affirmed his belief that quantum computers might one day tackle problems like climate change, and the CEO also name-checked John Martinis, who had established Googles quantum hardware group in 2014.

Heres what Pichai didnt mention: Soon after the team had first got its quantum supremacy experiment working a few months earlier, Martinis says, he had been reassigned from a leadership position to an advisory one. Martinis tells WIRED that the change led to disagreements with Hartmut Neven, the longtime leader of Googles quantum project.

Martinis resigned from Google early this month. Since my professional goal is for someone to build a quantum computer, I think my resignation is the best course of action for everyone, he adds.

A Google spokesman did not dispute this account, and says that the company is grateful for Martinis contributions and that Neven continues to head the companys quantum project. Parent company Alphabet has a second, smaller, quantum computing group at its X Labs research unit. Martinis retains his position as a professor at the UC Santa Barbara, which he held throughout his tenure at Google, and says he will continue to work on quantum computing.

Googles quantum computing project was founded by Neven, who pioneered Googles image search technology, in 2006, and initially focused on software. To start, the small group accessed quantum hardware from Canadian startup D-Wave Systems, including in collaboration with NASA.

Everything you ever wanted to know about qubits, superpositioning, and spooky action at a distance.

The project took on greater scale and ambition when Martinis joined in 2014 to establish Googles quantum hardware lab in Santa Barbara, bringing along several members of his university research group. His nearby lab at UC Santa Barbara had produced some of the most prominent work in the field over the past 20 years, helping to demonstrate the potential of using superconducting circuits to build qubits, the building blocks of quantum computers.

Qubits are analogous to the bits of a conventional computer, but in addition to representing 1s and 0s, they can use quantum mechanical effects to attain a third state, dubbed a superposition, something like a combination of both. Qubits in superposition can work through some very complex problems, such as modeling the interactions of atoms and molecules, much more efficiently than conventional computer hardware.

How useful that is depends on the number and reliability of qubits in your quantum computing processor. So far the best demonstrations have used only tens of qubits, a far cry from the hundreds or thousands of high quality qubits experts believe will be needed to do useful work in chemistry or other fields. Googles supremacy experiment used 53 qubits working together. They took minutes to crunch through a carefully chosen math problem the company calculated would take a supercomputer on the order of 10,000 years, but does not have a practical application.

Martinis leaves Google as the company and rivals that are working on quantum computing face crucial questions about the technologys path. Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft, as well as Google offer their prototype technology to companies such as Daimler and JP Morgan so they can run experiments. But those processors are not large enough to work on practical problems, and it is not clear how quickly they can be scaled up.

When WIRED visited Googles quantum hardware lab in Santa Barbara last fall, Martinis responded optimistically when asked if his hardware team could see a path to making the technology practical. I feel we know how to scale up to hundreds and maybe thousands of qubits, he said at the time. Google will now have to do it without him.

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Google's Head of Quantum Computing Hardware Resigns - WIRED

Boffins claim to have found path to 'real-world applications' by running hot

Dr Henry Yang and Professor Andrew Dzurak: hot qubits are a game-changer for quantum computing development. Pic credit: Paul Henderson-Kelly

Scientists in Australia are claiming to have made a breakthrough in the field of quantum computing which could ease the technology's progress to affordability and mass production.

A paper by researchers led by Professor Andrew Dzurak at Sydney's University of New South Wales published in Nature today says they have demonstrated quantum computing at temperatures 15 times warmer than previously thought possible.

Temperature is important to quantum computing because quantum bits (qubits) the equivalent classical computing bits running the computer displaying this story can exist in superconducting circuits or form within semiconductors only at very low temperatures.

Most quantum computers being developed by the likes of IBM and Google form qubits at temperatures within 0.1 degrees above absolute zero or -273.15C (-459.67F). These solid-state platforms require cooling to extremely low temperatures because vibrations generated by heat disrupt the qubits, which can impede performance. Getting this cold requires expensive dilution refrigerators.

Artistic representation of quantum entanglement. Pic credit: Luca Petit for QuTech

But Dzurak's team has shown that they can maintain stable "hotbits" at temperatures up to 15 times higher than existing technologies. That is a sweltering 1.5 Kelvin (-271.65C). It might not seem like much, but it could make a big difference when it comes to scaling quantum computers and getting them one step closer to practical applications.

"For most solid-state qubit technologies for example, those using superconducting circuits or semiconductor spins scaling poses a considerable challenge because every additional qubit increases the heat generated, whereas the cooling power of dilution refrigerators is severely limited at their operating temperature. As temperatures rise above 1 Kelvin, the cost drops substantially and the efficiency improves. In addition, using silicon-based platforms is attractive, as this can assist integration into classical systems that use existing silicon-based hardware," the paper says.

Keeping temperature at around 1.5 Kelvin can be achieved using a few thousand dollars' worth of refrigeration, rather than the millions of dollars needed to cool chips to 0.1 Kelvin, Dzurak said.

"Our new results open a path from experimental devices to affordable quantum computers for real-world business and government applications," he added.

The researchers used "isotopically enriched silicon" but the proof of concept published today promises cheaper and more robust quantum computing which can be built on hardware using conventional silicon chip foundries, they said.

Nature published another independent study by Dr Menno Veldhorst and colleagues at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands which details a quantum circuit that operates at 1.1 Kelvin, confirming the breakthrough.

If made more practical and cheaper, quantum computers could represent a leap forward in information science. Whereas the bit in classical computing either represents a one or a zero, qubits superimpose one and zero, representing both states at the same time. This creates an exponential improvement in performances such that so eight qubits theoretically have two to eight times the performance of eight bits. For example, Google and NASA have demonstrated that a quantum computer with 1,097 qubits outperformed existing supercomputers by more than 3,600 times and personal computers by 100 million.

While the experimental nature and cost of quantum computing means it is unlikely to make it into any business setup soon, anything to make the approach more practical could make a big difference to scientific computational challenges such as protein folding. The problem of how to predict the structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence is important for understanding how proteins function in a wide range of biological processes and could potentially help design better medicines.

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Quantum computing heats up down under as researchers reckon they know how to cut costs and improve stability - The Register

Law360 (April 21, 2020, 5:23 PM EDT) -- Once considered a scientific impossibility, quantum computing is now expected to have a far-reaching commercial impact thanks to an increase in investment and a myriad of new discoveries by physicists and computer scientists. Quantum computers have the potential to transform industries from auto manufacturing to pharmaceuticals to finance, but the technology has only recently moved from the laboratory to the commercial market.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, IBM Corp. announced it had struck partnerships with Daimler AG (the parent company of Mercedes-Benz) and Delta Air Lines Inc. to harness quantum computing to solve real-world issues for...

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What To Expect In The Emerging Age Of Quantum Computing - Law360

This partnership is an opportunity to leverage a unique industrial and technological expertise for the design, integration and validation of advanced quantum solutions that has been applied for more than a decade to quantum gravimeters and atomic clocks. It will speed up the development of Pasqals processors and will bring them to an unprecedented maturity level.

Muquans will supply several key technological building blocks and a technical assistance to Pasqal, that will offer an advanced computing and simulation capability towards quantum advantage for real life applications.

We have the strong belief that the neutral atoms technology developed by Pasqal has a unique potential and this agreement is a wonderful opportunity for Muquans to participate on the great adventure of quantum computing. It will also help us find new opportunities for our technologies. We expect this activity to significantly grow in the coming years and this partnership will allow us to become a key stakeholder in the supply chain of quantum computers., Bruno Desruelle, CEO Muquans

Muquans laser solutions combine extreme performance, advanced functionalities and industrial reliability. When you develop the next generation of quantum computers, you need to rely on strong bases and build trust with your partners. Being able to embed this technology in our processors will be a key factor for our company to consolidate our competitive advantage and bring quantum processors to the market., Georges-Olivier Reymond, CEO Pasqal

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Muquans and Pasqal partner to advance quantum computing - Quantaneo, the Quantum Computing Source