Scientists at the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences have developed a new quantum computing technique in which operations occur without a well-defined order. The new technique accomplished a task more efficiently than a standard quantum computer, and could open the way to faster quantum computing.
The Austrian researchers, led by Philip Walther and Caslav Brukner, introduced even more quantum weirdness by allowing the quantum circuitry itself - the logic gates that operate on the qubits - to be in a superposition of states.
In the usual approach to quantum computing, quantum gates are applied in a specific order, one gate before another. But it was recently realized that quantum mechanics permits ghostly quantum circuits with superposed quantum gates.
"Quantum computers achieve a speed-up by placing quantum bits (qubits) in superpositions of different states," say the researchers. "However, it has recently been appreciated that quantum mechanics also allows one to 'superimpose different operations'."
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