Latest Research on Quantum Computing

zeristor writes "The The Economist is running a story about the latest progress in Quantum computing. It seems that what has been glossed over in Physics as a minor detail, the decoherence of the superposition of states, is actually quite fundamental to Quantum computing. The decoherence can be measured by something called the Loschmidt echo (is this esoteric or am I just thick? This sounds like a bad episode of Star Trek.) Also goes on to explain how entanglement can be prolonged. All in all very interesting developments."

Comments

This is both a FP and not a FP

[Eevee]

We won't know until somebody reads the article and actually understands what it means.

I found it interesting that something that sounds quite fundamental to quantum physics has been passed over for so long with a 'And then something happens'.

Decoherence is no detail

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

what has been glossed over in Physics as a minor detail, the decoherence of the superposition of states, is actually quite fundamental to Quantum computing

This has never been a minor detail in quantum computing. People who think quantum computers won't go anywhere (like me) have been arguing that decoherence will kill any quantum computer with more than a handfull of bits. On the other hand, most (maybe even nearly all) papers I've seen on quantum computing recently have been about using error-correcting codes to fight decoherence.