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There are many different physical implementations of qubits: NMR, spin qubit, N color center in diamond, superconducting qubit, trapped ions, photonics quantum computing, topological qubit, etc. However, superconducting qubits is currently the most popular approach, adopted by IBM, Google, Rigetti, Intel, etc.

What are the advantages of superconducting qubits over other implementations, such as trapped ions? As far as I know, trapped ions qubits have higher gate fidelity and it doesn't require low temperature. Is scalability the main advantage of superconducting qubits over other implementations?

glS
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Junye Huang
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  • Possible duplicate of What is the physical representation of a qubit? – Sanchayan Dutta Nov 28 '19 at 06:38
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    Yes, it should be divided. This question is simply too broad for the SE format. We're not supposed to be an online encyclopedia unlike Wikipedia. Please ask specific questions, one implementation at a time. – Sanchayan Dutta Nov 28 '19 at 06:40
  • @SanchayanDutta I was sure someone already asked similar questions. I am hoping to get better answers than the question you mention. I am most interested in knowing why certain implementations are more popular, e.g. superconduciting qubits, trapped ions, while others are not as popular, e.g. photonics. Perhaps I should change the question to "Comparison of different physical implementations of qubits"? – Junye Huang Nov 28 '19 at 06:42
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    Now that you've made the question more specific I've retracted my close vote. Good luck. – Sanchayan Dutta Nov 28 '19 at 06:54
  • @SanchayanDutta Thank you. Sorry I am really new to Stack Exchange, still learning how to ask questions in a proper way. – Junye Huang Nov 28 '19 at 06:55
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    related: https://quantumcomputing.stackexchange.com/q/3871/55 – glS Nov 28 '19 at 12:24

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By coincidence, this article just came out on Ars Technica which might answer some of your questions. (This is not an endorsement of everything written in that article. But the author basically asked, and researched, the same question that you're asking.)

The TL;DR answer is that superconducting qubits are manufactured and allow for better control over other technologies.

dlyongemallo
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