Category Archives: Quantum Computing

by Chris Woodford. Last updated: February 18, 2017.

How can you get more and more out of less and less? The smaller computers get, the more powerful they seem to become: there's more number-crunching ability in a 21st-century cellphone than you'd have found in a room-sized, military computer 50 years ago. Yet, despite such amazing advances, there are still plenty of complex problems that are beyond the reach of even the world's most powerful computersand there's no guarantee we'll ever be able to tackle them. One problem is that the basic switching and memory units of computers, known as transistors, are now approaching the point where they'll soon be as small as individual atoms. If we want computers that are smaller and more powerful than today's, we'll soon need to do our computing in a radically different way. Entering the realm of atoms opens up powerful new possibilities in the shape of quantum computing, with processors that could work millions of times faster than the ones we use today. Sounds amazing, but the trouble is that quantum computing is hugely more complex than traditional computing and operates in the Alice in Wonderland world of quantum physics, where the "classical," sensible, everyday laws of physics no longer apply. What is quantum computing and how does it work? Let's take a closer look!

Photo: Quantum computing means storing and processing information using individual atoms, ions, electrons, or photons. On the plus side, this opens up the possibility of faster computers, but the drawback is the greater complexity of designing computers that can operate in the weird world of quantum physics. Photo courtesy of US Department of Energy.

You probably think of a computer as a neat little gadget that sits on your lap and lets you send emails, shop online, chat to your friends, or play gamesbut it's much more and much less than that. It's more, because it's a completely general-purpose machine: you can make it do virtually anything you like. It's less, because inside it's little more than an extremely basic calculator, following a prearranged set of instructions called a program. Like the Wizard of Oz, the amazing things you see in front of you conceal some pretty mundane stuff under the covers.

Photo: This is what one transistor from a typical radio circuit board looks like. In computers, the transistors are much smaller than this and millions of them are packaged together onto microchips.

Conventional computers have two tricks that they do really well: they can store numbers in memory and they can process stored numbers with simple mathematical operations (like add and subtract). They can do more complex things by stringing together the simple operations into a series called an algorithm (multiplying can be done as a series of additions, for example). Both of a computer's key tricksstorage and processingare accomplished using switches called transistors, which are like microscopic versions of the switches you have on your wall for turning on and off the lights. A transistor can either be on or off, just as a light can either be lit or unlit. If it's on, we can use a transistor to store a number one (1); if it's off, it stores a number zero (0). Long strings of ones and zeros can be used to store any number, letter, or symbol using a code based on binary (so computers store an upper-case letter A as 1000001 and a lower-case one as 01100001). Each of the zeros or ones is called a binary digit (or bit) and, with a string of eight bits, you can store 255 different characters (such as A-Z, a-z, 0-9, and most common symbols). Computers calculate by using circuits called logic gates, which are made from a number of transistors connected together. Logic gates compare patterns of bits, stored in temporary memories called registers, and then turn them into new patterns of bitsand that's the computer equivalent of what our human brains would call addition, subtraction, or multiplication. In physical terms, the algorithm that performs a particular calculation takes the form of an electronic circuit made from a number of logic gates, with the output from one gate feeding in as the input to the next.

The trouble with conventional computers is that they depend on conventional transistors. This might not sound like a problem if you go by the amazing progress made in electronics over the last few decades. When the transistor was invented, back in 1947, the switch it replaced (which was called the vacuum tube) was about as big as one of your thumbs. Now, a state-of-the-art microprocessor (single-chip computer) packs hundreds of millions (and up to two billion) transistors onto a chip of silicon the size of your fingernail! Chips like these, which are called integrated circuits, are an incredible feat of miniaturization. Back in the 1960s, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore realized that the power of computers doubles roughly 18 monthsand it's been doing so ever since. This apparently unshakeable trend is known as Moore's Law.

Photo: This memory chip from a typical USB stick contains an integrated circuit that can store 512 megabytes of data. That's roughly 500 million characters (536,870,912 to be exact), each of which needs eight binary digitsso we're talking about 4 billion (4,000 million) transistors in all (4,294,967,296 if you're being picky) packed into an area the size of a postage stamp!

It sounds amazing, and it is, but it misses the point. The more information you need to store, the more binary ones and zerosand transistorsyou need to do it. Since most conventional computers can only do one thing at a time, the more complex the problem you want them to solve, the more steps they'll need to take and the longer they'll need to do it. Some computing problems are so complex that they need more computing power and time than any modern machine could reasonably supply; computer scientists call those intractable problems.

As Moore's Law advances, so the number of intractable problems diminishes: computers get more powerful and we can do more with them. The trouble is, transistors are just about as small as we can make them: we're getting to the point where the laws of physics seem likely to put a stop to Moore's Law. Unfortunately, there are still hugely difficult computing problems we can't tackle because even the most powerful computers find them intractable. That's one of the reasons why people are now getting interested in quantum computing.

Quantum theory is the branch of physics that deals with the world of atoms and the smaller (subatomic) particles inside them. You might think atoms behave the same way as everything else in the world, in their own tiny little waybut that's not true: on the atomic scale, the rules change and the "classical" laws of physics we take for granted in our everyday world no longer automatically apply. As Richard P. Feynman, one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, once put it: "Things on a very small scale behave like nothing you have any direct experience about... or like anything that you have ever seen." (Six Easy Pieces, p116.)

If you've studied light, you may already know a bit about quantum theory. You might know that a beam of light sometimes behaves as though it's made up of particles (like a steady stream of cannonballs), and sometimes as though it's waves of energy rippling through space (a bit like waves on the sea). That's called wave-particle duality and it's one of the ideas that comes to us from quantum theory. It's hard to grasp that something can be two things at oncea particle and a wavebecause it's totally alien to our everyday experience: a car is not simultaneously a bicycle and a bus. In quantum theory, however, that's just the kind of crazy thing that can happen. The most striking example of this is the baffling riddle known as Schrdinger's cat. Briefly, in the weird world of quantum theory, we can imagine a situation where something like a cat could be alive and dead at the same time!

What does all this have to do with computers? Suppose we keep on pushing Moore's Lawkeep on making transistors smaller until they get to the point where they obey not the ordinary laws of physics (like old-style transistors) but the more bizarre laws of quantum mechanics. The question is whether computers designed this way can do things our conventional computers can't. If we can predict mathematically that they might be able to, can we actually make them work like that in practice?

People have been asking those questions for several decades. Among the first were IBM research physicists Rolf Landauer and Charles H. Bennett. Landauer opened the door for quantum computing in the 1960s when he proposed that information is a physical entity that could be manipulated according to the laws of physics. One important consequence of this is that computers waste energy manipulating the bits inside them (which is partly why computers use so much energy and get so hot, even though they appear to be doing not very much at all). In the 1970s, building on Landauer's work, Bennett showed how a computer could circumvent this problem by working in a "reversible" way, implying that a quantum computer could carry out massively complex computations without using massive amounts of energy. In 1981, physicist Paul Benioff from Argonne National Laboratory tried to envisage a basic machine that would work in a similar way to an ordinary computer but according to the principles of quantum physics. The following year, Richard Feynman sketched out roughly how a machine using quantum principles could carry out basic computations. A few years later, Oxford University's David Deutsch (one of the leading lights in quantum computing) outlined the theoretical basis of a quantum computer in more detail. How did these great scientists imagine that quantum computers might work?

The key features of an ordinary computerbits, registers, logic gates, algorithms, and so onhave analogous features in a quantum computer. Instead of bits, a quantum computer has quantum bits or qubits, which work in a particularly intriguing way. Where a bit can store either a zero or a 1, a qubit can store a zero, a one, both zero and one, or an infinite number of values in betweenand be in multiple states (store multiple values) at the same time! If that sounds confusing, think back to light being a particle and a wave at the same time, Schrdinger's cat being alive and dead, or a car being a bicycle and a bus. A gentler way to think of the numbers qubits store is through the physics concept of superposition (where two waves add to make a third one that contains both of the originals). If you blow on something like a flute, the pipe fills up with a standing wave: a wave made up of a fundamental frequency (the basic note you're playing) and lots of overtones or harmonics (higher-frequency multiples of the fundamental). The wave inside the pipe contains all these waves simultaneously: they're added together to make a combined wave that includes them all. Qubits use superposition to represent multiple states (multiple numeric values) simultaneously in a similar way.

Just as a quantum computer can store multiple numbers at once, so it can process them simultaneously. Instead of working in serial (doing a series of things one at a time in a sequence), it can work in parallel (doing multiple things at the same time). Only when you try to find out what state it's actually in at any given moment (by measuring it, in other words) does it "collapse" into one of its possible statesand that gives you the answer to your problem. Estimates suggest a quantum computer's ability to work in parallel would make it millions of times faster than any conventional computer... if only we could build it! So how would we do that?

In reality, qubits would have to be stored by atoms, ions (atoms with too many or too few electrons) or even smaller things such as electrons and photons (energy packets), so a quantum computer would be almost like a table-top version of the kind of particle physics experiments they do at Fermilab or CERN! Now you wouldn't be racing particles round giant loops and smashing them together, but you would need mechanisms for containing atoms, ions, or subatomic particles, for putting them into certain states (so you can store information), knocking them into other states (so you can make them process information), and figuring out what their states are after particular operations have been performed.

Photo: A single atom can be trapped in an optical cavitythe space between mirrorsand controlled by precise pulses from laser beams.

In practice, there are lots of possible ways of containing atoms and changing their states using laser beams, electromagnetic fields, radio waves, and an assortment of other techniques. One method is to make qubits using quantum dots, which are nanoscopically tiny particles of semiconductors inside which individual charge carriers, electrons and holes (missing electrons), can be controlled. Another method makes qubits from what are called ion traps: you add or take away electrons from an atom to make an ion, hold it steady in a kind of laser spotlight (so it's locked in place like a nanoscopic rabbit dancing in a very bright headlight), and then flip it into different states with laser pulses. In another technique, the qubits are photons inside optical cavities (spaces between extremely tiny mirrors). Don't worry if you don't understand; not many people do! Since the entire field of quantum computing is still largely abstract and theoretical, the only thing we really need to know is that qubits are stored by atoms or other quantum-scale particles that can exist in different states and be switched between them.

Although people often assume that quantum computers must automatically be better than conventional ones, that's by no means certain. So far, just about the only thing we know for certain that a quantum computer could do better than a normal one is factorisation: finding two unknown prime numbers that, when multiplied together, give a third, known number. In 1994, while working at Bell Laboratories, mathematician Peter Shor demonstrated an algorithm that a quantum computer could follow to find the "prime factors" of a large number, which would speed up the problem enormously. Shor's algorithm really excited interest in quantum computing because virtually every modern computer (and every secure, online shopping and banking website) uses public-key encryption technology based on the virtual impossibility of finding prime factors quickly (it is, in other words, essentially an "intractable" computer problem). If quantum computers could indeed factor large numbers quickly, today's online security could be rendered obsolete at a stroke.

Does that mean quantum computers are better than conventional ones? Not exactly. Apart from Shor's algorithm, and a search method called Grover's algorithm, hardly any other algorithms have been discovered that would be better performed by quantum methods. Given enough time and computing power, conventional computers should still be able to solve any problem that quantum computers could solve, eventually. In other words, it remains to be proven that quantum computers are generally superior to conventional ones, especially given the difficulties of actually building them. Who knows how conventional computers might advance in the next 50 years, potentially making the idea of quantum computers irrelevantand even absurd.

Photo: Quantum dots are probably best known as colorful nanoscale crystals, but they can also be used as qubits in quantum computers). Photo courtesy of Argonne National Laboratory.

Three decades after they were first proposed, quantum computers remain largely theoretical. Even so, there's been some encouraging progress toward realizing a quantum machine. There were two impressive breakthroughs in 2000. First, Isaac Chuang (now an MIT professor, but then working at IBM's Almaden Research Center) used five fluorine atoms to make a crude, five-qubit quantum computer. The same year, researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory figured out how to make a seven-qubit machine using a drop of liquid. Five years later, researchers at the University of Innsbruck added an extra qubit and produced the first quantum computer that could manipulate a qubyte (eight qubits).

These were tentative but important first steps. Over the next few years, researchers announced more ambitious experiments, adding progressively greater numbers of qubits. By 2011, a pioneering Canadian company called D-Wave Systems announced in Nature that it had produced a 128-qubit machine. Thee years later, Google announced that it was hiring a team of academics (including University of California at Santa Barbara physicist John Martinis) to develop its own quantum computers based on D-Wave's approach. In March 2015, the Google team announced they were "a step closer to quantum computation," having developed a new way for qubits to detect and protect against errors. In 2016, MIT's Isaac Chang and scientists from the University of Innsbruck unveiled a five-qubit, ion-trap quantum computer that could calculate the factors of 15; one day, a scaled-up version of this machine might evolve into the long-promised, fully fledged encryption buster! There's no doubt that these are hugely important advances. Even so, it's very early days for the whole fieldand most researchers agree that we're unlikely to see practical quantum computers appearing for many yearsperhaps even decades.

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Quantum computing: A simple introduction - Explain that Stuff

Quantum computing (QC) is another wave thats soon to be impacting information technology (IT) in various companies across the world. Luckily IT managers wont need to take any action for at least another three years or so from now, but they should start thinking about QC in a different light now as to prepare.

After several years of up and downs, scientists now conclude that quantum mechanics is more natural than what we call normal physics. Quantum mechanics deals with the very small and lives within its own world. However, everything we know in this world owes its existence to quantum mechanics.

So why is this important to an IT manager you may wonder? Well, the answer lies in the qubit and an explanation of Heisenbergs Uncertainty Principle, entanglement, superposition and so on and so forth. The IBM Quantum Experience has been offering a 5-qubit system since May 2016. Similar to early 1950s computers this system is unable to support any practical applications as 5-bits can only represent one of 32 unique states; 5-qubits, on the other hand, can represent all 32 states at the same time.

To understand this concept further, consider that fifty people flip a coin in the air thats numbered ad unfairly bias to either heads or tails. On a count of three everyone flips their coin in the air and lets it drop to the floor. For just that one moment in time, the spinning of all 50 coins is affected by each other via currents or collisions like QC entanglement. While theyre spinning asking whether a certain coin is heads or tails makes sense and is like QC uncertainty.Also, the coins spin so fast that its a blend of states between heads and tails which is like QC superposition. And finally, when they all fall to the floor, the entanglement ends which is like QC coherence.

However, in the coin toss, two may interact with one another Two coins interacting will represent one of 4 states while spinning and 3 coins will represent one of 8 states, 4 coins represent one of 16 states and so on. The point is that the n-coin system equals n bits of information, but the n-qubit system represents so much more. When n is small, there is hardly any difference between the two systems, but when n is large, the n-qubit system gets a little more complicated.

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Quantum Computing and What All Good IT Managers Should Know - TrendinTech

Short Bytes: A team of Chinesescientists has claimed that it has built the worlds first quantum computing machine. According to them, the machine is 24,000 times faster thanits international counterparts and 10-100 times faster than thefirst electronic computer, ENIAC. While it might not be of any practical use at the moment, it surely shows Chinas work in the field of quantum computing.

This quantum computer is built by the researchers working at the University of Science and Technology of China, which is located at Hefei in Anhui province. For those who dont know, quantum computing machines are incredibly faster than the conventional computers. The quantum computers can also predict the complex behaviorof subatomic particles.

The researchers believe that quantum computing could excel the processing power of supercomputers. Pan Jianwei, a quantum physicist, and an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that quantum computing makes use of quantum superposition principle for ultra-fast parallel calculation and simulation capabilities.

The Hefei quantum computing machine is 10 to 100 times faster than the first electronic computer, ENIAC. While it might not be of any practical use at the moment, the future prospects of quantum computing look bright.

Compared to the previous proof-of-principle experiments that had small photon number and low sampling rates, the performance of the new machine is better.

Our architecture is feasible to be scaled up to a larger number of photons and with a higher rate to race against increasingly advanced classical computers, the researchers said in a studypublished in the journal Nature Photonics on Tuesday.

Its the first quantum computing machine based on single photons. This development is interesting to note because, last year, China created the worlds first hack proof quantum satellite.

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World's First Quantum Computer Made By China 24000 Times Faster Than International Counterparts - Fossbytes

2D liquid crystals are commonly used in smart phone and television display screens.

Researchers at the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) recently discovered a new state of matter, the 3D quantum liquid crystal.

We have detected the existence of a fundamentally new state of matter that can be regarded as a quantum analog of a liquid crystal, David Hsieh, assistant professor of physics at Caltech, said in a press release.

Liquid crystals flow like a liquid but are structurally oriented like a solid. Quantum liquid crystals contain electrons that act nematic, or arrange themselves in a parallel manner.

Quantum liquid crystals are not a foreign concept. 2D quantum liquid crystals were first discovered in 1999 by a Caltech professor. As the name suggests, 2D quantum liquid crystals flow in a flat plane, moving in one particular direction. 2D quantum crystals can also be found in high-temperature superconductors.

Electrons living in this flatland collectively decide to flow preferentially along the x-axis rather than the y-axis even though theres nothing to distinguish one direction from the other, John Harter, a postdoctoral researcher at the Caltech lab, said in a press release.

3D quantum crystals have more states. They can move along three axes, in a forward or backward motion. If a current is run through the material, the motion of the electrons yields a different magnetic strength and magnetic orientation.

The 3D quantum liquid crystal was found, surprisingly, in the metallic pyrochlore Cd2Re2O7 using second harmonic optical anisotropy measurements. In fact, researchers were originally interested in studying the atomic structure of Cd2Re2O7 using second harmonic optical anisotropy and encountered results inexplicable using solely the concept of a 2D quantum liquid crystal.

Like liquid crystals, the new phase spontaneously breaks rotational symmetry. Their paper, which was published in Science, described how the researchers found that there was a spin-orbit coupling which suggested that the material had a 3D quantum nature.

According to Science Daily, Harter was at first surprised by their findings and questioned their results. They were able to connect the dots when they accounted for the concept of 3D quantum liquid crystals, which was developed by Liang Fu, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Liquid crystals can be found in nature but they can also be created artificially. Liquid crystal displays are commonly found in smartphones, televisions and other display screens.

The researchers question whether the 3D quantum liquid crystals could be implemented in a computer chip.

The nature of the electrons in the 3D quantum liquid crystals may be suitable for advancement in quantum computing, which uses quantum states to increase operating speed. Researchers theoretical models show that 3D quantum liquid crystals can have topological superconducting phases.

3D quantum liquid crystals could be the precursors to topological superconductors weve been looking for, said Hsieh in a press release.

Topological superconductors can stabilize the uncertain nature of quantum computing. Creating topological superconductors using the 3D quantum liquid crystals can open a new field in quantum computing.

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Quantum computing utilizes 3D crystals - Johns Hopkins News-Letter

Quantum Computation

Rather than store information using bits represented by 0s or 1s as conventional digital computers do, quantum computers use quantum bits, or qubits, to encode information as 0s, 1s, or both at the same time. This superposition of statesalong with the other quantum mechanical phenomena of entanglement and tunnelingenables quantum computers to manipulate enormous combinations of states at once.

In nature, physical systems tend to evolve toward their lowest energy state: objects slide down hills, hot things cool down, and so on. This behavior also applies to quantum systems. To imagine this, think of a traveler looking for the best solution by finding the lowest valley in the energy landscape that represents the problem.

Classical algorithms seek the lowest valley by placing the traveler at some point in the landscape and allowing that traveler to move based on local variations. While it is generally most efficient to move downhill and avoid climbing hills that are too high, such classical algorithms are prone to leading the traveler into nearby valleys that may not be the global minimum. Numerous trials are typically required, with many travelers beginning their journeys from different points.

In contrast, quantum annealing begins with the traveler simultaneously occupying many coordinates thanks to the quantum phenomenon of superposition. The probability of being at any given coordinate smoothly evolves as annealing progresses, with the probability increasing around the coordinates of deep valleys. Quantum tunneling allows the traveller to pass through hillsrather than be forced to climb themreducing the chance of becoming trapped in valleys that are not the global minimum. Quantum entanglement further improves the outcome by allowing the traveler to discover correlations between the coordinates that lead to deep valleys.

The D-Wave system has a web API with client libraries available for C/C++, Python, and MATLAB. This allows users to access the computer easily as a cloud resource over a network.

To program the system, a user maps a problem into a search for the lowest point in a vast landscape, corresponding to the best possible outcome. The quantum processing unitconsiders all the possibilities simultaneously to determine the lowest energy required to form those relationships. The solutions are values that correspond to the optimal configurations of qubits found, or the lowest points in the energy landscape. These values are returned to the user program over the network.

Because a quantum computer is probabilistic rather than deterministic, the computer returns many very good answers in a short amount of timethousands of samples in one second. This provides not only the best solution found but also other very good alternatives from which to choose.

D-Wave systems are intended to be used to complement classical computers. There are many examples of problems where a quantum computer can complement an HPC (high-performance computing) system. While the quantum computer is well suited to discrete optimization, for example,the HPC system is better at large-scale numerical simulations.

Download this whitepaper to learn more about programming a D-Wave quantum computer.

D-Waves flagship product, the 2000qubit D-Wave 2000Q quantum computer, is the most advanced quantum computer in the world. It is based on a novel type of superconducting processor that uses quantum mechanics to massively accelerate computation. It is best suited to tackling complex optimization problems that exist across many domains such as:

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Quantum Computing | D-Wave Systems

Its been proven that time crystals do in fact exist. Two different teams of researchers created some time crystals just recently, one of which was from the University of Maryland and the other from Harvard University. While the first team used a chain of charged particles called ytterbium ions, the others used a synthetic diamond to create an artificial lattice.

It took a while for the idea of time crystals to stick because they are essentially impossibilities. Unlike conventional crystals where the lattices simply repeat themselves in space, time crystals also repeat in time to breaking time-translation symmetry. This unique phenomenon is the first in demonstrating non-equilibrium phases of matter.

The Harvard researchers are excited with their discoveries so far and are now hoping to uncover more about these time crystals. Mikhail Lukin and Eugene Demler are both physics professors and joint leaders of the Harvard research group. Lukin said in a recent press release, There is now broad, ongoing work to understand the physics of non-equilibrium quantum systems. The team is keen to move on with further research as they know by researching materials such as time crystals will help us better understand our own world as well as the quantum world.

Research such as that carried out by the Harvard team will allow others to develop new technologies such as quantum sensors, atomic clocks, or precision measuring tools. In regards to quantum computing, time crystals could be the missing link that were searching for when it comes to developing the worlds first workable model. This is an area that is of interest for many quantum technologies, said Lukin, because a quantum computer is a quantum system thats far away from equilibrium. Its very much at the frontier of research and we are really just scratching the surface. Quantum computer could change the way in which research is carried out and help in solving the most complex of problems. We just need to figure it out first.

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Time Crystals Could be the Key to the First Quantum Computer - TrendinTech

Lets make no mistake: The race for a quantum computer is the new arms race.

As Arthur Herman wrote in a recent NRO article, Quantum Cryptography: A Boon for Security, the competition to create the first quantum computer is heating up. The country that develops one first will have the ability to cripple militaries and topple the global economy. To deter such activity, and to ensure our security, the United States must win this new race to the quantum-computer revolution.

Classical computers operate in bits, with each bit being either a 0 or 1. Quantum computers, by contrast, operate in quantum bits, or qubits, which can be both 0 and 1 simultaneously. Therefore, quantum computers can do nearly infinite calculations at once, rather than sequentially. Because of these properties, a single quantum computer could be the master key to hijack our country.

The danger of a quantum computer is its ability to tear through the encryption protecting most of our online data, which means it could wipe out the global financial system or locate weapons of mass destruction. Quantum computers operate much differently from todays classical computers and could crack encryption in less time than it takes to snap ones fingers.

In 2016, 4.2 billion computerized records in the United States were compromised, a staggering 421 percent increase from the prior year. Whats more, foreign countries are stealing encrypted U.S. data and storing it because they know that in roughly a decade, quantum computers will be able to get around the encryption.

Many experts agree that the U.S. still has the advantage in the nascent world of quantum computing, thanks to heavy investment by giants such as Microsoft, Intel, IBM, D-Wave, and Google. Yet with China graduating 4.7 million of its students per year with STEM degrees while the U.S. graduates a little over half a million, how long can the U.S. maintain its lead?

Maybe not for long. Half of the global landmark scientific achievements of 2014 were led by a European consortium and the other half by China, according to a 2015 MIT study. The European Union has made quantum research a flagship project over the next ten years and is committed to investing nearly $1 billion. While the U.S. government allocates about $200 million per year to quantum research, a recent congressional report noted that inconsistent funding has slowed progress.

According to Dr. Chad Rigetti, a former member of IBMs quantum-computing group and now the CEO of Rigetti Computing, computing superiority is fundamental to long-term economic superiority, safety, and security. Our strategy, he continues, has to be viewing quantum computing as a way to regain American superiority in high-performance computing.

Additionally, cyber-policy advisor Tim Polk stated publicly that our edge in quantum technologies is under siege. In fact, China leads in unhackable quantum-enabled satellites and owns the worlds fastest supercomputers.

While quantum computers will lead to astounding breakthroughs in medicine, manufacturing, artificial intelligence, defense, and more, rogue states or actors could use quantum computers for fiercely destructive purposes. Recall the hack of Sony by North Korea, Russian spies hacking Yahoo accounts, and the exposure of 22 million federal Office of Personnel Management records by Chinese hackers.

How can the United States win this race? We must take a multi-pronged approach to guard against the dangers of quantum computers while reaping their benefits. The near-term priority is to implement quantum-cybersecurity solutions, which fully protect against quantum-computer attacks. Solutions can soon be built directly into devices, accessed via the cloud, integrated with online browsers, or implemented alongside existing fiber-optic infrastructure.

Second, the U.S. needs to consider increasing federal research and development and boost incentives for industry and academia to develop technologies that align private interests with national-security interests, since quantum technology will lead to advances in defense and forge deterrent capabilities.

Third, as private companies advance quicker than government agencies, Washington should engage regularly with industry. Not only will policies evolve in a timely manner, but government agencies could become valuable early adopters.

Fourth, translating breakthroughs in the lab to commercial development will require training quantum engineers. Dr. Robert Schoelkopf, director of the Yale Quantum Institute, launched Quantum Circuits, Inc., to bridge this gap and to perform the commercial development of a quantum computer.

The United States achieved the unthinkable when it put a man on the Moon. Creating the first quantum computer will be easier but the consequences if we dont will be far greater.

Idalia Friedson is a research assistant at the Hudson Institute.

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The Quantum Computer Revolution Is Closer Than You May Think - National Review

China has beaten the world at building the first ever quantum computing machine that is 24,000 times faster than its international counterparts.

Making the announcement at a press conference in the Shanghai Institute for Advanced Studies of University of Science and Technology, the scientists said that this quantum computing machine may dwarf the processing power of existing supercomputers.

Researchers also said that quantum computing could in some ways dwarf the processing power of today's supercomputers.

HOW THE WORLD'S FIRST QUANTUM COMPUTING MACHINE CAME TO BE?

The manipulation of multi-particle entanglement is the core of quantum computing technology and has been the focus of international quantum computing research.

Recently, Pan Jianwei of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lu Chaoyang and Zhu Xiaobo of the University of Science and Technology of China and Wang Haohua of Zhejiang University set international records in quantum control of the maximal numbers of entangled photonic quantum bits and entangled superconducting quantum bits.

Pan said quantum computers could, in principle, solve certain problems faster than classical computers.

Despite substantial progress in the past two decades, building quantum machines that can actually outperform classical computers in some specific tasks - an important milestone termed "quantum supremacy" - remains challenging.

In the quest for quantum supremacy, Boson sampling - an intermediate quantum computer model - has received considerable attention, as it requires fewer physical resources than building universal optical quantum computers, Pan was quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua news agency.

Last year, the researchers had developed the world's best single photon source based on semiconductor quantum dots.

Now, they are using the high-performance single photon source and electronically programmable photonic circuit to build a multi-photon quantum computing prototype to run the Boson sampling task.

The test results show the sampling rate of this prototype is at least 24,000 times faster than international counterparts, researchers said.

At the same time, the prototype quantum computing machine is 10 to 100 times faster than the first electronic computer, ENIAC, and the first transistor computer, TRADIC, in running the classical algorithm, Pan said.

It is the first quantum computing machine based on single photons that goes beyond the early classical computer, and ultimately paves the way to a quantum computer that can beat classical computers.

Last year, China had successfully launched the world's first quantum satellite that will explore "hack proof" quantum communications by transmitting unhackable keys from space, and provide insight into the strangest phenomenon in quantum physics - quantum entanglement.

The research was published in the journal Nature Photonics.

(With inputs from PTI)

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Chinese scientists build world's first quantum computing machine - India Today