![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Bell-Labs-quantum-1024x438.webp.webp\" "\\"Bell")
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Momentum is building for quantum computing and some observers say that a usable, fault-tolerant quantum system could appear in the next few years. We have written about the significant steps that have been made by Google<\/a>, Microsoft<\/a>, and Amazon<\/a> in error correction for their quantum chips, and there have been similar efforts by the likes of IBM<\/a> and Rigetti<\/a>. Cisco Systems<\/a>, Nvidia<\/a>, D-Wave<\/a>, QuEra<\/a>, and others continue to take steps forward.<\/p>\n Investment money is flowing in \u2013 according to one account, $1.25 billion in investments<\/a> were made in quantum technologies in the first quarter \u2013 and the roster of quantum players continues to extend from hyperscalers and high-profile infrastructure companies down to a fast-growing number of pure-play startups.<\/p>\n Then there is the venerable Bell Labs \u2013 now part of Nokia after the major telecom equipment provider bought Alcatel-Lucent in 2016 for $16.6 billion \u2013 which this year is celebrating its first 100 years, a century of innovation that brought the transistor, lasers, photovoltaic cells, Unix, and the C programming language. Many of these firsts make up what Nokia Bell Labs refers to as Quantum 1.0 technologies, those that originated from the field of quantum mechanics.<\/p>\n We\u2019re now in Quantum 2.0<\/a>, defined by the ability to \u201cmanipulate individual particles of matter, making them do our bidding,\u201d chief technology officer Michael Eggleston and Nishant Batra, Nokia\u2019s chief strategy and technology officer, wrote earlier this year. \u201cThere is enormous potential in these quantum particles. A single electron, for example, can be used as a quantum bit, or qubit, which is the fundamental building block of quantum computing. Quantum 2.0 paves the way for unprecedented computational capabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n A Ten Year Horizon<\/p>\n To Thierry Klein, president of Bell Labs solutions research at Nokia, ten years out is about the right timeframe for usable, fault-tolerant quantum computing. AI is at the heart of conversations now about computing, but it will take a significant leap forward when quantum makes the scene, he says.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we think about our main challenges of the current generation, we see this coming-together of our physical, digital, and human worlds, and all of that is driven by a lot of AI, and we\u2019re obviously in the era of AI transformation and AI revolution,\u201d Klein tells The Next Platform. \u201cAs much as we do research on AI, our research on networking is important because networking will really enable the AI revolution, whether it\u2019s in the telecom sector or other sectors, and fundamentally we need to compute a lot of information to realize the potential of AI. As such, computing is equally important to really unlock the potential of AI and the massive knowledge and understanding that we can extract from the data that\u2019s around us, that we\u2019re collecting. While it will may be known as the AI era, we think that networking and computing and, by extension, quantum computing will be key to really enable the full potential of that AI.\u201d<\/p>\n Bell Labs is embracing topological qubits, similar to Microsoft\u2019s approach with its Majorana 1 quantum chip, according to Eggleston. As others, he sees the broad array of modalities being investigated as an indication of the relatively early stage of quantum computing, with the expectation that they\u2019ll winnow down as the technology matures. Bell Lab scientists saw high error rates across all modalities as a key problem and looked to physics to understand why qubits are so fragile and faulty and what can be done to improve error rates to allow for better scaling.<\/p>\n The transistor allowed modern computers to perform and scale better than their earlier transistors, and they saw that the same promise with topological qubits, Eggleston tells The Next Platform.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fundamental problem we see is it\u2019s really about how you store your quantum information,\u201d he says. \u201cIf you look at all the modalities out there, whether it\u2019s atoms or ions or superconductors or photons, the quantum information is stored in one discrete particle or state or location. You store it in an atom or an ion, and if anything happens to that \u2013 if a stray photon or phonon or energy or vibration, if anything comes in and touches it \u2013 it decoheres your system and you lose information.\u201d<\/p>\n Distributed Storage For Quantum Info<\/p>\n With a topological approach, information is encoded into a non-local property. It\u2019s distributed, so local disturbances here and there don\u2019t affect it. The scientific challenges were determining what a non-local quantum state is and how something completely non-local is built. The scientists found a way to not only store information non-locally, but also to have long lifetime.<\/p>\n \u201c<\/strong>We basically can measure quantum states, and they\u2019re stable for hours, sometimes days,\u201d Eggleston says.<\/p>\n It\u2019s done using gallium arsenide, a compound material used in traditional semiconductors, so Bell Labs can make their devices via traditional semiconductor processing and wafers can be mass-produced, easy to scale and manufacture, he says.<\/p>\n \u201cThe way to conceptualize it is, we\u2019re able to actually create what\u2019s effectively a quantum liquid,\u201d Eggleston says. \u201cWe have these electrons and they all basically condense into a liquid and they form this state \u2013 you can kind of think of it like a pond \u2013 where they\u2019re all coupled together and this allows us to basically store information over this kind of global area. You could basically manipulate it by just making small movements of these individual electrons throughout the entire liquid.\u201d<\/p>\n Most modalities store quantum information in a single electron or atom. With topological qubits, the information is distributed over millions of electrons, he says.<\/p>\n Smaller Qubits For Larger Scale<\/p>\n Also important in scaling is size, from the size of the qubit to the systems they\u2019re housed in. In quantum computing, that also includes how the qubits are cooled.<\/p>\n \u201cReally, all quantum computing technologies require very low temperatures,\u201d he says. \u201cSome of them do it through these dilution refrigerators or cryostats. Ions and neutral atoms, they can do laser cooling. They still have to cool it to very low temperatures, but they can use lasers to do it. But there\u2019s a lot of infrastructure on that, so when it comes to scaling, some of the things that are important are how many qubits you can actually fit into a small area. What\u2019s the size of your actual qubit?\u201d<\/p>\n The topological qubits Bell Labs scientist create are about 15-by-15 microns, which means they\u2019re small enough o allow a million or more to fit in the size of a traditional processing unit, Eggleston says. It something that could easily fit in a single dilution refrigerator, so a very large number of qubits are kept in a very cold environment but, from a scaling perspective, can fit in a relatively small space.<\/p>\n In Bell Labs\u2019 work, there are a couple of key milestones. The first is setting a quantum state, which needs to be done before a qubit can be made, something that can be set as a 0 or 1. It can be trivial; if you\u2019re using a photon, it can be polarization, he says. However, for topological quantum computing, it\u2019s a challenge, though the organization showed in 2023 it can be done.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can initialize these states, we can measure them, we can actually monitor them over long periods of time, and we can observe, basically, state flipping over periods of tens of hours to days,\u201d Eggleston says. \u201cWe have these really nice robust quantum states.\u201d<\/p>\n Controlling The Qubit<\/p>\n What\u2019s needed now is the ability to control the qubit, to be able to change it on command, flipping it between 0 and 1, something that in classical computing is called a NOT gate, or inverter. In quantum, it\u2019s called a Pauli-X gate, or X gate or quantum NOT gate. That\u2019s Bell Labs\u2019 next big milestone with hopes of announcing results by the end of the year, Eggleston says.<\/p>\n Once the quantum state is in place and the qubit can be swapped between 0 and 1, the next step is creating a superposition, which also is on the scientists\u2019 roadmap.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce you can create a superposition, then you have a qubit,\u201d he says. \u201cYou need to be able to create a zero and one at the same time. That\u2019s on our roadmap for next year. By the end of 2026, it\u2019s our goal to actually have demonstrated a topological qubit that\u2019s in a superposition.\u201d<\/p>\n Having a stable quantum state from the start helps Bell Labs differentiate itself from others in the quantum field.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of other players kind of started with maybe a more faulty qubit and a focus more on error correcting,\u201d Eggleston says. \u201cWe definitely believe error correcting will have a huge role in it, just like it does in traditional communication networks, but you want to start with the most robust quantum state that you can, and we think that that\u2019s really the key to scalable quantum computing.\u201d<\/p>\n One More Computing Tool<\/p>\n When considering what quantum computing will look like, Eggleston falls in line with what others are saying. It will be another tool available to organizations, primarily cloud-based and similar to how CPUs and GPUs are used today for particular jobs. Quantum systems already are being integrated into cloud networks to allow people to understand how to use them and to build the tools needed to interface with them.<\/p>\n At a higher level, Bell Labs scientists are taking a full view of the quantum environment beyond the qubit. That includes quantum security, sensing, and \u2013 unsurprisingly, given the parent company \u2013 networking also is a key part.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re really excited about the potential of quantum networking,\u201d he says. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of really exciting applications, from physical-layer security and networks to distributed quantum computing, but there\u2019s also new areas in expanding capacity and improving energy efficiency when you actually start looking at quantum networks.\u201d<\/p>\n Bell Labs has people working from the low hardware-device layer up to the network architecture, addressing such issues as how to coordinate multiple quantum systems.<\/p>\n \u201cCommunication is so vital to computation, and as we incorporate more and more quantum 2.0 technology into our networks, we need ways of communicating that quantum information, and that\u2019s a capability that we\u2019ll be bringing to kind of enable the quantum computing of the future,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Bell-Labs-topological.png\")
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