Quantum computer breakthrough as scientists show vital behaviour for first time

Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Scientists have demonstrated new behaviour, vital for the creation of quantum computers, that marks a major breakthrough. In the research, scientists took a number of qubits, or the quantum version of bits, and put them together into a single thing called a “logical qubit”. “The beauty of error correction codes for atomic ions is they can be very efficient and can be flexibly switched on through software controls.” As with any other system, computers will inevitably suffer errors eventually. “And fault-tolerant quantum error correction will enable us to make very reliable quantum computers from faulty quantum parts.” The study, ‘Fault-tolerant control of an error-corrected qubit’, is published today in Nature.