Quantum Computing

Scientists have found a way to produce quantum states in ordinary, everyday electronics without exotic materials or equipment. This raises the possibility that quantum information technologies can be created using current devices.

Google has announced that it has achieved “quantum supremacy,” the point where a quantum computer successfully performs an operation considered impossible for traditional computers. But rival IBM disagrees that this has been achieved at all.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University have found a superconducting material naturally stable in two states at once, which is useful for quantum computers.

In a new distance record, researchers have sent a photon, entangled with an ion, down a 50-km (31-mi) long optical fiber.

Scientists from Austria and China throw Schrodinger's Cat for a loop.

Practical quantum computers may be another step closer to reality, thanks again to graphene. The bits of information in quantum computers (qubits) can exist in two states at once, and now researchers have managed to record just how long that superposition state can last in a qubit made of graphene.

Fiber optics allows for ultra-fast communication systems, and more data can be crammed in by "twisting" the light. Now, Australian researchers have developed a device to decode beams that’s small enough to fit over the end of a fiber optic cable.

In a quantum network, information is passed instantly between nodes that have been entangled, and are unhackable since any unauthorized observation of the data will scramble it. Delft scientists have now overcome a hurdle to that technology, by generating quantum links faster than they deteriorate.

IBM Research has released its annual “5 in 5” list, outlining five technologies that the company believes will be instrumental over the next five years. This year’s list focuses on security and AI, predicting that by 2023 we’ll have unhackable encryption, unbiased AI and mainstream quantum computers

With the quantum computing race heating up, it feels like we’re hurtling towards quantum supremacy, when a quantum computer outperforms a classical one for the first time. Google has now unveiled Bristlecone, a new quantum computer chip with the record-setting power of 72 quantum bits (qubits).

Humanity has been on the trail of the elusive and mysterious Majorana fermion since it was first theorized in 1937. Now, researchers think they have manufactured a topological superconductor capable of hosting the particle. If so, this could be an important step towards quantum computing.

Photons, the elementary particles that make up light, are fast, weightless and don't interact with each other. But in new experiments, physicists have now created a new form of light, demonstrating that groups of photons can be made to interact with each other, slow down and gain mass.