Research Bits: April 5


Creating qubits in bulk Researchers from Intel and QuTech, an institute of the Delft University of Technology and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), built a qubit using standard semiconductor manufacturing facilities. The qubit is based on the spin of single electrons that are captured in a silicon nanoscale device, which resembles conventional transistors. ... » read more

Quantum logic with spin qubits crossing the surface code threshold


New research paper from QuTech, Delft University of Technology. Abstract "High-fidelity control of quantum bits is paramount for the reliable execution of quantum algorithms and for achieving fault tolerance—the ability to correct errors faster than they occur. The central requirement for fault tolerance is expressed in terms of an error threshold. Whereas the actual threshold depends o... » read more

Qubits made by advanced semiconductor manufacturing


Abstract: "Full-scale quantum computers require the integration of millions of qubits, and the potential of using industrial semiconductor manufacturing to meet this need has driven the development of quantum computing in silicon quantum dots. However, fabrication has so far relied on electron-beam lithography and, with a few exceptions, conventional lift-off processes that suffer from low yie... » read more

Absence of Barren Plateaus in Quantum Convolutional Neural Networks


Abstract:  Quantum neural networks (QNNs) have generated excitement around the possibility of efficiently analyzing quantum data. But this excitement has been tempered by the existence of exponentially vanishing gradients, known as barren plateau landscapes, for many QNN architectures. Recently, quantum convolutional neural networks (QCNNs) have been proposed, involving a sequence of convol... » read more

Factoring 2048-bit RSA Integers in 177 Days with 13 436 Qubits and a Multimode Memory


Abstract: "We analyze the performance of a quantum computer architecture combining a small processor and a storage unit. By focusing on integer factorization, we show a reduction by several orders of magnitude of the number of processing qubits compared with a standard architecture using a planar grid of qubits with nearest-neighbor connectivity. This is achieved by taking advantage of a tem... » read more

The Race To Make Better Qubits


One of the big challenges in quantum computing is getting qubits to last long enough to do something useful with them. After decades of research, there now appears to be tangible progress. The challenge with any new semiconductor technology is to improve performance by one or more orders of magnitude without discarding a half-century of progress in other areas. Qubits based on silicon quantu... » read more

Progress On General-Purpose Quantum Computers


The race is on to scale up quantum computing, transforming it from an esoteric research tool into a commercially viable, general-purpose machine. Special-purpose quantum computers have been available for several years now. Systems like D-Wave’s Advantage focus on specific classes of problems that are amenable to modeling as quantum systems. Still, the ultimate goal of having a general purp... » read more

Emergent magnetic monopoles isolated using quantum-annealing computer


Using D-Wave’s quantum-annealing computer, Los Alamos National Laboratory has shown that it’s possible to isolate magnetic monopoles. This research could one day enable future nanomagnets.   Abstract: "Artificial spin ices are frustrated spin systems that can be engineered, wherein fine tuning of geometry and topology has allowed the design and characterization of exotic eme... » read more

The Great Quantum Computing Race


Quantum computing is heating up, as a growing number of entities race to benchmark, stabilize, and ultimately commercialize this technology. As of July 2021, a group from China appears to have taken the lead in terms of raw performance, but Google, IBM, Intel and other quantum computer developers aren’t far behind. All of that could change overnight, though. At this point, it's too early t... » read more

Where Imperfections Lead To Opportunity


By Evelyn Hu It is natural to hold a bias that assumes that the highest-quality devices are those formed from the most perfect materials (crystalline, well-ordered, stoichiometric). Therefore, it is ironic, and perhaps counterintuitive, that particular kinds of defects, such as vacancies (missing atoms) in semiconductor materials, can form the building blocks of a new quantum information tec... » read more

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