New Reliable Qubit Breakthrough May Make Quantum Computing a Reality

Quantum computers have the potential to revolutionize the way computations are performed, so it's not surprising that physicists have been searching for ways to create a fully functional quantum computer. Now, scientists may be one step closer to creating such a computer; they've demonstrated a new level of reliability in a five-qubit array.

Quantum computers use qubits (quantum bits), which make direct use of multiple states of quantum phenomena. This has the potential to cause quantum computers to be millions of times more powerful than today's supercomputers when it comes to certain computations. Yet quantum computers are notoriously finicky.

"Quantum hardware is very, very unreliable compared to classical hardware," said Austin Fowler, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Even the best state-of-the-art hardware is unreliable. Our paper shows that for the first time reliability has been reached."

So how did the researchers achieve some form of reliability? They were able to create a unique configuration for the array, resulting from the flexibility of geometry at the superconductive level. More specifically, the scientists created cross-shaped qubits that they named Xmons. Superconductivity actually results when certain materials are cooled to a critical level that removes electrical resistance and eliminates magnetic fields. That's why the scientists placed five Xmons in a single row with each qubit "talking" to its nearest neighbor.

While this is certainly a breakthrough for quantum computers, more work still needs to be done in order to make it viable.

"If you really want to build a quantum computer, you need a two-dimensional array of such qubits, and the error rate should be below 1 percent," said Fowler in a news release. "If we can get one order of magnitude lower-in the area of 10^-3 or 1 in 1,000 for all our gates-our qubits could become commercial viable. But there are more issues that need to be solved. There are more frequencies to worry about and it's certainly true that it's more complex. However, the physics is no different."

The findings are published in the journal Nature.