The Race to Build Quantum Computers

The first quantum revolution brought us the great technological advances of the 20th century—the transistor, the laser, the atomic clock and GPS. A ‘second quantum revolution’ is now underway based on our relatively new understanding of how information can be stored, manipulated and communicated using strange quantum hardware that is neither fully digital nor fully analog.

In this talk, Steven Girvin will give a gentle introduction to the basic concepts that underlie this quantum information revolution. Even more remarkable than the prospect of quantum computation, he says, is the concept of quantum error correction. Rapid theoretical and experimental progress has brought us to the threshold of the era of practical quantum error correction, and it may soon become possible to carry out nearly perfect computations using imperfect hardware.