Quantum Computing

March 20, 2023

Google claims to have made a breakthrough in an important subfield called quantum error correction which would go on to make quantum computing more accurate.
Rather than storing information using bits represented by 0’s or 1’s as conventional computers do, quantum computers use qubits, to encode information as 0’s, 1’s, or both at the same time.
- However qubits are so sensitive that even stray light can cause calculation errors and the problem worsens as quantum computer grows.
To bridge this calculation error gap, Google claimed to have made a breakthrough in quantum error correction.
Quantum error correction protects information by encoding it across multiple physical qubits (instead of relying on individual physical qubits) to form a “logical qubit”.
Quantum computing is focused on developing computer technology based on quantum theory principles, which explains nature and behaviour of energy and matter on the quantum (atomic and subatomic) level.
It uses two key principles of quantum physics-
- Superposition means that each qubit can represent both 1 and 0 at the same time.
- Entanglement means that qubits in a superposition can be correlated with each other; i.e., state of one (whether it is a 1 or a 0) can depend on state of another.