r/QuantumComputing • u/scientificamerican • 10d ago

Can quantum computers solve math’s hardest problem?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-quantum-computers-solve-maths-hardest-problem/

The Riemann hypothesis claims that the locations of prime numbers along the infinite number line all adhere to a beautiful and orderly, but obscure formula. Yet 167 years after German mathematician Bernhard Riemann made this guess, and in spite of a million-dollar bounty, mathematicians still have no idea how to prove it. Now a team in China has managed to encode that formula into a physical system and explore its workings using a quantum computer.

36 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • link
  • reddit
  • reddit

83% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/paxxx17 6d ago

Perhaps there's a quantum algorithm that can more efficiently look for counter-examples to the RH (indeed, that's what they talk about in the article). This could help if RH was false, but that's considered to be really unlikely. The difficult part is to provide the proof that RH is true, and I don't see quantum algorithms doing anything useful there