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A research team, including famous Chinese quantum physicist Pan Jianwei, announced a significant computing breakthrough on Friday, gaining a quantum computational advantage.
Pan is a physics professor at the University of Science and Technology of China who specializes in quantum information and quantum bases. As one of the pioneers in experimental quantum information science, he has achieved a number of profound achievements that have brought him worldwide fame. Due to its many advances in quantum communication and multi-photon entanglement manipulation, quantum information science has become one of the fastest developing fields of physical science in China in recent years.
The team created a quantum computer prototype, called “Jiuzhang”, through which up to 76 photons were detected. The study was published in the journal Science online.
With this achievement, China has reached the first milestone on the path to large-scale quantum computing, a quantum computational advantage, also known as “quantum supremacy”, which indicates an overwhelming quantum computational speed.
No traditional computer can do the same thing in a reasonable amount of time, and acceleration is unlikely to be undone by classic algorithmic or hardware enhancements, according to the team.
In the study, Gaussian boson sampling (GBS), a classical simulation algorithm, was used to provide a highly efficient way of demonstrating quantum computational speed in solving some well-defined tasks.
The average number of photons detected by the prototype is 43, while up to 76 photons have been observed at the output.
Jiuzhang’s quantum computing system can deploy GBS on a large scale 100 trillion times faster than the world’s fastest existing supercomputer.
The team also said the new prototype processes 10 billion times faster than the 53-qubit quantum computer developed by Google.
“The quantum computational advantage is like a threshold,” said Lu Chaoyang, a professor at the University of Science and Technology of China. “It means that when the capacity of a new quantum computer prototype surpasses that of the more powerful traditional computer at handling a particular task, it shows that it is likely to make progress in many other areas.”
The breakthrough is the result of 20 years of effort by Pan’s team, which conquered several major technological hurdles, including a high-quality photon source.
“For example, it’s easy for us to have a sip of water every time, but it’s hard to drink just one water molecule every time,” Pan said. “A high-quality photon source has to ‘release’ one photon at a time, and each photon has to be exactly the same, which is a real challenge.”
Compared to conventional computers, Jiuzhang is currently only a “champion in a single area,” but according to the team its supercomputer capability has potential for application in areas such as graph theory, machine learning and quantum chemistry.
(Cover image via University of Science and Technology of China)
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