Quantum computers are getting closer. Scientists have created record-efficient qubits

Quantum technology based on superconductors will be responsible for this breakthrough. The researchers claim that they have succeeded in creating superconducting qubits using fluxons. Its potential for use can be enormous. It should be noted here, however, that the achievement is not the qubits themselves, but rather their stability. With the development of the issue of stability of key quantum processes, scientists have encountered the most problems in recent years. But this time, the researchers created a qubit capable of holding information for a record-breaking 1.43 milliseconds. This doesn’t sound good, but only until we realize that the previous record for information retention length was ten times less. In the quantum world, our human measure of time is completely useless.

What exactly are fluxons?

A stream is a type of qubit or qubit in which operations are performed on important connections within a superconducting circuit. The use of superconductors in quantum systems is an important feature for scientists. After all, it is here that the quantum properties of an electron can be measured on electronic circuits, and we already have plenty of experience producing these. Thanks to this, fluxon qubits are ideal for building larger systems and for minimizing the errors that are inevitable in these systems.

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Until now, the main limitation was the storage time of information by qubits. Now, however, that time has been extended tenfold, thanks to which its use is suddenly starting to make more sense.

It is worth adding here that achieving such a time brings fluxons back into play and poses real competition to transmission-based qubits. They are also superconducting qubits, which are currently used in the development of quantum computers by giants such as IBM or Google. Scientists emphasize that optimizing production processes will allow to further improve the coherence time (data retention by qubits), which is also currently limited to the absorption of matter.

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Either way, fluxon qubits prove ideal for reducing errors in computations for the next generation of quantum processors.

Can we expect practical use of qubits in the near future?

Relax, those times are coming, but you still have to wait a little longer. Scientists point out that quantum computers have so far required extremely low temperatures and very controlled operating conditions. Furthermore, there is still some work to be done to build large scale superconducting processors with consistency times of milliseconds.

On the other hand, if, as in this case, each subsequent achievement is a jump of whole sizes, quantum computers may take over our lives faster than we think. Who knows if they will not intrude into the consciousness of the general public as the great linguistic paradigms have done over the past year. At the beginning of 2022, the average person did not know what LLM was, and today there is probably no one who has not heard of ChatGPT, its competition and its clones. Who knows if this feat won’t be replicated at some point by quantum computers.