According to **, quantum computers will perform significantly better than traditional computers on some problems. **eugene mymrin/moment/getty
The summit of the mountain is clearly visible, but the path leading to the mountain is shrouded in mist. This is the sixth goal of Japan's research and development program for the moon landing, which is to "realize a fault-tolerant universal quantum computer by 2050 that will revolutionize the economy, industry, and security."
While everyone is working towards the same goal, the researchers involved in the program have very different views on the best technology to achieve quantum computers. But they all agree that when quantum computers come online, they will have a transformative impact on society.
Disruptive potential.
Quantum computers will help solve some of the toughest problems facing the world," Masahiro Kitagawa, head of the sixth goal of the lunar landing program. They are expected to unlock Nobel Prize-level discoveries in physics, chemistry, and life sciences, and will power the financial industry.
Quantum computers will be a true quantum leap, offering not only more computing power, but a completely different way of computation, taking advantage of the mysterious properties of quantum objects, such as superposition and entanglement. This will allow them to crack problems that today's most powerful computers can't solve.
This moon landing goal aims to realize quantum computers, bring innovation in various fields, and move to a knowledge-intensive society," said Daisuke Kawakami, deputy director of the Cabinet Office of Japan. "Our goal is to change society. ”
Multiple routes. But while there is a general consensus on the disruptive potential of quantum computers, there are conflicting opinions about the best way to develop them. Currently, five main platforms are being sought to enable quantum computers: superconductors, semiconductors, light, trapped ions, and neutral atoms. As an indication of how open the field is at the moment, the Moonshot project is exploring all five technologies.
No one knows which platform will enable fault-tolerant quantum computing," said Kitagawa, who is also a professor of quantum computing at Osaka University. "At this point, we don't even know which is the most promising.
Everything hangs in the balance. "The best platform might be a completely new platform that hasn't been considered yet, or a combination of different platforms might work best," Kitagawa said. "One platform may be in the lead for the first few decades, but then it is overtaken by another.
For Kitagawa, the most appealing aspect of quantum computers is that they artificially create a large system with quantum mechanical behavior.
We have never seen quantum phenomena such as superposition or entanglement because in our macroscopic world, quantum states can easily break through interactions with the environment," Kitagawa said. "By artificially doing quantum error correction, we can counteract this degradation process and keep large systems in a quantum state for as long as computational is needed. It's an amazing thing, something that has never been achieved before.
Quantum computers effectively blur the lines between the quantum world and the macroscopic world. "Previously, the boundary between the quantum world and the classical world could revolve around molecules — anything bigger, quantum properties would be contaminated," Kitagawa said. "But by doing error correction, the boundaries will be dramatically shifted from the molecular level to the computer level.
It's summer again. In 1999, Yasunobu Nakamura and Tsai Jaw-Shen demonstrated the world's first superconducting qubit (the building block of a quantum computer), and Japan got off to a good start in the development of quantum computers. They also implemented two-qubit gates and quantum entanglement. "At that time, Japan was ahead of the rest of the world," Kitagawa said.
But in the early 2010s, when large multinational companies such as Google and IBM joined the race to develop quantum computers, the "quantum winter" began in Japan.
Japan has experienced a quantum winter where all research funding has dried up," Kitagawa said. "Even Professor Nakamura was not able to secure enough funding to continue his quantum computing research. Behind this funding cut, there is a feeling that fault-tolerant quantum computing is too difficult to achieve.
Thus, the moon landing program represents Japan's new optimism about realizing the potential of fault-tolerant quantum computers and is ushering in a "quantum summer". The 2050 moon landing shows that we are only fifteen years away from achieving them.
The original bold innovation program – the race to the moon in the 1960s – was criticized for spending a lot of taxpayers' money without providing many tangible benefits. The same criticism cannot be made about Japan's nine "moon landing program" goals.
In setting these goals, ** has been thinking about how technology and science can be used to achieve human well-being," Kawakami said.
The goal of achieving a fault-tolerant quantum computer is expected to go a long way toward achieving this vision. But it takes courage to go into the unknown.
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