Category Archives: Quantum Computing

A new government initiative will direct hundreds of millions of dollars to support new centers for quantum computing research.

Why it matters: Quantum information science represents the next leap forward for computing, opening the door to powerful machines that can help provide answers to some of our most pressing questions. The nation that takes the lead in quantum will stake a pole position for the future.

Details: The five new quantum research centers established in national labs across the country are part of a $1 billion White House program announced Wednesday morning that includes seven institutes that will explore different facets of AI, including precision agriculture and forecast prediction.

How it works: While AI is better known and increasingly integrated into our daily lives hey, Siri quantum computing is just as important, promising huge leaps forward in computer processing power.

Of note: Albert Einstein famously hated the concept of entanglement, describing it as "spooky action at a distance." But the idea has held up over decades of research in quantum science.

Quantum computers won't replace classical ones wholesale in part because the process of manipulating quantum particles is still highly tricky but as they develop, they'll open up new frontiers in computing.

What they're saying: "Quantum is the biggest revolution in computers since the advent of computers," says Dario Gil, director of IBM Research. "With the quantum bit, you can actually rethink the nature of information."

The catch: While the underlying science behind quantum computers is decades old, quantum computers are only just now beginning to be used commercially.

What to watch: Who ultimately wins out on quantum supremacy the act of demonstrating that a quantum computer can solve a problem that even the fastest classical computer would be unable to solve in a feasible time frame.

The bottom line: The age of quantum computers isn't quite here yet, but it promises to be one of the major technological drivers of the 21st century.

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Why quantum computing matters - Axios

One of the goals of theSuperconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Centeris to build a beyond-state-of-the-art quantum computer based on superconducting technologies.The center also will develop new quantum sensors, which could lead to the discovery of the nature of dark matter and other elusive subatomic particles.

The U.S. Department of Energys Fermilab has been selected to lead one of five national centers to bring about transformational advances in quantum information science as a part of the U.S. National Quantum Initiative, announced the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy today.

The initiative provides the newSuperconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Centerfunding with the goal of building and deploying a beyond-state-of-the-art quantum computer based on superconducting technologies. The center also will develop new quantum sensors, which could lead to the discovery of the nature of dark matter and other elusive subatomic particles. Total planned DOE funding for the center is $115 million over five years, with $15 million in fiscal year 2020 dollars and outyear funding contingent on congressional appropriations. SQMS will also receive an additional $8 million in matching contributions from center partners.

The SQMS Center is part of a $625 million federal program to facilitate and foster quantum innovation in the United States. The 2018 National Quantum Initiative Act called for a long-term, large-scale commitment of U.S. scientific and technological resources to quantum science.

The revolutionary leaps in quantum computing and sensing that SQMS aims for will be enabled by a unique multidisciplinary collaboration that includes 20 partners national laboratories, academic institutions and industry. The collaboration brings together world-leading expertise in all key aspects: from identifying qubits quality limitations at the nanometer scale to fabrication and scale-up capabilities into multiqubit quantum computers to the exploration of new applications enabled by quantum computers and sensors.

The breadth of the SQMS physics, materials science, device fabrication and characterization technology combined with the expertise in large-scale integration capabilities by the SQMS Center is unprecedented for superconducting quantum science and technology, said SQMS Deputy Director James Sauls of Northwestern University. As part of the network of National QIS Research centers, SQMS will contribute to U.S. leadership in quantum science for the years to come.

SQMS researchers are developing long-coherence-time qubits based on Rigetti Computings state-of-the-art quantum processors. Image: Rigetti Computing

At the heart of SQMS research will be solving one of the most pressing problems in quantum information science: the length of time that a qubit, the basic element of a quantum computer, can maintain information, also called quantum coherence. Understanding and mitigating sources of decoherence that limit performance of quantum devices is critical to engineering in next-generation quantum computers and sensors.

Unless we address and overcome the issue of quantum system decoherence, we will not be able to build quantum computers that solve new complex and important problems. The same applies to quantum sensors with the range of sensitivity needed to address long-standing questions in many fields of science, said SQMS Center Director Anna Grassellino of Fermilab. Overcoming this crucial limitation would allow us to have a great impact in the life sciences, biology, medicine, and national security, and enable measurements of incomparable precision and sensitivity in basic science.

The SQMS Centers ambitious goals in computing and sensing are driven by Fermilabs achievement of world-leading coherence times in components called superconducting cavities, which were developed for particle accelerators used in Fermilabs particle physics experiments. Researchers have expanded the use of Fermilab cavities into the quantum regime.

We have the most coherent by a factor of more than 200 3-D superconducting cavities in the world, which will be turned into quantum processors with unprecedented performance by combining them with Rigettis state-of-the-art planar structures, said Fermilab scientist Alexander Romanenko, SQMS technology thrust leader and Fermilab SRF program manager. This long coherence would not only enable qubits to be long-lived, but it would also allow them to be all connected to each other, opening qualitatively new opportunities for applications.

The SQMS Centers goals in computing and sensing are driven by Fermilabs achievement of world-leading coherence times in components called superconducting cavities, which were developed for particle accelerators used in Fermilabs particle physics experiments. Photo: Reidar Hahn, Fermilab

To advance the coherence even further, SQMS collaborators will launch a materials-science investigation of unprecedented scale to gain insights into the fundamental limiting mechanisms of cavities and qubits, working to understand the quantum properties of superconductors and other materials used at the nanoscale and in the microwave regime.

Now is the time to harness the strengths of the DOE laboratories and partners to identify the underlying mechanisms limiting quantum devices in order to push their performance to the next level for quantum computing and sensing applications, said SQMS Chief Engineer Matt Kramer, Ames Laboratory.

Northwestern University, Ames Laboratory, Fermilab, Rigetti Computing, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics and several universities are partnering to contribute world-class materials science and superconductivity expertise to target sources of decoherence.

SQMS partner Rigetti Computing will provide crucial state-of-the-art qubit fabrication and full stack quantum computing capabilities required for building the SQMS quantum computer.

By partnering with world-class experts, our work will translate ground-breaking science into scalable superconducting quantum computing systems and commercialize capabilities that will further the energy, economic and national security interests of the United States, said Rigetti Computing CEO Chad Rigetti.

SQMS will also partner with the NASA Ames Research Center quantum group, led by SQMS Chief Scientist Eleanor Rieffel. Their strengths in quantum algorithms, programming and simulation will be crucial to use the quantum processors developed by the SQMS Center.

The Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics has been successfully collaborating with Fermilab for more than 40 years and is excited to be a member of the extraordinary SQMS team, said INFN President Antonio Zoccoli. With its strong know-how in detector development, cryogenics and environmental measurements, including the Gran Sasso national laboratories, the largest underground laboratory in the world devoted to fundamental physics, INFN looks forward to exciting joint progress in fundamental physics and in quantum science and technology.

Fermilab is excited to host this National Quantum Information Science Research Center and work with this extraordinary network of collaborators, said Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer. This initiative aligns with Fermilab and its mission. It will help us answer important particle physics questions, and, at the same time, we will contribute to advancements in quantum information science with our strengths in particle accelerator technologies, such as superconducting radio-frequency devices and cryogenics.

We are thankful and honored to have this unique opportunity to be a national center for advancing quantum science and technology, Grassellino said. We have a focused mission: build something revolutionary. This center brings together the right expertise and motivation to accomplish that mission.

The Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center at Fermilab is supported by the DOE Office of Science.

Fermilab is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit science.energy.gov.

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Fermilab to lead $115 million National Quantum Information Science Research Center to build revolutionary quantum computer with Rigetti Computing,...

AFRICA

South Africa is a few steps ahead in the advancement of quantum computing and quantum technologies in general, said Mark Tame, professor in photonics at Stellenbosch University in the Western Cape.

South Africas University of KwaZulu-Natal has also been working on quantum computing for more than a decade, gradually building up a community around the field.

The buzz about quantum computing in South Africa just started recently due to the agreement between [Johannesburgs] University of the Witwatersrand and IBM, said Professor Francesco Petruccione, interim director, National Institute for Theoretical and Computational Science, and South African Research Chair in Quantum Information Processing and Communication at the School of Chemistry and Physics Quantum Research Group, University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Interest was intensified by Googles announcement last October that it had developed a 53-qubit device which it claimed took 200 seconds to sample one instance of a quantum circuit a million times. The IT company claimed it would take a state-of-the-art digital supercomputer 10,000 years to achieve this.

A University of Waterloo Institute for Quantum Computing paper stresses quantum computers ability to express a signal (a qubit) of more than one value at the same time (the superposition ability) with that signal being manifested in another device independently, but in exactly the same way (the entanglement ability). This enables quantum computers to handle much more complex questions and problems than standard computers using binary codes of ones and zeros.

The IBM Research Laboratory in Johannesburg offers African researchers the potential to harness such computing power. It was established in 2015, part of a 10-year investment programme through the South African governments Department of Trade and Industry.

It is a portal to the IBM Quantum Experience, a cloud-based quantum computing platform accessible to other African universities that are part of the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA), which involves 16 of the continents leading universities (in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda and South Africa).

Levelling of the playing field

The IBM development has levelled the playing field for students, [giving them] access to the same hardware as students elsewhere in the world. There is nothing to hold them back to develop quantum applications and code. This has been really helpful for us at Stellenbosch to work on projects which need access to quantum processors not available to the general public, said Tame.

While IBM has another centre on the continent, at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2018 the University of the Witwatersrand became the first African university to join the American computing giants Quantum Computing Network. They are starting to increase the network to have an army of quantum experts, said Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, a nuclear physicist, and vice-chancellor and principal of the University of the Witwatersrand.

At a continental level, Vilakazi said Africa is still in a learning phase regarding quantum computing. At this early stage we are still developing the skills and building a network of young students, he said. The university has sent students to IBMs Zurich facility to learn about quantum computing, he said.

To spur cooperation in the field, a Quantum Africa conference has been held every year since 2010, with the first three in South Africa, and others in Algeria and Morocco. Last years event was in Stellenbosch, while this years event, to be hosted at the University of Rwanda, was postponed until 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Growing African involvement

Rwanda is making big efforts to set up quantum technology centres, and I have former students now working in Botswana and the Gambia. It is slowly diffusing around the continent, said Petruccione.

Academics participating at the Stellenbosch event included Yassine Hassouni of Mohammed V University, Rabat; Nigerian academic Dr Obinna Abah of Queens University Belfast; and Haikel Jelassi of the National Centre for Nuclear Sciences and Technologies, Tunisia.

In South Africa, experimental and theoretical work is also being carried out into quantum communications the use of quantum physics to carry messages via fibre optic cable.

A lot of work is being done on the hardware side of quantum technologies by various groups, but funding for these things is not the same order of magnitude as in, say, North America, Australia or the UK. We have to do more with less, said Tame.

Stellenbosch, near Cape Town, is carrying out research into quantum computing, quantum communication and quantum sensing (the ability to detect if a quantum-sent message is being read).

I would like it to grow over the next few years by bringing in more expertise and help the development of quantum computing and technologies for South Africa, said Tame.

Witwatersrand is focusing on quantum optics, as is Petrucciones team, while there is collaboration in quantum computing with the University of Johannesburg and the University of Pretoria.

University programmes

Building up and retaining talent is a key challenge as the field expands in Africa, as is expanding courses in quantum computing.

South Africa doesnt offer a masters in quantum computing, or an honours programme, which we need to develop, said Petruccione.

This is set to change at the University of the Witwatersrand.

We will launch a syllabus in quantum computing, and were in the process of developing courses at the graduate level in physics, natural sciences and engineering. But such academic developments are very slow, said Vilakazi.

Further development will hinge on governmental support, with a framework programme for quantum computing being developed by Petruccione. There is interest from the [South African] Department of Science and Innovation. Because of [the economic impact of] COVID-19, I hope some money is left for quantum technology, but at least the government is willing to listen to the community, he said.

Universities are certainly trying to tap non-governmental support to expand quantum computing, engaging local industries, banks and pharmaceutical companies to get involved in supporting research.

We have had some interesting interactions with local banks, but it needs to be scaled up, said Petruccione.

Applications

While African universities are working on quantum computing questions that could be applicable anywhere in the world, there are plans to look into more localised issues. One is drug development for tuberculosis, malaria and HIV, diseases that have afflicted Southern Africa for decades, with quantum computings ability to handle complex modelling of natural structures a potential boon.

There is potential there for helping in drug development through quantum simulations. It could also help develop quantum computing networks in South Africa and more broadly across the continent, said Vilakazi.

Agriculture is a further area of application. The production of fertilisers is very expensive as it requires high temperatures, but bacteria in the soil do it for free. The reason we cant do what bacteria do is because we dont understand it. The hope is that as quantum computing is good at chemical reactions, maybe we can model it and that would lead to cheaper fertilisers, said Petruccione.

With the world in a quantum computing race, with the US and China at the forefront, Africa is well positioned to take advantage of developments. We can pick the best technology coming out of either country, and that is how Africa should position itself, said Vilakazi.

Petrucciones group currently has collaborations with Russia, India and China. We want to do satellite quantum communication. The first step is to have a ground station, but that requires investment, he said.

Link:
A continent works to grow its stake in quantum computing - University World News

900 faculty from top Indian institutes to be trained

New Delhi, August 24, 2020: Microsoft is creating a new program to build quantum computing skills and capabilities in the academic community in India. As part of this initiative, Microsoft Garage is organizing a Train the Trainer program in collaboration with Electronics and ICT Academies at Malaviya National Institute of Technology (MNIT), Jaipur and National Institute of Technology, Patna.

This program will train 900 faculty from Universities and Institutes across India through E & ICT Academies at Institutes of National Importance such as IIT Kanpur, IIT Guwahati, IIT Roorkee, MNIT Jaipur, NIT Patna, IIIT-D Jabalpur, and NIT Warangal, equipping academics with the required skills to start building their quantum future.

Quantum computing applies the properties of quantum physics to process information. Quantum computers will enable new discoveries in the areas of healthcare, energy, environmental systems, smart materials, and beyond. Microsoft is bringing the capabilities to develop for this quantum future, to the cloud with Azure Quantum.

Azure Quantum is an open cloud ecosystem enabling developers to access diverse quantum software, hardware, and solutions from Microsoft and its partners. It is built on Azure, a trusted, scalable and secure platform, and will continue to adapt to Microsofts rapidly evolving cloud future. Moreover, it delivers the ability to have impact today through quantum inspired solvers running on classical hardware and to explorations on classical hardware using the open source Quantum Development Kit and the Q# programming language.

The Quantum training program through the E & ICT Academies, supports an initiative by Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) to enhance the skills of the academicians in imparting next level technological skills for future generations. Key themes that will be covered include an introduction to quantum information, quantum concepts such as superposition and entanglement, processing of information using qubits and quantum gates, as well as an introduction to quantum machine learning and quantum programming.

Rajiv Kumar, Managing Director, Microsoft India Development Center, and Corporate Vice President, Enterprise+Devices India, said, India is renowned across the world for its science, technology, engineering, mathematics and computing (STEM+C) workforce, and a tech-capable citizenry. Through this initiative in India, we aim to develop skills in quantum at scale, which has the potential to trigger the new frontier of innovation, shaping the future of the IT industry in this part of the world.

Inaugurating the program, Ms. Reena Dayal, Director, Microsoft Garage India & Chair for IEEE Quantum SIG, said, Quantum computing holds the potential to solve some of the most pressing issues our world faces today. Through this program, we aim to equip academia in India with the requisite knowledge to develop a comprehensive Quantum learning curriculum in their institutions and help develop these skills among some of the brightest minds in the country.

The training program will be conducted virtually, from August 24 Aug 29, 2020. The program will also cover practical coding for participants using Microsoft Q# & Quantum Development Kit.

Speaking on the collaboration, Prof. Udaykumar R Yaragatti, Director, MNIT Jaipur said, The institute is committed to providing state-of-the-art technologies to students and this collaboration with Microsoft will provide further encouragement to faculty members to explore the different aspects of Quantum Computing.

Prof. Pradip K Jain, Director, NIT Patna said, The COVID situation has given an opportunity for going digital with this program. This partnership will ignite the passion in faculty members who will in turn share the knowledge with their students.

About The Microsoft Garage

The Microsoft Garage is a program that drives a culture of experimentation and innovation at Microsoft. They deliver programs and experiences to our employees, customers, and ecosystem that drive collaboration and creativity. Their motto doers, not talkers continues to be the core. The Garage attracts people who are passionate about making a difference in the world. Garage India works on Cutting Edge Technologies and actively engages with the Ecosystem in India.

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq MSFT @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Microsoft set up its India operations in 1990. Today, Microsoft entities in India have over 11,000 employees, engaged in sales and marketing, research, development and customer services and support, across 11 Indian cities Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, New Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Pune. Microsoft offers its global cloud services from local data centers to accelerate digital transformation across Indian startups, businesses, and government organizations.

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New Microsoft program to help develop the quantum computing workforce of the future in India - Microsoft News Center India - Microsoft

Tufts is joining a major U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funded center called the Quantum Systems Accelerator (QSA), led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The center hopes to create the next generation of quantum computers and apply them to the study of some of the most challenging problems in physics, chemistry, materials science, and more.

The QSA is one of five new DOE Quantum Information Science research centers announced on Aug. 26, and will be funded with $115 million over five years, supporting dozens of scientists at 15 institutions.

Peter Love, an associate professor of physics, will lead Tufts participation in the project. We have long been interested in using quantum computers for calculations in physics and chemistry, said Love.

A large-scale quantum computer would be a very powerful instrument for studying everything from the structure of large molecules to the nature and behavior of subatomic particles, he said. The only difficulty is that the quantum computers we need dont exist yet.

Quantum computers employ a fundamentally different approach to computing than those existing now, using quantum states of atoms, ions, light, quantum dots or superconducting circuits to store information.

The QSA will bring together world-class researchers and facilities to develop quantum systems that could significantly exceed the capability of todays computers. Multidisciplinary teams across all the institutions will work toward advancing qubit technologythe manner and materials in which information is stored in a quantum state, and other components of quantum computers.

Loves research will focus on developing simulation algorithms in areas such as particle and nuclear physics, which will be run by the new quantum computers. It is important to work hard on the algorithms now, so we are ready when the hardware appears, he said. Love is also part of a National Science Foundation-funded effort to develop a quantum computer and applications to run on it.

Quantum computing is an important and growing area of research at Tufts. Tom Vandervelde, an associate professor in electrical and computer engineering, Luke Davis, an assistant professor of chemistry, and Cristian Staii, an associate professor of physics, are exploring new materials capable of storing qubits.

Philip Shushkov, Charles W. Fotis Assistant Professor of Chemistry, has research focused on theoretical modeling of qubit materials, while Misha Kilmer, William Walker Professor of Mathematics, and Xiaozhe Hu, associate professor of mathematics, study quantum-inspired algorithms relevant to their research in linear algebra. Bruce Boghosian, professor of mathematics, also made some fundamental contributions to quantum simulation in the late 1990s.

Mike Silver can be reached at mike.silver@tufts.edu.

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Tufts Joins Major Effort to Build the Next Generation of Quantum Computers - Tufts Now

Computers have underpinned the digital transformation of the banking and financial services sector, and quantum computing promises to elevate this transformation to a radically new level. BBVA, the digital bank for the 21st centuryestablished in 1857 and today the second largest bank in Spainis at the forefront of investigating the benefits of quantum computing.

Will quantum computing move banking to a new level of digital transformation?

We are trying to understand the potential impact of quantum computing over the next 5 years, says Carlos Kuchkovsky, global head of research and patents at BBVA. Last month, BBVA announced initial results from their recent exploration of quantum computings advantage over traditional computer methods. Kuchkovskys team looked at complex financial problems with many dimensions or variables that require computational calculations that sometimes take days to complete. In the case of investment portfolio optimization, for example, they found that the use of quantum and quantum-inspired algorithms could represent a significant speed-up compared to traditional techniques when there are more than 100 variables.

Carlos Kuchkovsky, Global Head of Research and Patents, BBVA

After hiring researchers with expertise in quantum computing, BBVA identified fifteen challenges that could be solved better with quantum computing, faster and with greater accuracy, says Kuchkovsky. The results released last month were for six of these challenges, serving as proofs-of-concept for, first and foremost, the development of quantum algorithms and also for their application in the following five financial services tasks: Static and dynamic portfolio optimization, credit scoring process optimization, currency arbitrage optimization, and derivative valuations and adjustments.

Another important dimension of BBVAs quantum computing journey is developing an external network. The above six proofs-of-concept were pursued in collaboration with external partners bringing to the various investigations their own set of skills and expertise: The Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), the startups Zapata Computing and Multiverse, the technology firm Fujitsu, and the consulting firm Accenture.

Kuchkovsky advises technology and business executives in other companies, in any industry, to follow BBVAs initial stepssurveying the current state of the technology and the major players, developing internal expertise and experience with quantum computing and consolidating the internal team, identifying specific business problems, activities and opportunities where quantum computing could provide an advantage over todays computers, and develop an external network by connecting to and collaborating with relevant research centers and companies.

As for how to organize internally for quantum computing explorations, Kuchkovsky thinks there could be different possibilities, depending on the level of maturity of the research and technology functions of the business. In BBVAs case, the effort started in the research function and he thinks will evolve in a year or two to a full-fledged quantum computing center of excellence.

Quantum computing is evolving rapidly and Kuchkovsky predicts that in five years, companies around the world will enjoy full access to quantum computing as a service and will benefit from the application of quantum algorithms, also provided as a service. Specifically, he thinks we will see the successful application of quantum computing to machine learning (e.g., improving fraud detection in the banking sector). With the growing interest in quantum computing, Kuchkovsky believes that in five years there will be a sufficient supply of quantum computing talent to satisfy the demand for quantum computing expertise.

The development of a talent pool of experienced and knowledgeable quantum computing professionals depends among other things on close working relationships between academia and industry. These relationships tend to steer researchers towards practical problems and specific business challenges and, in turn, helps in upgrading the skills of engineers working in large corporations and orient them toward quantum computing.

In Kuchocvskys estimation, the connection between academia and industry is relatively weaker in Europe compared to the United States. But there are examples of such collaboration, such as BBVAs work with CSIC and the European Unions Quantum Technologies Flagship, bringing together research centers, industry, and public funding agencies.

On July 29, Fujitsu announced a new collaboration with BBVA, to test whether a quantum computer could outperform traditional computing techniques in optimizing asset portfolios, helping minimize risk while maximizing returns, based on a decades worth of historical data. In the release, Kuchkovsky summarized BBVAs motivation for exploring quantum computing: Our research is helping us identify the areas where quantum computing could represent a greater competitive advantage, once the tools have sufficiently matured. At BBVA, we believe that quantum technology will be key to solving some of the major challenges facing society this decade. Addressing these challenges dovetails with BBVAs strategic priorities, such as fostering the more efficient use of increasingly greater volumes of data for better decision-making as well as supporting the transition to a more sustainable future.

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BBVA Uncovers The Promise Of Quantum Computing For Banking And Financial Services - Forbes