my country successfully developed a 62-bit quantum computing prototype "Zu Chongzhi"

In the field of quantum computers, my country's scientific research team has achieved another breakthrough. The University of Science and Technology of China has successfully developed a 62-bit programmable superconducting quantum computing prototype "Zu Chongzhi", which has the largest number of superconducting quantum bits in the world.

According to USTC, a research team consisting of Pan Jianwei, Zhu Xiaobo, Peng Chengzhi and others from the Institute of Quantum Information and Quantum Technology Innovation of USTC and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (hereinafter referred to as the Quantum Innovation Institute) has successfully developed a 62-bit programmable superconducting quantum computing prototype "Zu Chongzhi", and on this basis, realized programmable two-dimensional quantum walks.

The relevant research results were published online in the international academic journal Science on May 7, 2021.

Pan Jianwei, Zhu Xiaobo, Peng Chengzhi and others have long been aiming at the above core goals of superconducting quantum computing and have made a series of important progress.

In early 2019, the preparation of a 12-qubit entangled "cluster state" was achieved on a one-dimensional chain-structured 12-bit superconducting quantum chip with a fidelity of 70% (Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 110501 (2019)), breaking the previous record of 10 superconducting qubits entangled.

At the same time, the team pioneered the application of superconducting quantum bits to the study of quantum walks, laying the foundation for future simulations of many-body physics phenomena and the use of quantum walks for universal quantum computing (Science 364, 753 (2019)).

Subsequently, the team expanded the chip structure from one dimension to quasi-two dimensions, producing a high-performance superconducting quantum processor containing 24 bits, and for the first time achieved high-precision quantum coherent control of more than 20 bits in a solid-state quantum computing system (Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 050502 (2019)).

Recently, based on the independently developed two-dimensional superconducting quantum bit chip, the team successfully built the "Zu Chongzhi", a programmable superconducting quantum computing prototype with the largest number of superconducting quantum bits in the world, containing 62 bits, and successfully demonstrated a two-dimensional programmable quantum walk on the system.

The research team observed the quantum walk phenomenon under single-particle and double-particle excitation conditions on a two-dimensional superconducting quantum bit chip, experimentally studied the speed of quantum information propagation on a two-dimensional plane, and constructed a Mach-Zehnder interferometer by modulating the topological structure of the quantum bit connection, realizing programmable two-particle quantum walk.

This achievement has laid a technical foundation for demonstrating quantum supremacy in superconducting quantum systems and for quantum computing research that can solve problems with significant practical value.

In addition, the two-dimensional programmable quantum walk based on the "Zu Chongzhi" quantum computing prototype has potential applications in quantum search algorithms, general quantum computing and other fields, and will be an important direction for subsequent development.

In principle, quantum computers have super-fast parallel computing capabilities, and are expected to achieve exponential acceleration compared to classical computers through specific algorithms in some problems with significant social and economic value (such as code cracking, big data optimization, material design, drug analysis, etc.).

At present, the development of quantum computers, as one of the major challenges at the forefront of world science and technology, has become the focus of competition among developed countries in Europe and the United States. Superconducting quantum computing, as one of the most promising candidates for scalable quantum computing, has the core goal of increasing the number of integrated quantum bits and improving the performance of superconducting quantum bits simultaneously, so as to be able to coherently manipulate more quantum bits with high precision, achieve exponential acceleration in the processing speed of specific problems, and ultimately apply them to practical problems.

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