Quantum Supremacy Explained at CQuIC Seminar
November 20, 2019 - Gloria Cordova
ECE / P&A Asst Prof Tameem Albash and P&A Asst Prof Elizabeth Crosson co-presented “What is quantum supremacy and did Google do it?” at the Center for Quantum Information and Control (CQuIC) Seminar on November 21 to give the general scientific community a slightly deeper exposition of the subject matter. Attendees represented multiple disciplines in the UNM community. The presenters put into context the significance of Google’s milestone of showing that a quantum computer can perform a task faster and more efficiently than the current fastest supercomputer. Crosson and Albash noted the work of other research groups that are following on the heels of Google’s announcement and trying to find ways to improve the computational time for supercomputers.
The focus of this seminar is a recently published paper by The Google Quantum AI team in Nature.
“Neither Elizabeth nor I are co-authors on this work,” said Albash. “However the work is rather important and has garnered a lot of press and we believed it would be both useful and fun to give the general scientific community a slightly deeper exposition of the subject matter.”
The Google Quantum AI team has recently published their work [Nature 574, 505–510 (2019)] detailing their demonstration of quantum supremacy on their 53 qubit ‘Sycamore’ processor, heralding (perhaps) a new era in quantum computing. But what is ‘quantum supremacy’, did Google actually achieve it, and what are the implications of this demonstration?
See the video (UNM NetID login required):
