John Koetsier
An IBM quantum computerdpa/picture alliance via Getty Images
Paris-based quantum computing startup Alice & Bob has announced a stunning breakthrough in quantum computing: its qubits can now resist bit-flip errors for more than an hour. That’s four times longer than the company’s own previous record and millions of times longer than typical qubits, which often exist for just microseconds before de-cohering.
And that means Alice & Bob is on track to build a fault-tolerant quantum computer with 100 logical qubits by 2030.
“Being able to push the stability of our cat qubits year after year makes us confident that we will deliver on our roadmap,” Raphael Lescanne, CTO and Cofounder of Alice & Bob, said in a statement.
In the classical computing world, being able to maintain an error-free state for an hour is not a major accomplishment. Quantum computers, however, which promise massive computational advantages in fields like drug discovery, materials science, and cryptography, use quantum bits, or qubits, that are inherently fragile. They decohere, introducing errors in quantum computations. Solving error correction is one of the key challenges in quantum computing.
IBM’s Eagle superconducting quantum processor, for example, can achieve 400 milliseconds of coherence for its qubits. Other quantum computers might achieve only one to 34 milliseconds. New quantum computing architectures, like IBM’s Starling quantum computer that is scheduled to be built in 2029, solve the error correction problem via smarter detection technology, but longer-lived qbits solves the problem at the source.
“By virtually eliminating one of the two main error types, Alice & Bob’s cat qubits allow for more efficient error-correcting codes that require far fewer qubits,” the company says.
The new innovation, while reducing bit-flip errors, comes at the cost of more phase-flip errors, which the company says it can correct for more efficiently.
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