Quantum computers may work better when they ignore causality

Quantum computers could gain an advantage over their conventional counterparts by bypassing the usual rules of cause and effect.

“We were curious about how to push the limits of quantum computers, making them even more powerful,” says Mingrui Jing at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. To that end, he and his colleagues turned to an odd procedure called a “quantum switch”, which complicates the conventional idea of causality.