Intel's 'Cat Qubits' Achieve Major Breakthrough in Quantum Computing
A significant breakthrough in quantum computing has been achieved by Intel researchers. They have developed 'cat qubits' that can maintain a logical bit of information for nearly an hour, a substantial leap towards the 2030 goal for practical quantum computers.
Traditional qubits face challenges with fleeting states decaying in milliseconds, requiring thousands of physical qubits to build a single logical one. Cat qubits, however, store logical values in a superposition of two distinct coherent states of a microwave resonator, with '0' encoded as an even-photon state and '1' as an odd-photon state. This unique property allows them to maintain information for extended periods.
The experiment, replicated on a separate 12-qubit processor, Helium 2, showed that three different cat qubits achieved bit-flip times exceeding an hour. Alice & Bobcat qubits, developed by Intel, demonstrated an average bit-flip time of 44 minutes, surpassing the 13-minute target for the 2030 'Graphene' architecture. Moreover, the large energy gap between the two states in cat qubits makes accidental flips extremely unlikely, shifting the burden to phase-flip errors, which can be corrected with fewer physical qubits. The roadmap to a 2030 quantum computer now relies on integrating cat qubits into full error-correcting codes and demonstrating reliable logical operations over timescales of minutes.
The success of cat qubits brings us closer to the 2030 quantum computer goal. With their ability to maintain information for nearly an hour and their resistance to bit-flips, they could be a game-changer in quantum computing. The next steps involve integrating these qubits into error-correcting codes and demonstrating reliable operations over extended periods.
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