Well-informed comments from Jason Alicea about today's Microsoft Quantum announcement: Jason Alicea, a professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology, questioned whether the company had actually built a topological qubit, saying the behavior of quantum systems is often hard to prove. “A topological qubit is possible in principle, and people agree it is a worthwhile goal,” Dr. Alicea said. “You have to verify, though, that a device behaves in all the magical ways that theory predicts it should; otherwise, the reality may turn out to be less rosy for quantum computing. Fortunately, Microsoft is now set up to try.” https://lnkd.in/gdA4UWiT
talking about jealousy
The skepticism is warranted; #quantumcomputing has had its fair share of "breakthroughs" that didn’t quite pan out. But if #Microsoft can actually prove the stability and functionality of topological qubits, this could be the leap the field has been waiting for. Until then, it’s all about the data. Let’s see if the results match the promise.
Leandro Tosi
2mo
The news article is really misleading. The Nature paper (https://lnkd.in/dCM94-RB) is about the measurement of a charge island in a InAs nanowire, which has been know from decades about the CPB (https://lnkd.in/d9v73vNj) and because it is related with Majorana's which are complete absent in the device, it is published in a high impact journal! Come on! Look at this extremely uncritical publicity article (https://lnkd.in/dkY7npGm) It is a shame!
Ilia Khomchenko
2mo
Thank you!
Thanks for digging that, Michaela Eichinger, PhD . Note for the dyslexic reader: anyons are not anions. That's such a poor name choice.
Eid Al Subaie
2mo
The pursuit of topological qubits is ambitious, but, verification is crucial. Microsoft’s efforts mark a significant step, but the real challenge lies in proving that these qubits function as theory predicts. If successful, this could redefine fault-tolerant quantum computing, but rigorous validation remains the key milestone. Exciting times ahead for quantum research!
Stevie Ray Allen
2mo
Quantum cryptography may be a first stop. High value per qubit.
Paul C.
2mo
More importantly, does each qubit still behave like a qubit when attached to the whole array? The error correction would need to stay robust as you scaled, otherwise you've just got another weird new analog computer that occasionally does impressive things (like the D-Wave).
There seems to be a growing number of detractors (PHDs in the field) that are questioning this announcement! ???
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2moSticking to responding to the original posting. As an engineer that has worked for seven years in quantum systems. I’ll point out that it’s exceedingly hard to make stable classical systems that repeatedly can observe and measure quantum systems It’s one thing doing it in the lab 100 times and cherry picking your data. It’s another thing making something robust enough where there’s just a power switch and it just works. So to truly verify that they have a topical qubit could be a significant undertaking