Google Quantum: Unraveling the Mystery of Non-Abelian Anyons

Non-Abelian anyons are the cool kid on the block.

Welcome Back!

I am as always a bit puzzled by Google Quantum’s PR around breakthroughs. Sandbox AQ already spun out of Alphabet, but don’t let that fool you, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM are all hunting for the future of quantum computing as furious as anyone.

It was just in February, 2023 when Google Quantum said that Google Quantum AI researchers had discovered a way to reduce error rates in quantum computers exponentially, as the size of the system is increased, enabling them to reach “break-even point.”

The company said it’s now confident it will eventually be able to achieve “commercial value” for quantum computers. So what’s changed in those few months?

Topological quantum computations are hot, and not just at Microsoft. Quantinuum and Google Quantum now claim to have achieved parity.

Quantum Error Correction Breakthrough?

A few days after Quantinuum Google suddenly said that Google Quantum AI had observed non-Abelian anyons for the first time, a breakthrough that could revolutionize quantum computing by making it more robust to noise and leading to topological quantum computation.

• In a paper published in the journal Nature on May 11, researchers at Google Quantum AI announced that they had used one of their superconducting quantum processors to observe the peculiar behavior of non-Abelian anyons for the first time ever.

• They also demonstrated how this phenomenon could be used to perform quantum computations. Earlier this week the quantum computing company Quantinuum released another study on the topic, complementing Google’s initial discovery.

• These new results open a new path toward topological quantum computation, in which operations are achieved by winding non-Abelian anyons around each other like strings in a braid.

Google Quantum AI team member and first author of the manuscript, Trond I. Andersen says, “Observing the bizarre behavior of non-Abelian anyons for the first time really highlights the type of exciting phenomena we can now access with quantum computers.”

So what’s really going on here?