One of the great fields that can literally revolutionize our way of understanding life is, without a doubt, the quantum computing. A new way of understanding and processing data with which it is promised by many experts to achieve performance and speeds simply unattainable today with the hardware and software that we have today.
Within this peculiar race to be the first company to create the first quantum computer whose performance is superior to any current computer, we find large companies such as IBM, perhaps the most veteran in this field, Google, which not too long ago promised that its engineers, this year, would be able to achieve that peculiar objective of quantum supremacy or Microsoft, whose investigations are beginning to pay off.
Microsoft, a company that is following its own path within the world of quantum computing
Until relatively recently, little or nothing was known about Microsoft's advances in the world of quantum computing, especially if we take into account that, for quite some time, they announced that they were going to follow their own path within their research. Apparently and at this time, according to the latest press release published by the American company, it seems that have managed to take a step that could revolutionize the current state of quantum computing.
Specifically and as revealed in the published paper, the company's engineers, in collaboration with the Niels Bohr Institute, have managed to discover a new use for 'Majorana particle'a subatomic particle we have known since 1930, date on which it was discovered by the Italian physicist Ettore Majorana. In advance, let you know that thanks to this particle we could create qubits in a much simpler way, which would result in platforms much simpler to scale.
Microsoft has managed to create much more stable qubits thanks to the Majorana particle
Going into a little more detail, the Majorana particle, also known as Majorana's fermion, is a fermion that is its own antiparticle. At the time, the Italian physicist, due to his limited technological capacity, was only able to declare its existence. To obtain demonstrate its existence in a practical way we had to wait until 2014, at which time the use of superconductors and temperatures close to absolute zero allowed physicists to corroborate their existence in the real world.
As you can see, we are talking about a particle that is very difficult to find and, above all, to work with it as it requires the use of a very specific field and very peculiar characteristics. Despite this, Microsoft has the firm conviction that Thanks to the use of this method, the qubits created will be much more stable and much less prone to error than those created using traditional methods., a system that all its rivals use today. To get an idea of the value that the company gives to this research, I leave you with a comment made by the professor Charlie marcus, one of the project managers:
We have invented a particle that never existed before and applied it to computation.
There is still a long way to go to show that this discovery can lay the foundation for quantum computing.
As for the rivals, the truth is that, contrary to what we can suppose, they are all much more interested in the results that this research developed by Microsoft can offer since, as they have practically confirmed, they seem to see this project more like a great opportunity although, as always, there are voices that speak of no 'lose one's head'before the arrival of possible future disappointments.
Without going any further, as one of the great eminences in this field has declared, such as Professor John Morton, from University College London, has commented that:
This is one of the things that seems incredibly exciting, but physics has a habit of thwarting many plans.
Further information: Nature