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quantum computing becomes the need for next-generation

The public has quickly come to understand over the past four or five years that the exquisite and detailed golden chandeliers, which resemble upside-down, skeletal, multi-tiered metal wedding cakes, are popular and approximate representations of quantum computers. These chandeliers are frequently seen in TV shows and films, frequently in the settings of mad scientist labs or megalomaniacal villain lairs.

But in a real quantum computer, the main component is a cooler called a dilution refrigerator, which combines helium-3 and helium-4 to keep the processors temperature at 0.015 degrees Kelvin, which is quite cold that is, -273.135C or -459.643F. The quantum processor itself is located at the bottom of the chandelier.

Because quantum computers store information in quantum bits or qubits, very low temperatures are required. They comprise a particle, such as an electron, that can exist in two states. When the particle is in superposition, quantum computers, and quantum algorithms can exploit the combined potential energy of the two states.

However, qubits are extremely brittle and cannot be controlled or handled at normal temperatures. Qubits are extremely sensitive and easily disturbed even at very low temperatures. Examples of noise that can disturb them include temperature fluctuations, variations in the earths magnetic field, electromagnetic interference from devices like mobile phones and Wi-Fi terminals, microscopic flaws in quantum gates, and other vibrations or acoustic interferences like the sound of a subway train rumbling or taxis rattling. The quantum state will decohere in response to any of these (and other) circumstances, which will either utterly randomize the data and make it meaningless or wipe it entirely.

Even a small amount of noise can cause decoherence and the qubits to lose their remarkable properties of superposition and entanglement. This long-term problem of noise in a quantum computing environment is making progress toward developing large-scale, fault-tolerant, robust quantum machines more difficult.

Until a quantum system is measured, superposition refers to its capacity to exist in several states simultaneously: It permits several states or locations for quantum things to exist concurrently. This implies that a single thing can exist in two states simultaneously. The essential method of storing data in quantum computers is for particles to be in superposition.

When two or more quantum particles are linked together, even if they are separated by vast, galaxy-spanning distances, any change in one will cause a simultaneous change in the other. This phenomenon is known as quantum entanglement. Quantum computers can do several computations at once because of entanglement, which greatly boosts their processing capacity and accelerates them well beyond the capabilities of even the largest, most sophisticated, and most potent conventional supercomputers.

Thus, the pursuit of a solution or a suite of solutions to reduce noise is proceeding at a rapid speed. Several avenues are being explored, such as physically isolating qubits and creating ever-more-accurate control methods. It has become apparent that, like several other aspects of life, creating fault-tolerant, noise-immune quantum computers by human effort would require some walking before it can be considered a run. Currently, we are in the era of noisy, intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices and it appears highly improbable that we will be able totally to tackle the noise problem using the devices and methods of today. It appears that everyone agrees that NISQ devices performance will increase gradually, although significant technical breakthroughs will be required before quantum

Quantum error suppression, error mitigation, and error rectification are some of the methods.

Although there are clear challenges in the process of creating and manufacturing quantum computers, it is thought that these obstacles can and will be solved. Thats why companies including the likes of Google, IBM, Intel, and Microsoft, having already spent billions of dollars on the technology, are ramping up their R&D investments in the sector, even as specialist startups developing solutions based on a combination of hardware and software for the prevention or mitigation of quantum errors are beginning to emerge.

Everybody involved is aiming to bring about the quantum utility era, in which solving issues needing a lot of processing power would naturally, practically, and economically make use of quantum devices rather than conventional computers. Various methods are being used as part of it. Because quantum computing will enable services to be accessible from anywhere in the globe, several businesses are attempting to integrate it into the cloud. It has indeed already occurred on an experimental scale. On May 4, 2016, about eight years ago, the first five-qubit cloud-access quantum computer in history went online. Within the first week of its launch, 7,000 research scientists signed up for access to the facilities, demonstrating its immediate popularity.

Three primary kinds of solutions have evolved as more has been discovered about the peculiar properties of quantum computing and the numerous challenges associated with managing a computational process based on quantum waves. The first is error suppression, which continuously analyzes whats happening in the quantum circuitry and qubits using the well-known characteristics of classical software and machine-learning algorithms. It then reconfigures the process design to make sure that the information stored in the qubits is better protected.

Error mitigation, the second method, is grounded in the fact that not all noise-induced errors lead to decoherence and, thus, program failure in quantum computing. An analog of echo-cancellation in telecom networks, or a kind of anti-noise filter to limit the propagation of errors, both during the computational process itself and in the final output, may be able to be loaded into a quantum system. However, such a computation will stray into paths that lead nowhere. Such a solution is incomplete since it just estimates noise rather than recognizing every detail of an occurrence, and it is more expensive because it requires running an algorithm several times for it to function.

Utilizing quantum error correction (QEC) is the third option. To minimize and rectify noise, information is encoded into several qubits in this instance. It functions, but to safeguard and manage a single logical qubit, the system has to transport a supercargo of many physical qubits. The ratio of these is often stated as one logical qubit for every 1,000 physical qubits (a very large and expensive overhead), however, some developers have lately said that under certain conditions, the ratios can be as low as 13:1 or even as low as 100:1. That could or might not be practical or profitable, but regardless of the ratio, QEC is costly and exceedingly challenging to operate.

More potent algorithms are also being developed in the meantime; the Quantum Approximate Optimisation Algorithm (QAOA) has shown to be more noise-resistant and applicable in todays constrained and imperfect quantum devices.

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It will take some time before quantum computing becomes useful. - Medium