Microsoft-led team retracts quantum ‘breakthrough’

A Microsoft-led team has withdrawn a controversial research paper into quantum computing, published in 2018.

The research claimed to have found evidence of an elusive subatomic particle Microsoft suggested could help the development of more powerful computers.

But it now says mistakes were made.

The journal Nature has published a retraction. And the paper’s authors have apologised for “insufficient scientific rigour”.

But the company has said it remains confident of its wider efforts on quantum computing.

The paper had been hailed as a breakthrough.

But some scientists remained sceptical.

Quantum computing has been seen as a potentially revolutionary leap forward, promising to complete some tasks much faster.

In classical computers, the unit of information, or “bit”, can have a value of either one or nought.

Its equivalent in a quantum system – the quantum bit (qubit) – can be both at the same time, opening the door for multiple calculations to be performed simultaneously.

But scientists have struggled to build working devices with enough qubits to make them competitive with conventional types of computer.

Many large technology companies, including IBM and Google, as well as smaller rivals such as D-Wave and IonQ are also working on the problem.

But Microsoft proposed a different route – trying to create qubits with the properties of Majorana particles, whose existence was first suggested in the 1930s by Italian physicist Ettore Majorana, which it said would make them less error prone. – bbc.com