Quantum computing

Mathematicians and computer scientists made big progress in number theory, graph theory, machine learning and quantum computing, even as they reexamined our fundamental understanding of mathematics and neural networks.

Today Google announced that it achieved “quantum supremacy.” Its chief quantum computing rival, IBM, said it hasn’t. The disagreement hinges on what the term really means.

Researchers finally seem to have a quantum computer that can outperform a classical computer. But what does that really mean?

Fifty years after the current internet was born, the physicist and computer scientist Stephanie Wehner is planning and designing the next internet — a quantum one.

Researchers are getting close to building a quantum computer that can perform tasks a classical computer can’t. Here’s what the milestone will mean.

Pure, verifiable randomness is hard to come by. Two proposals show how to make quantum computers into randomness factories.

Neven’s law states that quantum computers are improving at a “doubly exponential” rate. If it holds, quantum supremacy is around the corner.

The universe of problems that a computer can check has grown. The researchers’ secret ingredient? Quantum entanglement.

Quantum computers can’t selectively forget information. A new algorithm for multiplication shows a way around that problem.