Quantum News Briefs October 12: Spain selected by European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking to host & operate quantum computers; Researchers from Canada, the U.S. and Japan simulate a quantum phase transition in a programmable 2,000 qubit Ising chain; and Phasecraft develops first truly scalable algorithm for observing ground-state properties of the Fermi-Hubbard model on a quantum computer and MORE.
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Spain selected by European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking to host & operate quantum computers
The new infrastructure will be installed at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) and will be integrated into the MareNostrum 5 supercomputer in collaboration with the Institut de Física de Altes Energies (IFAE) and the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL) in Portugal.
The new quantum computer to be installed at BSC will have the potential to significantly increase the impact of research by enabling solutions beyond the capabilities of current supercomputers. The EU and the Spanish State Secretariat for Digitization and AI (SEDIA) will co-finance €12.5 million for the project.
This milestone is one of the first results of the Quantum Spain program begun by SEDIA and coordinated by the Spanish Supercomputing Network (RES). The program boosts and strengthens the national quantum computing ecosystem and aims to reinforce its role in Europe and to attract investment to Spain.
The BSC-CNS is a public consortium formed by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, the Generalitat de Catalunya and the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – BarcelonaTech (UPC). For additional information about the new quantum computer and Spain’s Barcelona Supercomputing Center-CNS click here.
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Researchers simulate a quantum phase transition in a programmable 2,000 qubit Ising chain
“Coherent annealing has been something we’ve wanted to showcase for a long time,” Andrew D. King, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Phys.org. “One reason is that it allows us to compare the behavior of our programmable quantum system with ideal Schrödinger dynamics, providing both strong evidence of quantum-ness and a benchmark of this quantum-ness. The 1D chain is perfect for this because it has a well-known closed-form solution, which means that we can solve it classically without exhaustively simulating the quantum dynamics—a classically intractable task in general.”
The quantum simulation of the 1D Ising chain has been done before by other research teams, including a group at Harvard University. However, the simulation carried out by King and his colleagues is the first to be conducted using an annealing-based quantum computer. In addition, the researchers were able to realize larger and more strongly correlated states than those demonstrated in the past.
“The key variable here in our experiment is the annealing time, which is the time the D-Wave processor takes to go from its initial quantum superposition state to the classical endpoint of the computation,” King explained. “Normally a speed limit of 500 nanoseconds is placed on the system, to allow tolerances on the control circuitry. In this work, however, we went 100 times faster than this.”
Due to the higher speeds reached by their system, King and his colleagues had to apply more stringent hardware requirements and use new software methods. This ultimately allowed them to perfectly synchronize the thousands of qubits in their system.
The researchers performed their simulations using a highly programmable processor created at D-Wave Systems. To test its effectiveness more reliably, they chose to simulate an extremely simple and well understood quantum phase transition.
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Phasecraft develops first truly scalable algorithm for observing ground-state properties of the Fermi-Hubbard model on a quantum computer
Modelling quantum systems of this form has significant practical implications, including the design of new materials that could be used in the development of more efficient solar cells and batteries, or even high-temperature superconductors. However, doing so remains beyond the capacity of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. The Fermi-Hubbard model is widely recognized as an excellent benchmark for near-term quantum computers because it is the simplest materials system that includes non-trivial correlations beyond what is captured by classical methods. Approximately producing the lowest-energy (ground) state of the Fermi-Hubbard model enables the user to calculate key physical properties of the model.In the past, researchers have only succeeded in solving small, highly simplified Fermi-Hubbard instances on a quantum computer. This research shows that much more ambitious results are possible. Leveraging a new, highly efficient algorithm and better error-mitigation techniques, Phasecraft and their research partners successfully ran an experiment that is four times larger – and consists of 10 times more quantum gates – than anything previously reported in the literature. The work was partly funded by the ERC through Prof Ashley Montanaro’s Consolidator Grant “Quantum Algorithms: from Foundations to Applications,” and partly by UKRI through the EPSRC Prosperity Partnership scheme, which enabled the collaboration between the partners.
“The Fermi-Hubbard instance in this experiment represents a crucial step towards solving realistic materials systems using a quantum computer,” says Phasecraft co-founder, and Professor of Quantum Computation at the University of Bristol, Ashley Montanaro. “And we succeeded by developing the first truly scalable algorithm that anyone has managed to implement for the Fermi-Hubbard model. That’s particularly exciting because it suggests that we will be able to scale our methods in order to leverage more powerful quantum computers as the hardware improves.”
Phasecraft brings together many of the world’s leading quantum scientists and engineers and partners with the world’s leading developers of quantum hardware. Their research has led to fundamental breakthroughs in quantum science and is aimed at significantly reducing the timescale for quantum advantage in several critical areas.
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A new process to build 2D materials made possible by quantum calculations that could be used for fuel-cells devices
Researchers from the University of Surrey have performed calculations that allowed scientists to discover new “phases” of two-dimensional (2D) material that could be used to develop the next generation of fuel-cells devices. Quantum News Briefs summarizes the research analysis and interviews from Phys.org below.
The calculations aided Graz University of Technology’s research into the growth of one of the most promising 2D materials, hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN)—which has a honeycomb crystal structure almost identical to that of the most famous 2D material, graphene.
Dr. Anton Tamtögl, the project lead from Graz University of Technology, says that “the nanoporous phases discovered during our research are not of purely academic interest—they offer the potential for applications such as sensor materials, nanoreactors, and membranes. This work illustrates that fundamental physics and chemistry offer routes to truly relevant nanotechnology applications.”
Anthony Payne, co-author from the University of Surrey, says that “these nanopores are unlike anything seen before and may open up a new generation of nanomaterials with exciting possibilities in nanotechnology and catalysis.”
Anthony Payne, co-author from the University of Surrey, says that “these nanopores are unlike anything seen before and may open up a new generation of nanomaterials with exciting possibilities in nanotechnology and catalysis.”
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Sandra K. Helsel, Ph.D. has been researching and reporting on frontier technologies since 1990. She has her Ph.D. from the University of Arizona.