IBM Researchers Take a Step Closer to the Elusive Quantum Computer

Researchers at IBM have reported taking one step closer to making quantum computers a reality when they measured two important errors, simultaneously.

Considered impossible until recently, the researchers at the T.J. Watson Research Laboratory successfully measured bit-flip and phase-flip errors at the same time using a previously unused circuitry design. The researchers used a square lattice of four qubits (quantum bits) to demonstrate simultaneously, the detection of errors. Quantum information is highly susceptible to corruption from noise factors including electromagnetic radiation.

"Previously, it was only possible to address one type of quantum error or the other. The next step in the field is to correct quantum errors, an important step toward building a large quantum computer," Mark Ritter, staff member at IBM Research wrote.

Ritter further explained that the lattice design is the key to scaling up.

"By being the first to use this configuration, which I believe the rest of the research community will need to adopt, the IBM team will be able to add more qubits to get to a working system. We are already conducting tests of eight qubits in a square lattice in our lab," he said.

"The protocol detects an arbitrary quantum error on an encoded two-qubit entangled state via quantum non-demolition parity measurements on another pair of error syndrome qubits. This result represents a building block towards larger lattices amenable to fault-tolerant quantum error correction architectures such as the surface code," researchers wrote in the journal Nature Communications.