Quanta Abstractions

How Quantum Computers Will Correct Their Errors

Quantum bits are fussy and fragile. Useful quantum computers will need to use an error-correction technique like the one that was recently demonstrated on a real machine. The post How Quantum Computers Will Correct Their Errors first appeared on Quanta Magazine

In 1994, Peter Shor, a mathematician then at Bell Labs in New Jersey, proved that a quantum computer would have the power to solve some problems exponentially faster than a classical machine. The question was: Could one be built? Skeptics argued that quantum states were too delicate — the environment would inevitably jumble the information in the quantum computer, making it not quantum at all.

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Originally published in Quanta Abstractions.

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