THE prospect of doing anything useful with quantum computing has generally been thought of as decades or even centuries away. But not any more. Last week, Australian researchers announced that they have completed the first element of a device that many believe holds the best hope for quantum information processing, while an Austrian team reported the first truly quantum calculation.
The strange properties of the quantum world should allow a quantum computer to outperform any existing computer. While classical computers process binary digits (bits) of information, quantum processors use quantum bits, or qubits, encoded in the quantum states of particles…
