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Caltech

IQIM Postdoctoral and Graduate Student Seminar

Friday, November 1, 2019
12:00pm to 1:30pm
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Ramo Auditorium
Quantum supremacy using a programmable superconducting processor
John Martinis, Research Scientist and Professor of Physics Google and UCSB,

Note: *** Change in location the talk will be in Ramo Auditorium, beginning at ~12:15 ***

This week only, lunch will be provided beginning at 11:45 on the lawn outside E. Bridge. The seminar talk will begin at in 201 E. Bridge.

Abstract: The promise of quantum computers is that certain computational tasks might be executed exponentially faster on a quantum processor than on a classical processor. A fundamental challenge is to build a high-fidelity processor capable of running quantum algorithms in an exponentially large computational space. Here we report the use of a processor with programmable superconducting qubits to create quantum states on 53 qubits, corresponding to a computational state-space of dimension 2^53 (about 10^16). Measurements from repeated experiments sample the resulting probability distribution, which we verify using classical simulations. Our Sycamore processor takes about 200 seconds to sample one instance of a quantum circuit a million times—our benchmarks currently indicate that the equivalent task for a state-of-the-art classical supercomputer would take approximately 10,000 years. This dramatic increase in speed compared to all known classical algorithms is an experimental realization of quantum supremacy for this specific computational task, heralding a much-anticipated computing paradigm.

For more information, please contact Marcia Brown by phone at 626-395-4013 or by email at [email protected].