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Team from ETH Zurich make high quality quantum swap gate using a geometric phase

ethz.ch

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Re: Team from ETH Zurich make high quality quantum swap gate using a geometric phase

#41
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me the state of nuclear fusion.

Just a decade away now.

That's progress, if fusion is always only 10 years away now! The running joke used to be that it was always 30 years away.

Re: Team from ETH Zurich make high quality quantum swap gate using a geometric phase

#42
Every single discussion thread about any announcement in quantum feels exactly the same:

1. this is not what you think it is, there are caveats and the title is misleading.

2. I feel there is so much hype around quantum computing.

3. It's like nuclear fusion, always 10 years away.

4. Nuclear fusion is at least practical. QC is not.

5. Did they manage to find prime factorization of 17 already? LOL

6. Cryptography will be dead, RIP bitcoin and https.

7. No, actually quantum computers are useless.

It's tiring.

I recommend this recent post by Scott Aaronson https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9668

Re: Team from ETH Zurich make high quality quantum swap gate using a geometric phase

#44
post #7

I find the editorialized title misleading. They trapped 17000 atom pairs in an optical lattice and demonstrated a high-fidelity quantum gate between the atoms of each pair in parallel. There is no interaction between the atoms of different pairs and no individual control. The experiment demonstrates a very robust gate scheme, but is a long way from a programmable computer.

In case others are confused: the old HN title has been changed, and the new HN title is directly from the paper (and definitely not overhyped).

Reading the ETHZ article as well as the paper, they both seem pretty accurate and descriptive. Really sad HN is not discussing the actual cool research that was done, but not surprised since physics is outside HN's core competencies.

Re: Team from ETH Zurich make high quality quantum swap gate using a geometric phase

#45

“Demonstrates“ vs. “can be applied to 17,000 qubits simultaneously.“ - too completely different things, you know ...

Not sure what distinction you are trying to make.

The researchers used a 58000 atom system, turned 17000 of them into qubits, and applied their gate to all those qubits simultaneously.

Are you doubting this? On what grounds? It's stated pretty clearly in the paper.

Re: Team from ETH Zurich make high quality quantum swap gate using a geometric phase

#46
I am of the view the 17000 is simply referring to once they had the system set in the final stage they are happy with. They ran 17000 qubits through it over the course of testing and it led to a fidelity of 99%. Which is useful as fidelity is important, although this still isn't accurate enough, but it is no where near programmable general quantum computer.

Re: Team from ETH Zurich make high quality quantum swap gate using a geometric phase

#47

things are speeding up dangerously sure this isn't a 17k qubit quantum computer, but it's a step in that direction and this isn't the only news falling under "this is moving faster then expected" just one in many which scream "time to take it serious, deadline 2029 try earlier" --- a year or so(?) ago some investments happened, which made only sense if there had been some unpublished break through in quantum computer…

There are so many steps in quantum computing but there is nothing of note to suggest that we can get anywhere near building a device that outperforms HPC's at this stage.

Re: Team from ETH Zurich make high quality quantum swap gate using a geometric phase

#48

I am of the view the 17000 is simply referring to once they had the system set in the final stage they are happy with. They ran 17000 qubits through it over the course of testing and it led to a fidelity of 99%. Which is useful as fidelity is important, although this still isn't accurate enough, but it is no where near programmable general quantum computer.

They had something like 58000 atoms in their lattice and managed to form 17000 qubits from atom pairs.

Pretty impressive already yeah, I'm sure either their team or another research team will try to improve the qubit yield. Increasing the atom count could be harder though, I'm not an expert but at some point you run into limits from the size of your lab/cooler/trap.

And yeah 99.9% fidelity is not anything groundbreaking, but it's pretty surprising for a "first try" on a new gate implementation. In contrast superconducting systems have been worked on for years and years with ridiculous amounts of investment and also only get 3 nines of fidelity, and IonQ just recently demonstrated 4 nines fidelity, but only after working on their system for many years too.

Re: Team from ETH Zurich make high quality quantum swap gate using a geometric phase

#49
post #7

I find the editorialized title misleading. They trapped 17000 atom pairs in an optical lattice and demonstrated a high-fidelity quantum gate between the atoms of each pair in parallel. There is no interaction between the atoms of different pairs and no individual control. The experiment demonstrates a very robust gate scheme, but is a long way from a programmable computer.

Submitted title was "ETH Zurich demonstrates 17,000 qubit array with 99.91% fidelity". We've changed it now.

Submitters: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

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