Explained | The challenges of quantum computing

The story so far: The allure of quantum computers is their ability to take advantage of quantum physics to solve problems too complex for computers that use classical physics. The 2022 Nobel Prize for physics was awarded for work that rigorously tested one such ‘experience’ and paved the way for its applications in computing – which speaks to the contemporary importance of QCs. Similarly, when you probe the volume, you force the superposition of the electrons’ states to collapse to one depending on the probability of each state. That is, the second particle’s superposition will collapse to a single state in less than three hundredths of a second, which is the time light takes to travel 1,000 km. Practical as well as reliable QCs will require at least lakhs of qubits, operating with superconducting circuits that we’re yet to build – apart from other components like the firmware, circuit optimisation, compilers and algorithms that make use of quantum-physics possibilities.