Quantum News Briefs October 4 begins today with the announcement that the Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded for breakthroughs in quantum mechanics that “… has laid the foundation for a new era of quantum technology”; followed by Zurich Instruments introduction of LabOne Q, an intuitive software framework for scalable quantum computing. Third is ColdQuanta’s Expansion of its Leadership Team with Promotion of Chris Wood to CTO & Addition of New Top Talent and even MORE.
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Nobel Prize in physics awarded for breakthroughs in quantum mechanics
The Academy further explained the experiments that led to the prize: “What happens to one particle in an entangled pair determines what happens to the other, even if they are really too far apart to affect each other. The laureates’ development of experimental tools has laid the foundation for a new era of quantum technology.”
John F. Clauser, 79, an American physicist in Walnut Creek, Calif., was laureated along with Alain Aspect of Université Paris-Saclay and École Polytechnique in France and Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna in Austria.
Further information is at www.kva.se and www.nobelprize.org
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Zurich Instruments introduces LabOne Q, an intuitive software framework for scalable quantum computing
With LabOne Q, controlling many qubits is straightforward. Upgrading or scaling up a lab setup just requires a drop-in replacement in the code, with synchronization of all instruments ensured from the start. Simultaneous tune-up of multiple qubits, multiplexed qubit state readout, multi-qubit gate calibration, or control crosstalk compensation are all included.
LabOne Q empowers users to focus on science by providing an intuitive high-level programming language for constructing pulse sequences and building experiments. LabOne Q streamlines and automates time-consuming tasks such as optimizing instrument settings, generating and uploading waveforms, and synchronizing pulses between multiple instruments. Even with this control and measurement automation, users still have complete low-level access to the instruments. Setup details and instrument settings are accessible through a single line of code. LabOne Q provides browser-based tools for visualization of the experimental sequences and pulses before execution, giving a simplified overview of complex experiments, even with hundreds of pulses. The user-friendly python environment makes keeping track of experimental results and calibration data and repeating or modifying a previous experiment straightforward.
LabOne Q enables users to get the most out of their setups by optimizing control instructions and minimizing communication overhead. LabOne Q Experiments have a clear distinction between real-time execution, when the instruments execute instructions and gather data autonomously, and near-time instructions, when communication with an outside process is necessary. For example, when tuning up a quantum gate with optimal control, real-time calibration sequences are interleaved with optimization steps, where intermediate measurement results are used to optimally calibrate the required gate pulse. Additionally, a clear separation between offline and online workflows means experiments may be pipelined and queued to increase uptime. This means less time is spent on classical processing, and more on quantum computing.
Zurich Instruments makes cutting-edge instrumentation for scientists and technologists in advanced laboratories who are passionate about phenomena that are often notoriously difficult to measure. The company’s core offering includes lock-in amplifiers, impedance analyzers, arbitrary waveform generators, and the first commercially available quantum computing control system.
ColdQuanta Expands Leadership Team with Promotion of Chris Wood to Chief Technology Officer and Addition of New Top Talent
These appointments come on the heels of several technical milestones, industry partnerships, and growth across the company’s entire portfolio of quantum ecosystem solutions. Earlier this year ColdQuanta’s quantum matter platform, Albert, launched in beta at the Laser World of Photonics Conference in Munich, where it was honored as the 2022 Prism Award winner for Quantum. Additionally, ColdQuanta announced the commercial beta launch of Hilbert, the world’s first cold atom quantum computer. The company made its first acquisition of quantum software company, Super.tech.
As CTO, Wood will guide ColdQuanta’s technology and new product strategy, which includes overseeing the critical transition from Research to Engineering to Product. He brings extensive familiarity with rugged, field-proven mil-spec and space-qualified solid-state lasers, Telcordia-qualified lasers, Photonic Integrated Circuits, and optical fabrication and coatings from previous jobs at at Insight Lidar, Kapteyn-Murnane Laboratories, Lockheed Martin Coherent Technologies, and Precision Photonics.
Dr. Clark joins ColdQuanta from General Dynamics Mission Systems, where he was a Senior Engineering Fellow, and the Founder and Director of the Quantum Laboratory and Quantum Center of Excellence, where he explored the practical use of quantum technologies for secure and covert communications, remote sensing and signal processing.
Laura Hale, Vice President of Government Programs, brings a rich background in program, product, and systems engineering across multiple domains, including ground, space, and novel environments in transformational leadership positions with NASA, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the Space Development Agency, and various elements of the US Department of Defense and Intelligence Community.
Matthews joins ColdQuanta as Vice President of Sales & Business Development for Quantum Information Platforms, bringing 20 years of Enterprise Software Sales experience to his role. He previously worked at quantum computing software company, QC Ware.
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Center for Quantum Networks a key component of $99 Million Grand Challenges Research Building at the University of Arizona
The 108,000-square-foot building will be the newest addition to the Wyant College of Optical Sciences complex. The College of Optical Sciences was deeply involved in the design process of the building and has hired 14 new staff members, according to Dean Thomas L. Koch. Three floors of the addition will be dedicated solely to optical sciences. “We’re growing in response to the demand for our students, staff, technology and research. We need space and it’s wonderful to get,” said Koch. “It’s kind of custom-made to do what we need. It’s fabulous.”
A key component of the Grand Challenges building is the Center for Quantum Networks, a multi-year, multi-million-dollar project through the National Science Foundation that will lay the foundations for the quantum internet. The quantum internet will revolutionize “how humankind computes, communicates and senses the world by creating a fabric to connect quantum computers, data centers and gadgets” using high capacity “quantum bits,” or qubits, according to a UA news release.
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Quantum technology reaches unprecedented control over captured light
A major obstacle towards the realization of a practically useful quantum computer is that the quantum systems used to encode the information are prone to noise and interference, which causes errors. Correcting these errors is a key challenge in the development of quantum computers. A promising approach is to replace qubits with resonators.
However, controlling the states of a resonator is a challenge with which quantum researchers all over the world are grappling. And the results from Chalmers provide a way of doing so. The technique developed at Chalmers allows researchers to generate virtually all previously demonstrated quantum states of light, such as for example Schrödinger’s cat or Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP)states, and the cubic phase state, a state previously described only in theory.
“The cubic phase state is something that many quantum researchers have been trying to create in practice for twenty years. The fact that we have now managed to do this for the first time is a demonstration of how well our technique works, but the most important advance is that there are so many states of varying complexity and we have found a technique that can create any of them,” says Marina Kudra, a doctoral student at the Department of Microtechnology and Nanoscience and the study’s lead author.
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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.