Quantum Computers: A Peek into The Future

The word 'Quantum' evokes varied emotional responses in people, ranging from confusion to utter fear. The reason may be the fact that it is related to concepts counter-intuitive to our daily experiences. Such are the complexities related to the topic that even the originators of the field were never sure of themselves when it comes to knowing the intricacies involved. Quotes like Einstein's 'spooky at a distance' and Erwin Schrodinger's "I don't like it, " dominate conversations about the subject's complexities.

To understand the working of a quantum computer, one has to keep all daily life experiences aside and embrace new concepts that are sometimes the opposite.

A classicalcomputer uses bits to store data that may have a value of zero or one. In contrast, Quantum computer stores the data in Qubits that may be both zero and one. How it is possible, maybe explained by an ingenious thought experiment called the Schrodinger's cat. As the name suggests, it was the imagination of Erwin Schrodinger, though Einstein's version of the same also exists.

In this experiment, the cat is in a bunker with a radioactive material acting as a trigger to a hammer, which breaks a vial full of poisonous gas upon a radioactive emission. The argument here is that, before the observer takes a look into the bunker, the cat is both dead and alive. This concept is called the superposition of states.

Now, there are many ways to create a qubit. The most prevalent one is to use a superconducting material in a tiny electrical circuit. Trapped atoms, ions, or spin states of electrons are also some ways of physically realizing the qubit. The challenge here is to maintain the system's quantum state long enough for it to be of practical use.

Jbw2 at English Wikipedia / CC BY-SA (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)

Once there is a system of qubit creating in place, the second step is to entangle qubits so that they can share information. Entanglement is yet another quantum physics concept which enables information sharing at speeds faster than that of light.

Quantum computes hence can process enormous amounts of data in a fraction of the time taken by classical computers. Applications of this are beyond imagination, increased cybersecurity, complex molecular modeling, faster MRI scan, to name a few.

With all the excitement about quantum computers, still, the road ahead is long. The processors are in the range of 50 to 27 qubits as compared to millions in the case of classical computers. The efficiency is also very low in comparison. On the brighter side, all the tech giants involved in the development of this technology are offering their platforms without any cost for research.

    Microsoft Azure Quantum and  Honeywell Quantum have joined hands to provide developers a quantum computing facility using the language Q#. Similarly, IBM Q offers QISKIT, a Python language-based platform for its quantum computer System One. Google Quantum Computing has also joined the bandwagon with its offering, Bristlecone quantum processor, along with Cirq environment for development.

Like with any other new technology, quantum computing does not come without any potential dangers. Quantum computers can break the most advanced cryptographic algorithms in a fraction of a second. Besides, such devices are hack-proof to classical computers as well as quantum ones. So the security aspect has to be looked into much before implementing a quantum computing system.

 

Quantum computers, therefore, mark the beginning of an exciting new era in the world of computing, and it is a matter of time before we would see this mammoth paradigm shift in the way the computers work.