Overview
- A Nature paper details how the Willow processor measured second-order out-of-time-order correlators using a time-reversal echo sequence.
- The experiment completed in just over two hours versus an estimated 3.2 years on the Frontier supercomputer, a roughly 13,000-fold speedup.
- Google and UC Berkeley applied the method to molecular structure comparisons, matching NMR results and revealing added detail described as a molecular ruler.
- The team underscores that the outputs are reproducible on comparable quantum hardware and can be cross-checked against physical experiments.
- Independent confirmation and substantial advances in scale and fault tolerance remain necessary, while Google projects early practical uses could arrive within about five years.