2025 is the international year of quantum Science and Technology
The United Nations has declared 2025 to be the International year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), since then, scientists, educators, and science lovers have been buzzing with ideas for how to celebrate the previous century of quantum physics and its applications. This year marks a century since what is traditionally considered to be the start of the new quantum theory. Quantum mechanics is now being used to construct a new generation of computers that can solve the most complex scientific problems in a few seconds. Operating on a different computing basis from that of semiconductor- based computers, these machines will perform, in seconds, as set of computations that would take conventional computers millions of years. The field of quantum computing contains a range of disciplines, including quantum hardware and quantum algorithms. While still in development, quantum technology will soon be able to solve complex problems that supercomputers can’t solve, or can’t solve fast enough Quantum computing has been an increasingly popular research field and source of hype over the last few years. There seem to be news articles daily discussing new breakthroughs and developments in quantum computing research, promising that we can solve any number of different problems faster and with lower energy costs. Quantum computing can make an impact across society, making it an exciting time to get involved and learn how to program quantum computers and apply quantum resources to solve problems that matter.
A primary difference between classical and quantum computers is that quantum computers use qubits instead of bits to store exponentially more information. While quantum computing does use binary code, qubits process information differently from classical computers. Classical computer generally performs calculations sequentially, storing data by using binary bits of information. Each bit represents either a 0 or 1. Quantum computers function similarly to classical computers, but instead of bits, quantum computing uses qubits. These qubits are special systems that act like subatomic particles made of atoms, superconducting electric circuits or other systems that data in a set of amplitudes applied to both 0 and 1, rather than just two states (0 or 1). This complicated quantum mechanical concept is called a superposition. Through a process called quantum entanglement, those amplitudes can apply to multiple qubits simultaneously.
Applications of Quantum computers
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Machine Leaning (ML)
- Financial Modelling (FM)
- Cybersecurity
- Digital Banks
- Drug and chemical research
- Battery Technology
- Internet of Things (IoT)
- Natural Language Processing (NLP)
- Logistics optimization.
Quantum computers have been under development for decades and major strides have been made since the early 2010s, but they still have key hurdles to cross, e.g., number of qubits, qubit coherence and fidelity, noise, etc. There are technologies which already address some of these issues like logical qubits, in which multiple qubits are entangled and store a single state thus mitigating single-qubit errors. The possibility of having reliable quantum computers is already having an effect. Many major corporations and financial institutions are following suit. Other applications of quantum computers are also presently being developed, such as in pharmaceuticals (drug discovery), photovoltaics research, and industrial chemical research. The future of quantum computing depends upon our understanding of the quantum mechanics, the more we understand the more it will develop the quantum computing systems since, quantum computers uses quantum mechanical phenomenon’s (which are still undergoing the phase of intensive research). Now it is clear that as time will pass the quantum computers will develop and in near future it might become a really interesting research field which will sow the seeds of future quantum supercomputers. Quantum computers are made for really different purposes. They are not made to be used as PCs. They perform very critical and complicated tasks like cryptanalysis, etc and they are very large and complicated systems that are handled by cutting edge engineering (for the cooling). But as we go into far future, we may see ourselves using those complicated tasks in our day to day life. So, we can hope that like the electronic computer, the quantum computer can also be integrated to such small level.
Author
Dr Hukum Singh
Professor & Head Department: Department of Applied Sciences