Microsoft Research has announced a major breakthrough in its quantum computer pursuit – the foundation for a new kind of qubit, one that has never left the world of theory … and still does not. Microsoft has ultimately not yet produced any devices based on its new Qubit design, but adds confidence to its feasibility with evidence produced through immense simulations within and without Microsoft Azur Quantum physics Cloud Infrastructure. Microsoft’s research on quantum computing focuses on a specific, exotic form of Qubit, topological Qubits, that it has been announcing as its vehicle into the future of quantum physics since 2016.
Despite Microsoft’s investment in the field, relatively little has been heard of the company. Moreover, Microsoft’s tech giant competitors Google and IBM and many smaller companies such as Microsoft, such as Riggetti Computing and IonQ, have already deployed quantum computing systems, while Microsoft has not. So one would think that two trillion dollars Microsoft has pulled its feet in the race towards scalable quantum computing.
The road traveled less
However, Microsoft would say that it chose to go for a type of Qubit that its competitors would not. Topological Qubits were initially proven to exist in a 2018 Nature Magazine publication and then rejected when the original researchers withdrew the article “for insufficient scientific rigor in our original manuscript.”
Microsoft is not only proving that topological cubits are on the verge of becoming a reality: the company says that they are ultimately the only currently valid bets for sustainable, scalable (on the millions of used cubits), and ultimately meaningful quantum computers.
“Today’s cubits will not be the basis of tomorrow’s quantum computers,” said Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Chetan Nayak Ars Technica. “The cubits we have today are very interesting, very impressive – you can learn a lot and do a lot of research and make good incremental progress. But some sort of new idea will be needed to make a commercial quantum computer.
The world record for the highest Qubit number on a single device, IBM’s Eagle, currently stands at 127 addressable Qubits – a far cry from the million Qubit figure that Microsoft expects to be needed. And because IBM uses Transmon-based Qubits, the company’s devices must be cooled to absolute zero (-273.15 ºC) to keep the quits safe from environmental interference.
Another element of the note is that because non-topological cubits are particularly sensitive to decoherence, these quantum architectures usually contain additional cubits whose sole function is to provide a measure of error correction capabilities, meaning that they are not used directly in calculations. This is inefficient, especially when you consider the current difficulty in scaling the number of cubits. Hence Microsoft’s choice to go the long way. But what is this long way around – what are topological Qubits?
Absence of Evidence ≠ Evidence of Absence
The first thing to remember about topological cubits is that they are not yet materialized. Instead, they are theorized to exist (as we have covered and explored in more detail here) as pairs of Majorana null modes (MZMs), a special kind of quasi-particle that naturally behaves as if it were only half an electron. These MZMs have been shown to deposit as a layer on the surface of superconducting materials, and show extreme resistance to environmental noise (such as heat, stripe subatomic particles or magnetic field). Left uncontrolled, or unconstructed against, these environmental noises lead to decoherence – the process by which cubits fall out of their superposition state and reveal their value. If Qubits reveal their value too early, an error appears before the calculation is complete.
Microsoft’s topological Qubit design has a U-shaped wire with a Majorana zero mode at each end, so that a physical separation in the neighborhood is at a quantum point. This quantum point serves as a control mechanism because its capacity changes when it interacts with one of the majorana zero modes, which allows it to be measured. This is the part Microsoft has not yet figured out: its design has not yet been quantified.
The resilience of topological cubits stems from the fact that both MZMs (in Microsoft design, on each end of the U-shaped wire) are responsible for encoding the quantum information. However, because the information is only accessible by looking at both quasi-particle states at the same time, the Qubit state does not decode unless both MZMs are equally affected and “forced” to discover their contents. And depending on the engineering design, the researchers can offer a measure of the distance between the MZMs, creating a gap between them that reduces the chance of decohering both particles.
To better visualize this, imagine that you are a world-class villain, and you write the password on your Doomsday device on a piece of paper. You then give half of it to two of your trusted subordinates (before you forget it forever). Whatever happens, none of them can reveal the password, regardless of what methods are applied to discover the information. In quantum physics, information has become non-local. The only way for anyone to recover your entire password would be to take both pieces of information and link them together to discover the final result. In an extremely simplified way, this is what gives MZMs their resilience to decoherence.
To achieve the ultimate superconducting wire design that enables all of this, Microsoft’s research has simulated the materials and their shape across 23 adjustable parameters. This step requires huge amounts of computing power, but Microsoft has one of the most powerful computing networks in the world with Azure. In addition, the simulations allowed the Microsoft team to quickly iterate on both fronts, a process that would be impossible with the stock, practical approach to materials technology. According to Nayak, “When you have to sort [the materials] experimentally through trial and error, you would never be able to optimize across all of these parameters at any reasonable time.
Finally, Microsoft relied on aluminum as the superconducting wire and indium arsenide as the semiconductor surrounding it, and the company manufactured the devices itself. These new data and material-driven approaches were the glue that held Microsoft’s approach to quantum computing together.
“We are now led by designs that are based on simulations, not just one that carries ideas into a conference room,” Nayak said. “And now we have the unique growth and manufacturing technologies to bring these ideas to life. It does not matter if you have the best designs in the world – if you can not make them, they just stay on paper.
It seems that Microsoft’s intention to be a hardware provider goes far beyond Xbox and its device division – the company wants to be the one to provide the basic hardware for quantum computer systems, both for on-premises installations and in cloud environments . Microsoft’s quantum physics hardware could very well lead to a hypothetical Apple “iQuantum” product. In theory, of course.
Future computing time
Microsoft has raised expectations for the computing density of machines through its future topological cubits: Microsoft says that one million of these cubits fit on a wafer that is smaller than the security chip on a credit card. It’s the transistor revolution over and over again, but with quubits.
Although Microsoft has not yet delivered a working quantum computer product, we must remember that this is one of the most complex fields possible in a nightmarish interception between theoretical physics, practical engineering and pure economics. But there is also a time-critical factor: the company is entering a market that is estimated to be worth up to $ 76 billion by 2030. , the market will not care who moved into the room first.
Experts in the quantum computer field are even more aware of how weak the status quo still is for quantum computer systems. One of the critics of the since retired 2018 Nature publication, Marco Valentini, at the time believed that Majorana Modes would eventually be created, recognized and used as quibits – just not as they were presented in the retired 2018 paper.
The same paper was the subject of an investigation by an independent committee of experts who found no evidence of data manipulation. In the end, it was the most common cause of error: human failure. The original data fell on the confirmation bias, as the authors of the report noted, writing that “The research program set up by the authors is particularly vulnerable to self-deception, and the authors did not object to this.”
Microsoft knows what’s at stake with its choice of Qubits – and was already deep in its research when the whole drama surrounding the paper exploded. Perhaps this is why Microsoft likes to defend its results: The company’s research wing had a separate team to accurately analyze the output data to avoid confirmation bias. And the company also presented its research data to “an expert council of independent consultants,” which sounds a lot like inviting eminent colleagues in the field to constructively review the researcher’s work. Microsoft continues to push with topological Qubit research as it tries to isolate its efforts from previous vices.
“It would be irresponsible of the physics community to decide now that we already know the only way,” Ady Stern of the Weizmann Institute of Sciences in Rehovot, Israel, told Quanta Magazine. “We’re on page 10 of a thriller, and we’re trying to guess how it will end.”
With its topological quibits, Microsoft claims to be the BluRay of quantum format conflict. And maybe it will be – the company seems to be convinced of the physics behind its calculated choice. Time, as always, will tell.
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