Physics World
May 22, 2023
Errors are the Achilles’ heel of quantum computation, cropping up at random and threatening to ruin calculations. But they might, in principle, be tamed by encoding quantum information in a type of quasiparticle called a non-Abelian anyon. Evidence that such quasiparticles may exist has now been reported independently by teams at Google, Microsoft, the quantum-computing firm Quantinuum, and Zhejiang University in China.
The new reports “make a very intriguing advance in quantum computing”, says Jiannis Pachos, a physicist the University of Leeds, UK. “They are all things we have been waiting a long time to see,” agrees Steven Simon, a theorist at the University of Oxford, UK. “It’s a very exciting time for the field.” Still, Simon cautions that none of the results will transform quantum computing yet. “They all have shortcomings, which means there is lots of room for further work,” he says.