Oxford Ionics, a leader in trapped-ion quantum computing, yesterday (10 September) announced that it had come one step closer to developing a working quantum computer. The company set a new record in quantum state preparation and measurement (SPAM).
The Oxford University spinoff company demonstrated the highest recorded SPAM fidelities of any quantum computing platform at 99.9993%, representing a new world record in qubit readout.
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The results reflect a 13x reduction in SPAM errors compared to the next best approach.
The team achieved this groundbreaking result through developing a novel protocol that can detect and discard qubits in the wrong state.
In quantum computing, a qubit can be ‘prepared’ in a known state, as well as analysed to read out a ‘bit’.
A classical binary bit can only represent a single binary value, such as 0 or 1, meaning that it can only be in one of two possible states, a qubit on the other hand can hold two states simultaneously, known as superposition.
Errors can occur whether during the preparation of the qubit into the desired state, during single- or two-qubit gates, or when reading out the qubit state at the end of the computation.
Low errors in SPAM, along with two-qubit and single-qubit gates, are therefore among the three most important metrics when evaluating the precision and accuracy of a quantum computer.
Dr Chris Ballance, Oxford Ionics co-founder and CEO, said: “Reliable and high-performing quantum computers hold the key to unlocking extraordinary solutions to critical problems. But to deliver a quantum computer capable of realising this future, the error rates across SPAM, single- and two-qubit gates are critical.
“Our team’s latest result means that Oxford Ionics has now demonstrated world-leading performance on all three of these fundamental metrics. We’re excited to accelerate our efforts to put this technology in the hands of end-users.”
Quantum computing promises to solve complex computational problems far beyond the capacity of any classical supercomputer, however errors are the most significant obstacle.
