(Phys.org) Physicists have discovered a potentially game-changing feature of quantum bit behavior which would allow scientists to simulate complex quantum systems without the need for enormous computing power.
The development of the next generation of quantum computer has limited by the processing speed of conventional CPUs. Even the world’s fastest supercomputers have not been powerful enough, and existing quantum computers are still too small, to be able to model moderate-sized quantum structures, such as quantum processors.
However, a team of researchers from Loughborough and Nottingham and Innopolis universities have now found a way to bypass the need for such massive amounts of power by harnessing the chaotic behavior of qubits—the smallest unit of digital information.
When modeling the behavior of quantum bits (qubits) they found that when an external energy source, such as a laser or microwave signal, was used the system became more chaotic—eventually demonstrating the phenomenon known as hyperchaos.
The researchers found that the degree of complexity (hyperchaos) did not increase exponentially as the size of the system grew—which is what one would expect—but instead, it remained proportional to the number of units.
The new results show that a quantum system shows qualitatively different patterns of general case behavior, and the transitions between them are governed by a relatively small number of parameters.
If this holds generally, then the researchers will be able to determine the critical values of these parameters from, e.g., building and testing scale models, and, by taking a few measurements of the actual system, to tell whether the parameters of our quantum processor allow it to work properly or not.
Physicists Use ‘Hyperchaos’ to Model Complex Quantum Systems at Fraction of the Computing Power
