Developing reliable quantum computers

Quantum computers may one day solve algorithmic problems that even the biggest supercomputers today can’t manage. But how do you test a quantum computer to ensure it is working reliably? Depending on the algorithmic task, this could be an easy or a very difficult certification problem. An international team of researchers has taken an important step towards solving a difficult variation of this problem, using a statistical approach developed at the University of Freiburg. The results of their study are published in the latest edition of Nature Photonics.