Category: Quantum Computing

Google’s Bristlecone Quantum Computing Chip

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A few days ago Google previewed its new quantum processor, Bristlecone, a quantum computing chip that will serve as a testbed for research regarding the system error rates and scalability of Google’s qubit technology. In a post on its research blog, Google said it’s “cautiously optimistic that quantum supremacy can be achieved with Bristlecone.”

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72 Qubit Quantum Computing Chip

The purpose of this gate-based superconducting system is to provide a testbed for research into system error rates and scalability of their qubit technology, as well as applications in quantum simulation, optimization, and machine learning. Qubits (the quantum version of traditional bits) are very unstable and can be adversely affected by noise, and most of these systems can only hold a state for less than 100 microseconds. Google believes that quantum supremacy can be “comfortably demonstrated” with 49 qubits and a two-qubit error below 0.5 percent. Previous quantum systems by Google have given two-qubit errors of 0.6 percent, which in theory sounds like an extremely small difference, but in the world of quantum computing remains significant.

However, each Bristlecone chip features 72 qubits, which may help mitigate some of this error, but as Google says, quantum computing isn’t just about qubits. Until now, the most advanced quantum chip, built by IBM, had 50 qubits.  “Operating a device such as Bristlecone at low system error requires harmony between a full stack of technology ranging from software and control electronics to the processor itself,” the team writes in a blog post. “Getting this right requires careful systems engineering over several iterations.”

(via Google Research Blog, Engadget, Forbes)

 

 

Quantum Network

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We all know the hype that’s currently running around Quantum Computer, their working and a plethora of discoveries happening in Quantum Computing. Recommended: Quantum Computing, Quantum Computer Memories.

Recently, there has been news about a Quantum Network or rather, Quantum Internet. So what’s Quantum Network? Quantum networks form an important element of quantum computing and quantum communication systems. In general, quantum networks allow for the transmission of quantum information (quantum bits, also called qubits), between physically separated quantum processors. A quantum processor is a small quantum computer being able to perform quantum logic gates on a certain number of qubits.

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Being able to send qubits from one quantum processor to another allows them to be connected to form a quantum computing cluster. This is often referred to as networked quantum computing or distributed quantum computing. Here, several less powerful quantum processors are connected together by a quantum network to form one much more powerful quantum computer. This is analogous to connecting several classical computers to form a computer cluster in classical computing. Networked quantum computing offers a path towards scalability for quantum computers since more and more quantum processors can naturally be added over time to increase the overall quantum computing capabilities. In networked quantum computing, the individual quantum processors are typically separated only by short distances.

Going back a year, Chinese physicists launched the world’s first quantum satellite. Unlike the dishes that deliver your Television shows, this 1,400-pound behemoth doesn’t beam radio waves. Instead, the physicists designed it to send and receive bits of information encoded in delicate photons of infrared light. It’s a test of a budding technology known as quantum communications, which experts say could be far more secure than any existing info relay system. If quantum communications were like mailing a letter, entangled photons are kind of like the envelope: They carry the message and keep it secure. Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China, who leads the research on the satellite, has said that he wants to launch more quantum satellites in the next five years.

The basic structure of a quantum network and more generally a quantum internet is analogous to classical networks. First, we have end nodes on which applications can ultimately be run. These end nodes are quantum processors of at least one qubit. Some applications of a quantum internet require quantum processors of several qubits as well as a quantum memory at the end nodes.

Second, to transport qubits from one node to another, we need communication lines. For the purpose of quantum communication, standard telecom fibers can be used. For networked quantum computing, in which quantum processors are linked at short distances, one typically employs different wavelength depending on the exact hardware platform of the quantum processor.

Third, to make maximum use of communication infrastructure, one requires optical switches capable of delivering qubits to the intended quantum processor. These switches need to preserve quantum coherence, which makes them more challenging to realize than standard optical switches.

Finally, to transport qubits over long distances one requires a quantum repeater. Since qubits cannot be copied, classical signal amplification is not possible and a quantum repeater works in a fundamentally different way than a classical repeater.

The quantum internet could also be useful for potential quantum computing schemes, says Fu. Companies like Google and IBM are developing quantum computers to execute specific algorithms faster than any existing computer. Instead of selling people personal quantum computers, they’ve proposed putting their quantum computer in the cloud, where users would log into the quantum computer via the internet. While running their computations, they might want to transmit quantum-encrypted information between their personal computer and the cloud-based quantum computer. “Users might not want to send their information classically, where it could eavesdrop,” Fu says. But still, this technology is almost 13 years away and surely we will witness a lot more discoveries in the coming years.

(source : MitTechReview, Wikipedia, Wired)

 

 

Quantum computer memories of higher dimensions than a qubit

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A quantum computer memory of higher dimensions has been created by the scientists from the Institute of Physics and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and MIPT by letting two electrons loose in a system of quantum dots. In their study published in Scientific Reports, the researchers demonstrate for the first time how quantum walks of several electrons can help for implementation of quantum computation.

For more information: Quantum Computing

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Abstraction – Walking Electrons

“By studying the system with two electrons, we solved the problems faced in the general case of two identical interacting particles. This paves the way toward compact high-level quantum structures,” says Leonid Fedichkin, associate professor at MIPT’s Department of Theoretical Physics.

In a matter of hours, a quantum computer will be able to hack into the most popular cryptosystem used by web browsers. As far as more benevolent applications are concerned, a quantum computer would be capable of molecular modeling that accounts for all interactions between the particles involved. This, in turn, would enable the development of highly efficient solar cells and new drugs.

As it turns out, the unstable nature of the connection between qubits remains the major obstacle preventing the use of quantum walks of particles for quantum computation. Unlike their classical analogs, quantum structures are extremely sensitive to external noise. To prevent a system of several qubits from losing the information stored in it, liquid nitrogen (or helium) needs to be used for cooling. A research team led by Prof. Fedichkin demonstrated that a qubit could be physically implemented as a particle “taking a quantum walk” between two extremely small semiconductors known as quantum dots, which are connected by a “quantum tunnel.”

The Quantum dots are like potential wells to an electron, therefore, the position of an electron can be used to encode the basis of two states of the qubits 0 or 1.

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The blue and purple dots in the diagrams are the states of the two connected qudits (qutrits and ququarts are shown in (a) and (b) respectively). Each cell in the square diagrams on the right side of each figure (a-d) represents the position of one electron (i = 0, 1, 2, … along the horizontal axis) versus the position of the other electron (j = 0, 1, 2, … along the vertical axis). The cells color-code the probability of finding the two electrons in the corresponding dots with numbers i and j when a measurement of the system is made. Warmer colors denote higher probabilities. Credit: MIPT

If an entangled state is created between several qubits, their individual states can no longer be described separately from one another, and any valid description must refer to the state of the whole system. This means that a system of three qubits has a total of eight basis states and is in a superposition of them: A|000⟩+B|001⟩+C|010⟩+D|100⟩+E|011⟩+F|101⟩+G|110⟩+H|111⟩. By influencing the system, one inevitably affects all of the eight coefficients, whereas influencing a system of regular bits only affects their individual states. By implication, n bits can store n variables, while n qubits can store 2n variables. Qudits offer an even greater advantage since n four-level qudits (aka ququarts) can encode 4n, or 2n×2n variables. To put this into perspective, 10 ququarts store approximately 100,000 times more information than 10 bits. With greater values of n, the zeros in this number start to pile up very quickly.

In this study, Alexey Melnikov and Leonid Fedichkin obtain a system of two qudits implemented as two entangled electrons quantum-walking around the so-called cycle graph. The entanglement of the two electrons is caused by the mutual electrostatic repulsion experienced by like charges. Number of qudits can be created by connecting quantum dots in a pattern of winding paths and have more wandering electrons. The quantum walks approach to quantum computation is convenient because it is based on a natural process.

So far, scientists have been unable to connect a sufficient number of qubits for the development of a quantum computer. The work of the Russian researchers brings computer science one step closer to a future when quantum computations are commonplace.

(Source: Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, 3Tags.)

World’s First Fully Programmable and Reconfigurable Quantum Computer Module

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A team of researchers, led by Professor Christopher Monroe from Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) at the University of Maryland Physics , has introduced the first fully programmable and reconfigurable quantum computer module in a paper published as the cover article in the August 4 issue of the journal Nature.

For more Info: Read Quantum Computing.

 

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Photo of an ion trap.

 

The new device, dubbed a module because of its potential to connect with copies of itself is made of five individual ions, charged atoms — trapped in a magnetic field, whose strength is manipulated in such a way that the ions are arranged in a line. A computer program dedicated to solving a particular problem—on five quantum bits, or qubits—the fundamental unit of information in a quantum computer. Quantum computers promise speedy solutions to some difficult problems, but building large-scale, general-purpose quantum devices is a problem fraught with technical challenges.

“For any computer to be useful, the user should not be required to know what’s inside,” said Monroe, who is also a UMD Distinguished University Professor, the Bice Zorn Professor of Physics, and a fellow of the Joint Quantum Institute and the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science. “Very few people care what their iPhone is actually doing at the physical level. Our experiment brings high-quality quantum bits up to a higher level of functionality by allowing them to be programmed and reconfigured in software.”

The reconfigurability of the laser beams is a key advantage, Debnath says. “By reducing an algorithm into a series of laser pulses that push on the appropriate ions, we can reconfigure the wiring between these qubits from the outside,” he said. “It becomes a software problem, and no other quantum computing architecture has this flexibility.”

To test the module, the team ran three different quantum algorithms, including a demonstration of a Quantum Fourier Transform (QFT), which finds how often a given mathematical function repeats. It is a key piece in Shor’s quantum factoring algorithm, which would break some of the most widely-used security standards on the internet if run on a big enough quantum computer.

Two of the algorithms ran successfully more than 90 percent of the time, while the QFT topped out at a 70 percent success rate. The team says that this is due to residual errors in the pulse-shaped gates as well as systematic errors that accumulate over the course of the computation, neither of which appear fundamentally insurmountable. They note that the QFT algorithm requires all possible two-qubit gates and should be among the most complicated quantum calculations.

The team believes that eventually more qubits—perhaps as many as 100—could be added to their quantum computer module. It is also possible to link separate modules together, either by physically moving the ions or by using photons to carry information between them.

 

(via Science Daily, IBT)