Research update: Multiple steps toward the ‘quantum singularity’
In early 2011, a pair of theoretical computer scientists at MIT proposed an optical experiment that would harness the weird laws of quantum mechanics to perform a computation impossible on conventional computers. Commenting at the time, a quantum-computing researcher at Imperial College London said that the experiment “has the potential to take us past what I would like to call the ‘quantum singularity,’ where we do the first thing quantumly that we can’t do on a classical computer.”The experiment involves generating individual photons — particles of light — and synchronizing their passage through a maze of optical components so that they reach a battery of photon detectors at the same time. The MIT researchers — Scott Aaronson, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and his student, Alex Arkhipov — believed that, difficult as their experiment may be to perform, it could prove easier than building a fully...