If you're building a quantum computer with the intention of making calculations not even imaginable with today's conventional technology, you're in for an arduous effort. Case in point: You're delving into new problems and situations associated with the foundational work of novel and complicated systems as well as cutting-edge technology.

Such is life for the scientists of the Martinis Group at UC Santa Barbara and Google, Inc., as they explore the exciting but also still somewhat counter-intuitive world of quantum computing. In a paper published in the journal Nature Physics, they and colleagues at Tulane University in New Orleans demonstrate a relatively simple yet complete platform for quantum processing, integrating the of three superconducting qubits.

"We're probing the edge of our capability," said the paper's lead author, Pedram Roushan. There have been quite a few efforts to build and study individual parts of a quantum processor, he explained, but this particular project involves putting them all together in a basic building block that can be fully controlled and potentially scaled up into a functional quantum computer.

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