The last laugh on quantum computing
Nature News: Some experts think that a quantum computation could be plaited like a skein of string. And now they may have found the sorts of string they need, finds Liesbeth Venema.
When Alexei Kitaev published a preprint suggesting that the topological properties of quasiparticles, moving around each other and behaving as anyons, could be used as the basis for a new form of error-proof quantum computing, it seemed absurd.
“I laughed when I first read it,” recalls Nick Bonesteel, a theoretical physicist at Florida State University in Tallahassee. And there may still be some people laughing today — but at least a few of them are doing so with excited anticipation.
Related Physics Today material
Devices Based on the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect May Fulfill the Promise of Quantum Computing (October 2005)
