Tristan is a U.S-based science and technology journalist. He covers artificial intelligence (AI), theoretical physics, and cutting-edge technology stories. His work has been published in numerous outlets including Mother Jones, The Stack, The Next Web, and Undark Magazine.
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Discover this week's must-see night sky events, moon phases, and stunning astrophotos. Sign up for our skywatching newsletter and explore the universe with us! Researchers have demonstrated a breakthrough method for preventing errors in light-powered quantum computers before they even occur. The milestone, which was achieved using a new technique called photon distillation, means physicists are one step closer to developing light-based “photonic” quantum computers capable of achieving quantum advantage over classical supercomputers.
Quantum computers need just 10,000 qubits — not the millions we assumed — to break the world's most secure encryption algorithms IBM quantum processor achieves highest fidelity calculations for the longest period of time on recordThe research tackles what is arguably the biggest hurdle in the path to developing fault-tolerant universal quantum computers, the presence of noisy errors that can cause computations to fail. — the quantum equivalent of computer bits — photonic quantum computers are powered by light.
Scientists shoot beams of photons through specifically engineered fields of mirrors and beam splitters. The photons themselves are then manipulated into complex quantum states that allow computations to be performed. One of the key benefits of this quantum computing paradigm is that it works at room temperature.
The underlying reason this is possible is also the culprit behind photonic quantum computing's biggest problemphotonic quantum computers can operate without generating much excess heat because light is in constant motion. This motion allows computations to occur through the interactions between photons as they move. But it also produces significantly more errors. Superconducting quantum computers have to energize circuits to create qubits — a process that generates heat.
Although photons don't suffer from this problem, there's a trade-off: photonic quantum computers are very brittle. Photons are, by their very nature, imperfect, which means there's typically a significant percentage of"bad" photons bouncing around that can ruin a given computation. Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox. , chief scientist and co-founder of QuiX Quantum, told Live Science.
"And the way that computations work is by interactions between these photons when they encounter each other on the chip. " "Errors occur when one of the photons doesn't play nice," Renema said. "Every once in a while, there's sort of a maverick photon that decides to not play by the rules of the other photons. " This"rogue" photon will work its way through the system without ever interacting with the other photons, producing a distinct error.
Because this happens before the photon is even turned into a qubit for processing, this problem is difficult to address through conventionalUltrafast quantum chemistry engine could speed up the development of new medicines and materialsPhysicists entangle two moving atoms for the first time, validating 'spooky' quantum theoryThe amount of qubits that you need to expend in order to make a single good qubit is so enormous that the cost of the computer just blows up enormously. Using a technique called quantum photonic distillation, QuiX employed error mitigation to tackle the root cause of these errors before they could happen.
"You set up the interference in such a way that the probability that your rogue photon makes it to the output … is lower than the probability that the photons that are playing nice make it to that output," Renema said. This probability lies at the heart of photonic quantum computing. As Renema put it,"Everything in photonics is probabilistic.
" When researchers shoot beams of photons through a series of mirrors and beam splitters, there's a certain probability that each photon will do what it wants, and if nothing is done to mitigate errors, they're essentially relying on luck to produce viable computations. The odds of success get even worse for each photon as engineers add more quantum computing gates to the system.
With a superconducting quantum computer, you can add"logical" qubits to perform fault tolerance on physical qubits to compensate for errors. These are collections of physical qubits that share the same data, so that if one or more qubits fail, the data is available elsewhere in the cluster and calculations are not disrupted. But with quantum computing, adding overhead tends to produce more errors than it fixes.
Photonic distillation also exhibits"below threshold error mitigation" — a metric the study authors used to indicate that their technique reduces the number of errors that occur as the system scales, as opposed to adding more, which is normally the case as you make a quantum computer bigger, the QuiX scientists wrote in the study. in December 2024, for example. But the new study represents the first time this has been achieved in light-powered systems.
"The amount of qubits that you need to expend in order to make a single good qubit is so enormous that the cost of the computer just blows up enormously," Renema said. "So there's this trade-off.
" Breakthrough quantum computer could consume 2,000 times less power than a supercomputer and solve problems 200 times faster Building quantum supercomputers: Scientists connect two quantum processors using existing fiber-optic cables for the first time Scientists build the smallest quantum computer in the world — it works at room temperature, and you can fit it on your desk Photonic distillation sends imperfect photons through a specialized optical circuit that uses"quantum interference" — a strange feature of quantum mechanics wherein the probability amplitudes of quantum states combine — to filter out physical inconsistencies and output a single, high-quality photon. All of this happens before the photons are turned into qubits.
These high-quality photons are then sent through the system with a much lower probability of going rogue. This quality increase provides a net gain in error correction even when taking into account all the errors introduced when the photons are used as qubits. Because photonic computers are probabilistic, this experimental work demonstrates a scalable approach to error mitigation that should provide below-threshold performance at scales great enough to produce useful quantum computations, the study authors said.
His work has been published in numerous outlets including Mother Jones, The Stack, The Next Web, and Undark Magazine. Prior to journalism, Tristan served in the US Navy for 10 years as a programmer and engineer. When he isn’t writing, he enjoys gaming with his wife and studying military history.
Quantum computers need just 10,000 qubits — not the millions we assumed — to break the world's most secure encryption algorithmsQuantum ComputingQuantum computers need just 10,000 qubits — not the millions we assumed — to break the world's most secure encryption algorithmsRecord-breaking feat means information lasts 15 times longer in new kind of quantum processor than those used by Google and IBM
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