The first fotonic cubal immune to errors is already ready

The development they have experienced Quantum computers During the last decade it is amazing. This discipline is no longer attractive only for the research centers linked to some of the most prestigious universities on the planet; The governments of the United States, China, Germany, France, Australia, the United Kingdom, India, Canada or Russia are some of those who have openly manifested The strategic character that has for them Quantum computing.

However, a good part of the greatest advances that we are as witnesses come from the private company. Google, Intel, Honeywell or IBM are some of the companies that are bidding to make possible the innovations required by the challenges that this computing paradigm has placed in front of us.

Experts agree that There is still much to dobut the two greatest challenges that need to be overcome to make the tuning of fully functional quantum compute error correction that guarantees that the results we read are the correct ones, and also the scaling of the number of cubits. In fact, both challenges go hand in hand.

Xanadu invites us to tie the future with more optimism than ever

Xanadu’s trajectory started in 2016, but what placed this young Canadian company in the center of the debate in early June 2022 was the article published in Nature in which Jonathan Lavoie, his scientific heading, and his team explain how they achieved achieve quantum supremacy. Interestingly, in their project they used a programmable quantonic quantonic processor that they baptized as borealis and is able to operate at ambient temperature.

The Lavoie team managed to solve in just 36 microseconds a problem in which a classic supercommer pertrected with the best available algorithm would have invested 9,000 years. However, this is not all. In addition, these researchers assured that their technology had allowed them minimize your hardware imperfections and reach a computational advantage in execution time 50 million times higher than that they have thrown other computers that also resort to photonic quantum processors.

Whatever the most shocking thing is that at that time, exactly three years ago, Lavoie and his team assured that they intended to be ready before this decade is a quantum computer of a million cubits endowed with the ability to amend their own errors. One of the greatest buzas in favor of the Xanadu scientific team is that its photonic quantum processor can be manufactured using the same photolithographic technology used in the production of the chips that reside inside our computers and smartphones, which opens the door to its mass manufacturing.

However, the most interesting thing is the strategy that the team led by Lavoie has devised to make possible the scaling of its quantum hardware until it is able to bring together one million cubits. What he pursues is, in broad strokes, interconnect his quantum processors using a fiber optic network with the purpose of can exchange quantum information and face the same problem in a coordinated way. The most obvious advantage that this approach puts on the table is that, if everything goes as Xanadu researchers have planned, nothing will prevent them from continuing to climb their quantum hardware beyond one million cubits.

In any case, these scientists have not wasted time for the past three years. Just a few hours ago they have published an article in Nature in which they describe with great detail the characteristics of their new silicon photonic cubits resistant to errors and integrated into a chip. It is the first time that a team manages to demonstrate the proper functioning of a quantum integrated circuit like this.

Very broadly, your strategy is to overlap many photons to encode information in a way resistant to errors. This does not imply that quantum computers endowed with the ability to correct their own mistakes are already ready. To be viable using photonic technology it is necessary Optimize manufacturing and packaging processes with the purpose of mitigating optical losses throughout the platform. Anyway, there is no doubt: this achievement of Xanadu is very important. We will follow the track closely.

Image | Xanadu

More information | Nature

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