Evidence that quantum searches are an ordinary feature of electron behavior may explain the genetic code, one of the greatest puzzles in biology.
A ten-qubit system based on spins in impure diamond achieves coherence times of over a minute.
In the global race to build a quantum computer, it’s still unclear what material will make the best qubit. Companies have bet on a variety of architectures based on trapped ions, neutral atoms, superconducting circuits, and more. Now, Tim Taminiau of Delft University of Technology, Netherlands, and colleagues have demonstrated that they can manipulate magnetic spins inside diamond into the robust quantum states necessary for quantum computing. In their experiment, they entangle all possible pairs of a ten-qubit system and produce states in which seven different qubits are entangled simultaneously. They also show that individual qubits can retain quantum coherence for up to 75 s—a record for solid-state systems.
Q-CTRL, an Australian-based quantum computing software company that makes “quantum firmware,” on Tuesday announced a $15 million series A funding round led by Square Peg Capital. Sierra Ventures also participated in the round, joining existing investors Horizons Ventures, Main Sequence Ventures, and Sequoia Capital.
The primary purpose of the round, says founder and CEO Michael Biercuk, is to expand and grow the company. It currently has 25 employees and aims to double that number in the next 12 to 18 months. It’s also opening an office in Los Angeles where it hopes to add more employees and will expand its product offerings in the field of quantum sensing.
Biercuk is a professor at the University of Sydney and has been conducting research in quantum computing for over a decade. He’s particularly interested in combining the principles of control engineering to quantum computing and other systems such as quantum sensing.
As hardware makers continue to work on ways of making wide-scale quantum computing a reality, a startup out of Australia that is building software to help reduce noise and errors on quantum computing machines has raised a round of funding to fuel its U.S. expansion.
Q-CTRL is designing firmware for computers and other machines (such as quantum sensors) that perform quantum calculations, firmware to identify the potential for errors to make the machines more resistant and able to stay working for longer (the Q in its name is a reference to qubits, the basic building block of quantum computing).
The startup is today announcing that it has raised $15 million, money that it plans to use to double its team (currently numbering 25) and set up shop on the West Coast, specifically Los Angeles.
Machine learning techniques have so far proved to be very promising for the analysis of data in several fields, with many potential applications. However, researchers have found that applying these methods to quantum physics problems is far more challenging due to the exponential complexity of many-body systems.
The fabric of space-time may get its robustness from a network of quantum particles, according to a principle called quantum error correction.