Quantum computing—much like fusion or room-temperature superconductors—always feels years away from making a profound impact on human life. And while that slow progress can feel frustrating, there’s a reason why these concepts remain relentlessly pursued around the world. A room-temperature superconductor would revolutionize the electric grid, fusion would bring the power of the Sun to Earth, and quantum computing could solve problems (even immensely complex ones like climate change) that we could never hope to solve with classical computing alone.
But, like fusion and superconductors, a few things stand in the way of this quantum computing dream. And chief among them is a lack of resilience. Due to the tricky science that underpins quantum computers, these machines are incredibly susceptible to noise and errors, which eventually lead to decoherence—a cessation of the quantum superposition state that makes qubits so useful.
So, to improve resilience, a team of scientists from the U.S. and China leveraged the inherent stability of another quantum system known as a time crystal. By effectively turning a quantum computer into a time crystal, the researchers were able to create topological time-crystals capable of lasting longer than expected. The results were published in the journal Nature Communications.
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