Colloquium

Last fall, a team at Google announced the first-ever demonstration of "quantum computational supremacy" — that is, a clear quantum speedup over a classical computer for some task — using a 53-qubit programmable superconducting chip called Sycamore. In addition to engineering, Google's accomplishment built on a decade of research in quantum computing theory. This talk will discuss questions like: what exactly was the contrived computational problem that Google solved? How does one verify the outputs using a classical computer? And how confident are we that the problem really is classically hard — especially in light of subsequent counterclaims by IBM? I'll end with a proposed application for Google's experiment — namely, the generation of certified random bits, for use (for example) in proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies — that I've been developing and that Google is now working to demonstrate.

[video recording]

Preceded by introductory lecture for students