Hybrid algorithms can accommodate limited qubits, lack of error correction for real-world tasks.

As reported in an article in Nature Reviews Physics, instead of waiting for fully mature quantum computers to emerge, Los Alamos National Laboratory and other leading institutions have developed hybrid classical/quantum algorithms to extract the most performance—and potentially quantum advantage—from today’s noisy, error-prone hardware. Known as variational quantum algorithms, they use the quantum boxes to manipulate quantum systems while shifting much of the work load to classical computers to let them do what they currently do best: solve optimization problems.

“Quantum computers have the promise to outperform classical computers for certain tasks, but on currently available quantum hardware they can’t run long algorithms. They have too much noise as they interact with environment, which corrupts the information being processed,” said Marco Cerezo, a physicist specializing in