University of Bristol researchers have reduced the time to simulate an optical quantum computer. Quantum computers have exponential speedups for certain problems. It can be applied in areas from drug discovery to new materials for batteries. Though quantum computing is still in its early stage.
So, these are long-term goals. But there are exciting intermediate milestones on the journey to building a useful device. “Quantum advantage” is receiving a lot of attention. Here a quantum computer performs a task beyond the capabilities of even the world’s most powerful supercomputers.
University of Science and Technology of China scientists claimed quantum advantage using photons. They have said that it performed in 200 seconds which would take 600 million years to simulate on the world’s largest supercomputer.
University of Bristol’s Quantum Engineering Technology Labs researchers have reduced this simulation time down to just a few months. The paper has been published in the journal Science Advances. Other experimental approaches claimed quantum advantage. The new methods do not exploit any errors in the experiment. So, in the next step for the research is to combine their new methods with techniques. This will speed up simulation time and build a greater understanding.
