The King's College team will gain access to the state-of-the-art Google-Quant chip

The King's College team will gain access to the state-of-the-art Google-Quant chip

Scientists at King's College London have received access to Google's state-of-the-art quantum computer chip Willow as the first academic research team in the United Kingdom launched last year with the UK's national quantum laboratory. Quantum computers can theoretically solve problems that cannot solve the most powerful conventional computers. According to Google, Willow can solve a theoretical problem in five minutes, for which the currently fastest supercomputers in the world would need 10 Septillions – or 10,000.000.000.000.000.000 years. King’s head of the project, Dr. Eleanor Crane, said that the use of Willow would “ignite a torch for research” to answer questions about the most important natural processes. “It would be useful if society could understand how plants convert sunlight into energy, find materials that transport electricity quickly, or how molecules bind together,” said Crane, who will lead the research team together with Dr. Alexander Schuckert from ENS Paris. These natural processes are based on the interactions between many basic particles that form the building blocks of life. But some questions are really hard to answer with the computers or even supercomputers we currently use. “If we could handle these processes, we could use this understanding to develop better solar cells and more efficient energy grid systems and to discover medicines for previously untreated diseases,” she said. The science that explains the behaviour of physical particles is called quantum mechanics and is the basis for the functioning of quantum computers, which allows them to solve these problems much better. While a large part of this area is still theoretical, Google says that Willow contains important “breaks” and “saving the way to a useful quantum computer on a large scale”. Crane said that in Great Britain, Europe, the USA, China and elsewhere there have been huge developments in this direction. “Quantity computers are built. They quickly develop into useful tasks for society,” she said. The Kings team will conduct research on Willow to help develop techniques that are needed to enable a quantum computer to model natural systems, such as photosynthesis, and answer questions about it. According to Charina Chou, Chief Operating Officer of Google Quantum, Kings had made a convincing research proposal. NQCC director Dr. Michael Cuthbert said that the initiative reflects the UK's commitment to promoting first-class quantum research. The University of Cambridge recently announced its largest corporate partnership with the American quantum technology company IonQ to host the allegedly most powerful quantum computer in Britain. Quantum computers will not replace existing machines because they are not suitable for many tasks. But if they meet the hype, they promise a number of valuable solutions to problems that we cannot solve at the moment. At the beginning of the year, Sir Peter Knight, Chairman of the National Quantum Technology Programs Strategy Advisory Board, told the BBC that Willow entered New Land and opened the door for machines that are of real practical value. However, Google is facing a strong competition from competitors with a strong track record in quantum research such as IBM. Current projects are faced with considerable technical obstacles before they can scale the largely experimental devices of today in machines suitable for a wide range of commercially valuable practical applications. Dr. Crane is optimistic. In an additional BBC interview in the “Today” broadcast, she said that by 2028 or 2030 there might already be opportunities for how quantum computers could solve “extremely useful problems”. Not every application of quantum computing is clearly positive. Soon, quantum machines could be able to crack the encryption that protects everything from cryptocurrency transactions to private messages. And some technology and financial companies have already taken steps to protect their systems from the quantum spies and hackers of the future.