Quantum Zeno effect could freeze tomorrow’s quantum computers mid-calculation

HZDR researchers warn that the quantum Zeno effect could become a serious scaling limit for large quantum computers.

In their model of adiabatic Grover search, environmental noise can act like repeated measurement and slow or nearly freeze computation.

The problem may get worse as systems grow, because shrinking energy gaps make the effect stronger.

The study suggests that simply adding more qubits may not be enough if decoherence increasingly suppresses quantum dynamics.