Australian student's code solves 20-year-old quantum computing problem: Report

Twenty-one year old Pablo Bonilla's code reportedly contains “remarkable error-correcting properties” – all thanks to a simple modification to code that has been in use for almost two decades.

The 21-year-old’s code has “remarkable error-correcting properties”, according to the report. (Ragsxl/Wikimedia Commons)

A 21-year-old student from the University of Sydney might have solved one of the most common problems with quantum computing in his first academic paper, which could possibly change how the technology works permanently.

According to a recent report from ABC Australia, second-year physics student Pablo Bonilla's code received attention from researchers at Yale University and Duke University, while e-commerce giant Amazon's AWS platform might include his fix for what is being called a decades-old quantum computing problem.

The 21-year-old's code has “remarkable error-correcting properties” – all thanks to a simple modification to code that has been in use for almost two decades, according to assistant professor Shruti Puri, from Yale University's quantum research program. "What amazes me about this new code is its sheer elegance," she told ABC Australia.

According to Bonilla's co-author Ben Brown, only the “smallest of changes” were made to a chip that is widely used, but the chip started “doing a lot better” and that it was amazing to him that nobody had spotted it in the for the past two decades. Dr Brown also told ABC Australia that his student had been “leading from the front” and that he had no doubt he would go a long way.

While computers have gotten a lot faster over the past few decades, researchers have been working on quantum computers, which employ quantum mechanics to solve problems faster than a regular computer. Quantum computers are also being developed in order to perform a large number of computations to eventually solve problems with healthcare, diagnostics, research, finance, trading, meteorology, logistics, marketing, agriculture, security and defence and much more.