Speaker: John Martinis, UCSB

Abstract: The promise of quantum computers is that certain computational tasks might be executed exponentially faster on a quantum processor than on a classical processor.  We have used a programmable superconducting processor to create quantum states on 53 qubits, corresponding to a "parallel computation" of 10 million trillion states.  For a simple algorithm, our Sycamore processor takes about 200 seconds to run a quantum circuit a million times - the equivalent task for a state-of-the-art classical supercomputer would take approximately 10,000 years. This dramatic increase in speed compared to all known classical algorithms is an experimental realization of quantum supremacy, heralding a much-anticipated computing paradigm.