Quantum Leap: Test Your Knowledge on Recent Quantum Computing Advances

All Questions in This Quiz

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1. Which IBM processor on its published roadmap was designed to reach 1,121 qubits?

   • A. Eagle (127 qubits)
   • B. Osprey (433 qubits)
   • C. Condor (1,121 qubits)
   • D. Kookaburra (4,158 qubits)

2. In its 2023 Nature paper on surface-code error correction, what did Google's quantum team demonstrate?

   • A. Quantum supremacy using a 53-qubit Sycamore chip
   • B. A distance-5 surface-code logical qubit (49 physical qubits) with a lower error rate than the smaller distance-3 code
   • C. Entanglement of 100 photons in a photonic chip
   • D. A 1,000-qubit superconducting processor

3. What did China's Jiuzhang 3.0 photonic quantum computer demonstrate in 2023?

   • A. Quantum advantage using superconducting qubits
   • B. Gaussian boson sampling with up to 255 detected photons
   • C. Factoring a 2,048-bit integer with Shor's algorithm
   • D. Simulation of the Hubbard model on a 2D lattice

4. What did the 256-atom neutral-atom platform built by the Harvard/MIT group behind QuEra demonstrate?

   • A. A 1,000-qubit ion-trap processor
   • B. A programmable quantum simulator generating entangled states and encoding combinatorial optimization problems
   • C. Fault-tolerant logical qubits with the surface code
   • D. Quantum state transmission over a satellite link

5. Which IBM processor, introduced in December 2023, has 133 qubits and was designed as the building block of IBM's modular architecture?

   • A. Eagle
   • B. Osprey
   • C. Heron
   • D. Condor

6. Which error-mitigation technique has a sampling overhead that grows exponentially with circuit depth?

   • A. Zero-noise extrapolation
   • B. Probabilistic error cancellation
   • C. Symmetry verification
   • D. Measurement error mitigation

7. Which experimental platform has been used to observe pseudogap-like correlations in the doped Fermi-Hubbard model?

   • A. Superconducting transmon processors
   • B. Ultracold fermionic atoms in an optical lattice, imaged with a quantum gas microscope
   • C. Photonic boson-sampling chips
   • D. Trapped-ion linear chains

8. Which demonstration is considered a key step toward practical quantum repeaters?

   • A. Entanglement swapping between atomic quantum memory nodes separated by tens of kilometres of optical fibre
   • B. Sending classical encrypted keys over free space by drone
   • C. Ground-to-satellite entanglement distribution over 1,200 km
   • D. Teleporting a classical bit across a laboratory bench

9. What is the primary error-suppression property of a cat qubit, a bosonic code used in error-corrected quantum computing?

   • A. It suppresses phase errors exponentially while amplifying bit-flip errors
   • B. It suppresses bit-flip errors exponentially, leaving phase errors as the dominant channel
   • C. It requires no error correction and is intrinsically fault-tolerant
   • D. It behaves exactly like a transmon but with longer coherence

10. How do 'warm starts' improve the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA) on MaxCut problems?

    • A. They initialize the circuit from a classical approximate solution, improving the approximation ratio at low depth
    • B. They replace the quantum circuit entirely with a classical greedy optimizer
    • C. They increase QAOA depth so that exact solutions are guaranteed
    • D. They apply only to Boolean satisfiability, not to graph problems

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