Physicists move closer to defeating errors in quantum computation
Jul. 14, 2021 , 6:30 PM
Physicists at Google have taken an important step toward protecting delicate information in their nascent quantum computer from errors that can obliterate it. The researchers can’t yet compensate for all types of errors—a necessary step toward building a full-fledged quantum computer—but others say they’re poised to achieve that goal.
“There's no smashing breakthrough here, but they're doing the hard work, and they're reporting clear progress for a future breakthrough,” says Greg Kuperberg, a mathematician at the University of California, Davis. Joschka Roffe, a theoretical physicist at the Free University of Berlin, says Google researchers are “within touching distance” of demonstrating full error correction.