Explained: What is Quantum technology? How it promises to reinforce cyber security?

Termed as the future of the Internet, scientists are looking at quantum technology as one with potential of providing enormous computational power. This year’s Nobel Prize for Physics went to the trio of Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger for their research into the rapidly emerging technology.

Experts say that this technology will reinforce cyber safety, enhance health services, secure our financial transactions and, above all, will bring superfast computing capability in our system which is currently present only in huge supercomputers. Let’s look in detail about this to be revolutionary technology.

What is quantum technology?

Particles at atomic and subatomic level do not obey the laws of classical Newtonian physics. This bizarre deviation sometimes results in very peculiar characteristics.

They exhibit the property of ‘superposition’, which makes them capable of being in various states (electron's state) simultaneously.

They can also display “entanglement,” in which two or more particles are perfectly identical even when they are separated physically by a large distance. This takes away individuality, as none of them can be singularly described without referencing others.

How will this technology enhance our computers?

Quantum technology exploits these properties to address issues that are too complicated for traditional computers.

In traditional computing, bits are transistors that can be in the states of 0 or 1, making it on or off. However, using the property of superposition, quantum bits (qubit) have the flexibility to exist as both zeros and ones simultaneously or in any position between. This gives them the capacity to carry out several calculations at once.

Because of the “entanglement” characteristic, altering the state of an entangled qubit immediately affects its paired counterpart. This therefore increases the processing efficiency of quantum computers.

Limitations

There are many working models of quantum computers, but they are still far from exploring the huge potential of quantum technology. Even the technology behemoth IBM offers online access to quantum computers. Earlier, Apple demonstrated use of quantum computer to solve a problem that would take a “classical computer an impractically long amount of time.”

But for fully functional quantum computers, scientists must successfully coax a large number of qubits to cooperate. That’s challenging because qubits have a tendency to quit working at the smallest disruption, even from a small temperature change.