Google’s New ‘Time Crystals’ Could Be a Breakthrough for Long-Awaited Quantum Computers

(WashingtonPost) Google, along with physicists at Stanford and Princeton universities, claims to have developed a “scalable approach” to time crystal creation using the company’s Sycamore quantum computer.
“Time crystals are like a rest stop on the road to building a quantum computer,” said Norman Yao, a molecular physicist at the University of California at Berkeley.
In a paper published last month on the research-sharing platform Arxiv.org, a team of more than 100 scientists describes setting up an array of 20 quantum particles, or qubits, to serve as a time crystal. During experiments, they applied algorithms that spun the qubits upward and downward, generating a controllable reaction that could be sustained “for infinitely long times,” according to the paper.
Quantum computing is weighed down by hard-to-control qubits, which are error prone and often die. Time crystals might introduce a better method for sustaining quantum computing, according to Yao, who published a blueprint for making time crystals in 2017.
“Time crystals are a weighted benchmark, showing that your system has the requisite level of control,” Yao said.