Researchers first claim to be “unconditional proof” of the quantum advantage. What happens next?

Quantum computers are already there, even if it is not easy. Now, researchers say that the quantum advantage – the long -term phase of the field of surpassing conventional computers – finally appears. But history comes with a significant warning.

Research of scientists from the University of Texas in Austin and the Computer Society of Colorado Questinuum has designed and carried out an experience which demonstrates an “unconditional” quantum advantage, sometimes called quantum supremacy. As the researchers formulated it, their “result is provable and permanent: no future development in conventional algorithms can fill this gap”. Pre-impression, which has not yet been evaluated by peers, was made available on Arxiv earlier this month.

Gizmodo has contacted several experts in the field, who said the new results. They added that the experience, although commendable, is not the most practical use of a quantum computer – which already gets a flak for its useless users.

Here again, “Quantum Advantage” is a strange and surprisingly malleable concept with many possible applications. Overall, the results are really worth a more in -depth examination.

Alice and Bob make a cameo

Quantum lovers can be familiar with Alice and Bob, two fictitious characters often summoned for quantum thinking experiences. In the context of the new experience, Alice and Bob are two researchers collaborating on a calculation using a single device. They receive different entries at different times, but only Alice can send a message to Bob, not vice versa. Based on Alice’s message, Bob must decide how to measure and interpret to produce a final outing.

According to the document, “the use of a quantum message may not reduce the amount of communication required by an exponential factor compared to any protocol that uses conventional communication alone.” In other words, a small quantum message can replace a much larger classic. To prove their point of view, the team has repeated the experience 10,000 times on quantum computers trapped H1-1 of Tasnuum, coupled with a careful mathematical validation of their protocol.

Surprisingly, they found that a quantum computer needed only 12 qubits (qubits are the smallest information unit for quantum computers) to solve this problem. On the other hand, even the most effective conventional computers needed 330 bits.

A different way of playing the game

“This is a very different quantum advantage type that we have seen before – not better or worse, but it simply proves something completely different from past experiences,” a computer scientist from the University of Chicago told Gizmodo. Fefferman had previously collaborated with the main author Scott Aaronson, but was not involved in the new study.

Fefferman explained that scientists generally assimilate the quantum advantage to “endeavor to carry out a calculation on a quantum computer which can be resolved spectacularly that any conventional computer”. On the other hand, the new experience achieves “supremacy of quantum information”, in which the emphasis is not so much on speed as on the use of less qubits to solve a problem that conventional computers need many more bits to break.

“It is true that their result is unconditional, in the sense that it was not based on unproven hypotheses,” said Fefferman. “It is, of course, a great characteristic of this new experience, but it is also inherited from this” move of goal posts “.

Gizmodo contacted the study authors, who said they could not comment until the document was officially published.

Press the advantage

The results raise questions about the wider objectives of proving the quantum advantage. As the director of IBM Quantum said it to Gizmodo in a previous interview, a potential answer is to wonder how quantum computers can improve the computer problems that we already know.

But as Fepferman noted, there is not necessarily a better or worse approach to reach a quantum advantage – although this “goal post” seems to be the Holy Grail for the fight of the field to prove its value.

It may be a product in the story of Quantum Computing, Giuseppe Carleo, a computer physicist from EPFL in Switzerland who was not involved in the new work, told Gizmodo in a video call. The rapid growth of quantum computer science makes it easy to forget how good equipment has recently become available to test theory.

“The field has therefore developed historically in the past 20 years, much closer to mathematics, rather than an applied field where, if you wish, you can use a machine to carry out things,” said Carleo, who spoke with Gizmodo in the history of quantum computer science. Consequently, most of the analysis in the field has remained at theoretical levels for longer than scientists would have hoped.

But with material advances and rapid growth industry, this trend is gradually changing – as it should, said Carleo. Other projects are moving away from the design of experiences on quantum advantages “specifically adapted to show the advantage”, he said, turning rather towards places where quantum computers can help, not necessarily upset.

It is actually closer to the “origins” of the field, he added. Richard Feynman, the instrumental physicist of the foundations of quantum computer science, suggested that quantum computers should predict quantum phenomena. Of course, there may not be so much “money attached to it”, but they are “a huge interest in theoretical physics”, in particular with regard to fundamental questions about our universe, explained Carleo.

Quantum-Anket never makes it easy

The new experience could find it difficult to prove its immediate link with practicality. But in a way, pre -impression adheres to Feynman’s advice. It is certainly a theoretically robust demonstration of the use of quantum material to study quantum concepts.

Right now, it looks detached from reality. Again, when has something Quantum ever gave easy answers? However, if scientific history is a guide, the best discoveries come from the most unexpected and improper activities. We will just have to watch.