NIST scientists have made significant progress in controlling quantum bits (qubits) for quantum computing. They demonstrated a logic gate operation between two qubits with 97% accuracy, compared to 80% with previous techniques. This represents a major step forward in building practical quantum computers.
The researchers used beryllium ions trapped in a vacuum and manipulated with lasers to create qubits. The ions’ spin states represented 1s and 0s, and their entanglement allowed them to perform logical operations simultaneously. The key innovation was a precise laser-based logic gate that controlled entanglement between two ions with high accuracy.
While the experiment only demonstrated a single computational operation, the researchers believe their scalable architecture could eventually enable practical quantum computers. The next steps will be to improve gate reliability and integrate memory regions into larger quantum computing systems.
The work, published in Nature, represents a major milestone in quantum computing research and could eventually lead to powerful new computing technologies.
Source: https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2003/04/taming-qubit
Keywords: qubits, entanglement, logic gates
