One major barrier standing between today and this future computational eden is an idea known as \u201cquantum error correction.\u201d Qubits<\/a> are easily disrupted by \u201cnoise,\u201d which can come in the form of electromagnetic radiation and even just temperature. This noise eventually leads to decoherence of the system, transforming our nifty quantum computer into just a run-of-the-mill classical one. While the error-rate of normal bits is extremely minuscule, quantum error rates average around one in 1,000, which basically turns computations into an unusable mess pretty quick. <\/p>\n Related Story<\/p>\n A new study\u2014published in the journal Nature<\/a> by a research team from MIT, Harvard, and the quantum computing company QuEra\u2014aims to improve this error-correction by demonstrating what\u2019s called \u201cmagic state distillation\u201d in logical qubits. <\/p>\n …yeah, that sentence might need some unpacking. <\/p>\n First, logical qubits aren\u2019t the same physical qubits, which are the basic building blocks of quantum systems. Logical qubits<\/a> are groups of physical qubits that share the same information and are protected by layers of error-correcting code<\/a>. The idea goes that if one logical qubit produces and error, it won\u2019t disrupt the whole system, as that information is contained. <\/p>\n For more than 20 years<\/a>, scientists have known about so-called \u201cmagic states,\u201d which are highly refined resources that are key to scaling fault-tolerant quantum systems. In a press release accompanying the study, QuEra compares \u201cmagic states\u201d to jet fuel. <\/p>\n Think of magic state distillation as the quantum equivalent of refining crude oil into aviation fuel: it transforms the fragile, noisy raw materials produced by today\u2019s quantum systems into the high\u2011octane resource required to run any quantum algorithm reliably. Raw magic states are imperfect, so engineers combine multiple copies and \u201cdistill\u201d the batch into a single, cleaner version. <\/p>\n For the first time, researchers performed this distillation process within logical qubits using the QuEra\u2019s neutral-atom computer. They created logical qubit bundles of sizes known as Distance-3 and Distance-5\u2014essentially, the higher the number, the better the logical qubit (it\u2019s more capable of correcting errors, for example). They then distilled five imperfect magic states into one cleaner magic states\u2014refining that \u201ccrude oil\u201d into high-octane jet fuel<\/a>. The results showed that the final magic state contained a higher fidelity than any of the inputs, proving that fault-tolerant magic state distillation is possible.<\/p>\n Related Story<\/p>\n \u201cThis experiment leverages the unique strengths of neutral\u2011atom arrays…to tackle one of the most demanding sub\u2011routines in quantum error correction,\u201d Mikhail Lukin, a co-author of the study from Harvard University, said in a press statement. \u201cIt is a very important step toward practical, universal quantum processors.\u201d<\/p>\n QuEra\u2019s chief commercial officer Yuval Boger, speaking with Live Science<\/a>, said that this breakthrough is a true step forward. In years past, scientists had pondered whether quantum computers were even possible, and recently, universities and tech companies have been searching for ways to make those computers<\/a> less prone to errors. Boger says that the question has now become: \u201cCan we make these computers truly useful?\u201d <\/p>\n If history is any indicator, we might already know that answer.<\/p>\n Exclusive Pop Mech Digital Issues Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes\/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here\u2019s what you\u2019ll learn when you read this story: Making quantum computers fault-tolerant (and scaling effective error correction…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13640,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[10217,353,85,46,43,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-13639","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-computing","8":"tag-carousel","9":"tag-computing","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Chevron](\"https:\/\/www.popularmechanics.com\/_assets\/design-tokens\/fre\/static\/icons\/arrow-left-regular.dc4f48a.svg?primary=%2523D4D4D4\"){kind=icon}
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