Surfing the HyperNet -A Quantum Future Coming Soon?

Quantum computers are so sought after they make the Holy Grail look like an IKEA wineglass. The list of things people expect a quantum computer to do starts with "crack unbreakable codes" and goes up from there, so every small advance on the way gets a lot of attention. The latest such headline comes from Northwestern University, where researchers have built a quantum CNOT gate that can be linked to fiber optics.

That might not blow your socks off, but it's getting attention because the makers are smart enough to use buzzwords like "quantum internet" - which is honestly more exciting-sounding than Angeline Jolie talking about her day at the Jello Wrestling Championships.

The idea is that CNOT gates are a "universal gate", which means you can make any other logical operation if you have enough of them. Fiber optics connect computers together, so conceivably a fiber-optic enabled CNOT gate could herald a global network of quantum megacomputers. Unfortunately, it's in the same way a single brick heralds the Empire State building.

The demonstration so far is only one gate, and it isn't within the fiber - it's just connected to it. The efficiency of the system is very low and you have to do far more work to check if it functioned than the gate actually does, so claims of instantaneous hypercomputation are more premature than a wedding proposal in the 1st grade.

Which isn't to say it's not awesome, of course. The system is a definite stride forward, a demonstration that photons can be shuttled around the place (just like the real world) and still perform quantum calculations, unlike previous demonstrations which were more carefully isolated from reality than an albino baby unicorn. The work done by Professor Kumar and colleagues will be a milestone when we look back on our QuantiMax-9000 computers as we surf the HyperNet. It'll just be a milestone near the start, not the end.

Posted by :Luke McKinney.