Algorithmic cooling
A qubit (or quantum bit) is a unit of information that can be in a superposition of two states, denoted as formula_1 and formula_2. The general superposition can be written as formula_3where formula_4 and formula_5. If one measures the state of the qubit in the orthonormal basis composed of formula_1 and formula_2, one gets the result formula_1 with probability formula_9 and the result formula_2 with probability formula_11.
Charge qubit
To-date, the realizations of qubits that have had the most success are ion traps and NMR, with Shor's algorithm even being implemented using NMR. However, it is hard to see these two methods being scaled to the hundreds, thousands, or millions of qubits necessary to create a quantum computer. Solid-state representations of qubits are much more easily scalable, but they themselves have their own problem: decoherence. Superconductors, however, have the advantage of being more easily scaled, and they are more coherent than normal solid-state systems.