https://phys.org/news/2021-09-tool-larg ... cuits.html
by Northwestern University
The next generation of computing and information processing lies in the intriguing world of quantum mechanics. Quantum computers are expected to be capable of solving large, extremely complex problems that are beyond the capacity of today's most powerful supercomputers.
New research tools are needed to advance the field and fully develop quantum computers. Now Northwestern University researchers have developed and tested a theoretical tool for analyzing large superconducting circuits. These circuits use superconducting quantum bits, or qubits, the smallest units of a quantum computer, to store information.
Circuit size is important since protection from detrimental noise tends to come at the cost of increased circuit complexity. Currently there are few tools that tackle the modeling of large circuits, making the Northwestern method an important contribution to the research community.
"Our framework is inspired by methods originally developed for the study of electrons in crystals and allows us to obtain quantitative predictions for circuits that were previously hard or impossible to access," said Daniel Weiss, corresponding and first author of the paper. He is a fourth-year graduate student in the research group of Jens Koch, an expert in superconducting qubits.