Quantum Entanglement Breakthrough Could Yield Faster Quantum Computing

One of the primary goals of quantum computing research is the development of a consistent “quantum speedup” — a process that, in MIT Professor Scott Aaronson’s words, means to “solve some actual computational problem faster using quantum coherence.” In order to achieve such a speedup, it’s necessary to take advantage of the ability of qubits (the basic unit of information in quantum computing) to exhibit quantum entanglement. Quantum entanglement allows qubits to exhibit multiple states — enabling faster calculations than traditional bits, which can only exhibit one state at a time. Such entanglement has been demonstrated on a small scale in superconducting circuits by the Schoelkopf Lab at Yale, which last year published a paper demonstrating three qubit entanglement.