Team Develops Simulator with 256 Qubits, Largest of its Kind Ever Created
upstart writes:
A team of physicists from the Harvard-MIT Center for Ultracold Atoms and other universities has developed a special type of quantum computer known as a programmable quantum simulator capable of operating with 256 quantum bits, or qubits."
The system marks a major step toward building large-scale quantum machines that could be used to shed light on a host of complex quantum processes and eventually help bring about real-world breakthroughs in material science, communication technologies, finance, and many other fields, overcoming research hurdles that are beyond the capabilities of even the fastest supercomputers today. Qubits are the fundamental building blocks on which quantum computers run and the source of their massive processing power.
[...] According to Sepehr Ebadi, a physics student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the study's lead author, it is the combination of system's unprecedented size and programmability that puts it at the cutting edge of the race for a quantum computer, which harnesses the mysterious properties of matter at extremely small scales to greatly advance processing power. Under the right circumstances, the increase in qubits means the system can store and process exponentially more information than the classical bits on which standard computers run.
The number of quantum states that are possible with only 256 qubits exceeds the number of atoms in the solar system," Ebadi said, explaining the system's vast size.
Already, the simulator has allowed researchers to observe several exotic quantum states of matter that had never before been realized experimentally, and to perform a quantum phase transition study so precise that it serves as the textbook example of how magnetism works at the quantum level.
Journal Reference:
Sepehr Ebadi, Tout T. Wang, Harry Levine, et al. Quantum phases of matter on a 256-atom programmable quantum simulator, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03582-4)
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