Quantum computers just took a huge logical leap forward

By Duncan Geere

Quantum computing researchers at the University of Oxford have developed a logic gate with a precision of 99.9%. That’s not only a new record, it also hits the theoretical benchmark necessary to build a real quantum computer.

Logic gates are one of the crucial components inside every computer, and – for that matter – pretty much any digital system. They change inputs into outputs based on a certain logic. An AND gate, for example, will only switch on its output if both of its two inputs are activated.

Entanglement

The team built a quantum version by placing two atoms in a state of “quantum entanglement” – an action on one affects the other. Researchers have done this before, but this time the fidelity of the link was substantially greater than any previous attempt.

David Lucas, a co-author on the paper describing the discovery in Physical Review Letters, explains: ‘A quantum logic gate is an operation which can take two independent atoms and put them into this special entangled state.

The precision of the gate is a measure of how well this works. In our case, 99.9% precision means that, on average, 999 times out of 1,000 we will have generated the entangled …read more

Source:: techradar.com – Computing Components