If you’d like to solve a math problem on a good old-fashioned chalkboard, you want the board clean and free of any previous markings so that you have space to work. Quantum computers have a similar need for a clean workspace, and a team including scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has found an innovative and effective way to create and maintain it.
The research effort, a collaboration with physicists at Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology, could address one of the main issues confronting quantum computer designers: the need to keep the bits in a superconducting quantum processor free of errors and ready to perform calculations whenever necessary. These “qubits” are notoriously sensitive to heat and radiation, which can spoil their calculations just as stray chalk marks might make the numeral 1 look like a 7.