Andersen and Lensky of Google disagree. They don’t suppose the experiment demonstrates a topological qubit, as a result of the item can not reliably manipulate data to realize sensible quantum computing. “It’s repeatedly said explicitly within the manuscript that error correction have to be included to realize topological safety and that this might have to be accomplished in future work,” they write to WIRED.
When WIRED spoke with Tony Uttley, the president and COO of Quantinuum, after the corporate’s personal announcement in Might, he was steadfast. “We created a topological qubit,” he mentioned. (Uttley mentioned final month that he was leaving the corporate.) The corporate’s experiments made non-Abelian anyons out of 27 ions of the metallic ytterbium, suspended in electromagnetic fields. The crew manipulated the ions to kind non-Abelian anyons in a racetrack-shaped entice, and much like the Google experiment, they demonstrated that the anyons might “bear in mind” how that they had moved. Quantinuum revealed its ends in a preprint research on arXiv with out peer evaluation two days earlier than Nature revealed Kim’s paper.
Room for Enchancment
Finally, nobody agrees whether or not the 2 demonstrations have created topological qubits as a result of they haven’t agreed on what a topological qubit is—even when there may be widespread settlement that such a factor is extremely fascinating. Consequently, Google and Quantinuum can carry out related experiments with related outcomes however find yourself with two very totally different tales to inform.
Regardless, Frolov on the College of Pittsburgh says that neither demonstration seems to have introduced the sector nearer to the true technological objective of a topological qubit. Whereas Google and Quantinuum seem to have created and manipulated non-Abelian anyons, the underlying techniques and supplies used had been too fragile for sensible use.
David Pekker, one other physicist at Pittsburgh, who beforehand used an IBM quantum pc to simulate the manipulation of non-Abelian anyons, says that the Google and Quantinuum tasks don’t showcase any quantum benefit in computational energy. The experiments don’t shift the sector of quantum computing from the place it has been for some time: Engaged on techniques which can be too small-scale to but compete with current computer systems. “My iPhone can simulate 27 qubits with increased constancy than the Google machine can do with precise qubits,” Pekker says.
Nonetheless, technological breakthroughs typically develop from incremental progress. Delivering a sensible topological qubit would require every kind of research—giant and small—of non-Abelian anyons and the mathematics underpinning their quirky habits. Alongside the way in which, the quantum computing trade’s curiosity helps additional some elementary questions in physics.
