Most quantum computers use binary encoding to store information in qubits—the quantum analogue of classical bits. Yet, the underlying physical hardware consists of information carriers that are not necessarily binary, but typically exhibit a rich multilevel structure. Operating them as qubits artificially restricts their degrees of freedom to two energy levels¹. Meanwhile, a wide range of applications—from quantum chemistry² to quantum simulation³—would benefit from access to higher-dimensional Hilbert spaces, which qubit-based quantum computers can only emulate⁴. Here we demonstrate a universal quantum processor using trapped ions that act as qudits with a local Hilbert-space dimension of up to seven. With a performance similar to qubit quantum processors⁵, this approach enables the native simulation of high-dimensional quantum systems³, as well as more efficient implementation of qubit-based algorithms^6,7.

大多数量子计算机使用二进制编码将信息存储在量子比特中——经典比特的量子模拟。然而，底层物理硬件由不一定是二进制的信息载体组成，但通常表现出丰富的多级结构。将它们作为量子比特人为地将它们的自由度限制在两个能级¹。^{同时，从量子化学2}到量子模拟³的广泛应用将受益于访问更高维的希尔伯特空间，而基于量子比特的量子计算机只能模拟⁴. 在这里，我们演示了一个使用捕获离子的通用量子处理器，这些离子充当局部 Hilbert 空间维度高达 7 的 qudits。凭借与量子位量子处理器⁵相似的性能，这种方法能够对高维量子系统³进行本地模拟，以及更有效地实施基于量子位的算法^6,7。