{"id":211072,"date":"2025-04-10T10:12:46","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T15:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/proving-quantum-computers-have-the-edge"},"modified":"2025-04-10T10:12:46","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T15:12:46","slug":"proving-quantum-computers-have-the-edge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/proving-quantum-computers-have-the-edge","title":{"rendered":"Proving quantum computers have the edge"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Quantum computers promise to outperform today\u2019s traditional computers in many areas of science, including chemistry, physics, and cryptography, but proving they will be superior has been challenging. The most well-known problem in which quantum computers are expected to have the edge, a trait physicists call \u201cquantum advantage,\u201d involves factoring large numbers, a hard math problem that lies at the root of securing digital information.<\/p>\n

In 1994, Caltech alumnus Peter Shor (BS \u201881), then at Bell Labs, developed a quantum algorithm<\/a> that would easily factor a large number in just seconds, whereas this type of problem could take a classical computer millions of years. Ultimately, when quantum computers are ready and working\u2014a goal that researchers say may still be a decade or more away\u2014these machines will be able to quickly factor large numbers behind cryptography schemes.<\/p>\n

But, besides Shor\u2019s algorithm, researchers have had a hard time coming up with problems where quantum computers will have a proven advantage. Now, reporting in a recent Nature Physics<\/i> study titled \u201cLocal minima in quantum systems<\/a>,\u201d a Caltech-led team of researchers has identified a common physics problem<\/a> that these futuristic machines would excel at solving. The problem has to do with simulating how materials cool down to their lowest-energy states.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quantum computers promise to outperform today\u2019s traditional computers in many areas of science, including chemistry, physics, and cryptography, but proving they will be superior has been challenging. The most well-known problem in which quantum computers are expected to have the edge, a trait physicists call \u201cquantum advantage,\u201d involves factoring large numbers, a hard math problem [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,1523,1625,41,2229,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-computing","category-encryption","category-information-science","category-mathematics","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211072\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}