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Demonstrating a long-coherence dual-rail erasure qubit using tunable transmons.


AWS today reported demonstrating an improved approach to quantum error correction that accounts for flip and phase errors in qubits with less overhead (redundant qubits) and on time scales that allow for effective error correction. The work, published today in APS Physical Review X, uses what’s called dual-rail erasure qubits.

Broadly, qubits undergo three types, report AWS researchers Harry Levine and Arbel Haim, in a blog (A new building block for error-corrected quantum computers) today, “[The] vast majority of errors (96%) in our dual-rail qubit are erasure errors (leakage to |00 ⟩), with only a small fraction (4%) of residual (silent) bit-flip and phase-flip errors. This is a strong indicator that if we can accurately flag the erasures, then we can efficiently correct most errors that occur in this system.”

Our H+ friend Rob Wilkes alerted me to this today!


March 20 (Reuters) — Elon Musk’s brain-chip startup Neuralink livestreamed on Wednesday its first patient implanted with a chip using his mind to play online chess.

Noland Arbaugh, the 29-year-old patient who was paralyzed below the shoulder after a diving accident, played chess on his laptop and moved the cursor using the Neuralink device. The implant seeks to enable people to control a computer cursor or keyboard using only their thoughts.

Arbaugh had received an implant from the company in January and could control a computer mouse using his thoughts, Musk said last month.

Neuralink, Elon Musk ’s brain chip startup, released a video on Wednesday showing the company’s first patient using a laptop with just his mind.

The video, which was livestreamed on Neuralink’s account on X, showed 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh playing a game of chess on his laptop using Neuralink’s brain computer interface (BCI) technology. Arbaugh is paralyzed from the shoulders down due to what he describes as a “freak diving accident.”

“It’s all brain power there,” Arbaugh said, referring to his ability to use a mouse and keyboard unassisted. He later added, “Basically, it was like using the Force on the cursor and I could get it to move wherever I wanted.”

Significant advancements have been made in quantum computing, with major international companies like Google and IBM now providing quantum computing services via the cloud. Nevertheless, quantum computers are not yet capable of addressing issues that arise when conventional computers hit their performance ceilings. This limitation is primarily the availability of qubits or quantum bits, i.e., the basic units of quantum information, is still insufficient.

One of the reasons for this is that bare qubits are not of immediate use for running a quantum algorithm. While the binary bits of customary computers store information in the form of fixed values of either 0 or 1, qubits can represent 0 and 1 at one and the same time, bringing probability as to their value into play. This is known as quantum superposition.

This makes them very susceptible to external influences, which means that the information they store can readily be lost. In order to ensure that quantum computers supply reliable results, it is necessary to generate a genuine entanglement to join together several physical qubits to form a logical qubit. Should one of these physical qubits fail, the other qubits will retain the information. However, one of the main difficulties preventing the development of functional quantum computers is the large number of physical qubits required.

In a study published in the journal Science Advances, researchers from Peking University have unveiled a miniaturized implantable sensor capable of health monitoring without the need of transcutaneous wires, integrated circuit chips, or bulky readout equipment, thereby reducing infection risks, improving biocompatibility, and enhancing portability. The study is titled “Millimeter-scale magnetic implants paired with a fully integrated wearable device for wireless biophysical and biochemical sensing.”