This does not mean that the error-corrected qubit was completely stable. Eventually, one of the errors that inevitably occurred could not be corrected because too many of its individual atoms changed positions at once. But performing simple error correction can keep some of these logical qubits stable for up to 90 rounds.
Again, this is not sufficient for any kind of sophisticated calculations. But it’s much closer than the company has been to working on this technology before.
resonating
EeroQ is a startup with a unique approach to qubits. Many companies are considering using the spin of electrons as their qubits, usually because it is easier to make chips that can manipulate electrons housed in quantum dots. EeroQ is building its chips with lots of tiny pools that can hold a drop of liquid helium. When an electron is placed on that drop, it has nowhere to go because helium hates carrying an extra electron. So, the lone electron remains floating on the surface.
Which is great, but the physics of it were well established long before the company launched. The problem was that no one had figured out a way to interact with the electron in any useful way.
Recently, the company released a manuscript describing a new version of its chip, with a tiny resonator next to a helium-filled pool. They showed that this resonator can couple with the motion of the electron, which is prevented from hitting the pool walls by the electric field. Since the dynamical states of the electron are quantized, the resonator adopts one or two states during the experimental process, which is a possible building block of a qubit.
Again, this is nowhere near functional computing hardware. But again, this kind of incremental work is needed if any of these technologies want to live up to their promise.
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