The use of quantum computers has grown over the past several months as researchers have relied on these systems to make sense of the massive amounts of data related to the COVID-19 virus.

Quantum computers are based on qubits, a unit that can hold more data than classic binary bits, said Heather West, a senior research analyst at IDC.

Besides better understanding of the virus, manufacturers have been using quantum systems to determine supply and demand on certain products -- toilet paper, for example -- so they can make estimates based on trends, such as how much is being sold in particular geographic areas, she said.

"Quantum computers can help better determine demand and supply, and it allows manufacturers to better push out supplies in a more scientific way,'' West said. "If there is that push in demand it can also help optimize the manufacturing process and accelerate it and actually modernize it by identifying breakdowns and bottlenecks."

Quantum has gained momentum this year because it has moved from the academic realm to "more commercially evolving ecosystems,'' West said.

In late 2019, Google claimed that it had reached quantum supremacy, observed Carmen Fontana, an IEEE member and a cloud and emerging tech practice lead at Centric Consulting. "While there was pushback on this announcement by other leaders in tech, one thing was certain -- it garnered many headlines."

Echoing West, Fontana said that until then, "quantum computing had felt to many as largely an academic exercise with far-off implications. After the announcement, sentiment seemed to shift to 'Quantum computing is real and happening sooner than later'."

In 2020, there have been more tangible timelines and applications for quantum computing, indicating that the space is rapidly advancing and maturing, Fontana said.

"For instance, IBM announced plans to go from their present 65-qubit computer to a 1,000-qubit computer over the next three years," he said. "Google conducted a large-scale chemical simulation on a quantum computer, demonstrating the practicality of the technology in solving real-world problems."

Improved artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, accelerated business intelligence, and increased productivity and efficiency were the top expectations cited by organizations currently investing in cloud-based quantum computing technologies, according to an IDC surveyearlier this year.

"Initial survey findings indicate that while cloud-based quantum computing is a young market, and allocated funds for quantum computing initiatives are limited (0-2% of IT budgets), end users are optimistic that early investment will result in a competitive advantage,'' IDC said.

Manufacturing, financial services, and security industries are currently leading the way by experimenting with more potential use cases, developing advanced prototypes, and being further along in their implementation status, according to IDC.

Quantum is not without its challenges, though. The biggest one West sees is decoherence, which happens when qubits are exposed to "environmental factors" or too many try to work together at once. Because they are "very, very sensitive," they can lose their power and ability to function, and as result, cause errors in a calculation, she said.

"Right now, that is what many of the vendors are looking to solve with their qubit solutions,'' West said.

Another issue preventing quantum from becoming more of a mainstream technology right now is the ability to manage the quantum systems. "In order to keep qubits stable, they have to be kept at very cold, subzero temps, and that makes it really difficult for a lot of people to work with them,'' West said.

Nevertheless, With the time horizon of accessible quantum computing now shrinking to a decade or less, Fontana believes we can expect to see "an explosion of start-ups looking to be first movers in the quantum applications space. These companies will seek to apply quantum's powerful compute power to solve existing problems in novel ways."

Here are eight companies that are already focused on quantum computing.

Atom Computing is a quantum computing hardware company specializing in neutral atom quantum computers. While it is currently prototyping its first offerings, Atom Computing said it will provide cloud access "to large numbers of very coherent qubits by optically trapping and addressing individual atoms," said Ben Bloom, founder and CEO.

The company also builds and creates "complicated hardware control systems for use in the academic community,'' Bloom said.

Xanadu is a Canadian quantum technology company with the mission to build quantum computers that are useful and available to people everywhere. Founded in 2016, Xanadu is building toward a universal quantum computer using silicon photonic hardware, according to Sepehr Taghavi, corporate development manager.

The company also provides users access to near-term quantum devices through its Xanadu Quantum Cloud (XQC) service. The company also leads the development of PennyLane, an open-source software library for quantum machine learning and application development, Taghavi said.

In 2016, IBM was the first company to put a quantum computer on the cloud. The company has since built up an active community of more than 260,000 registered users, who run more than one billion every day on real hardware and simulators.

In 2017, IBM was the first company to offer universal quantum computing systems via theIBM Q Network. The network now includes more than 125 organizations, including Fortune 500s, startups, research labs, and education institutions. Partners include Daimler AG,JPMorgan Chase, andExxonMobil. All use IBM's most advanced quantum computers to simulate new materials for batteries, model portfolios and financial risk, and simulate chemistry for new energy technologies, the company said.

By2023, IBM scientists will deliver a quantum computer with a 1,121-qubit processor, inside a 10-foot tall "super-fridge" that will be online and capable of delivering a Quantum Advantage-- the point where certain information processing tasks can be performed more efficiently or cost effectively on a quantum computer, versus a classical one, according to the company.

ColdQuanta commercializes quantum atomics, which it said is "the next wave of the information age." The company's Quantum Core technology is based on ultra-cold atoms cooled to a temperature of nearly absolute zero; lasers manipulate and control the atoms with extreme precision.

The company manufactures components, instruments, and turnkey systems that address a broad spectrum of applications: quantum computing, timekeeping, navigation, radiofrequency sensors, and quantum communications. It also develops interface software.

ColdQuanta's global customers include major commercial and defense companies; all branches of the US Department of Defense; national labs operated by the Department of Energy; NASA; NIST; and major universities, the company said.

In April 2020, ColdQuanta was selected by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a scalable, cold-atom-based quantum computing hardware and software platform that can demonstrate quantum advantage on real-world problems.

Zapata Computing empowers enterprise teams to accelerate quantum solutions and capabilities. It introduced Orquestra, an end-to-end, workflow-based toolset for quantum computing. In addition to previously available backends that include a full range of simulators and classical resources, Orquestra now integrates with Qiskit and IBM Quantum's open quantum systems, Honeywell's System Model H, and Amazon Braket, the company said.

The Orquestra workflow platform provides access to Honeywell's H, and was designed to enable teams to compose, run, and analyze complex, quantum-enabled workflows and challenging computational solutions at scale, Zapata said. Orquestra is purpose-built for quantum machine learning, optimization, and simulation problems across industries.

Recently introduced Azure Quantum provides a "one-stop-shop" to create a path to scalable quantum computing, Microsoft said. It is available in preview to select customers and partners through Azure.

For developers, Azure Quantum offers:

Founded in 1999, D-Wave claims to be the first company to sell a commercial quantum computer, in 2011, and the first to give developers real-time cloud access to quantum processors with Leap, its quantum cloud service.

D-Wave's approach to quantum computing, known as quantum annealing, is best suited to optimization tasks in fields such as AI, logistics, cybersecurity, financial modeling, fault detection, materials sciences, and more. More than 250 early quantum applications have been built to-date using D-Wave's technology, the company said.

The company has seen a lot of momentum in 2020. In February, D-Wave announced the launch of Leap 2, which introduced new tools and features designed to make it easier for developers to build bigger applications. In July, the company expanded access to Leap to India and Australia. In March, D-Wave opened free access to Leap for researchers working on responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. In September, the company launched Advantage, a quantum system designed for business. Advantage has more than 5,000 qubits, 15-way qubit connectivity, and an expanded hybrid solver service to run problems with up to one million variables, D-Wave said. Advantage is accessible through Leap.

Strangeworks, a startup based in Austin, Texas, claims to be lowering the barrier to entry into quantum computing by providing tools for development on all quantum hardware and software platforms. Strangeworks launched in March 2018, and one year later, deployed a beta version of its software platform to users from more than 140 different organizations. Strangeworks will open its initial offering of the platform in Q1 2021, and the enterprise edition is coming in late 2021, according to Steve Gibson, chief strategy officer.

The Strangeworks Quantum Computing platform provides tools to access and program quantum computing devices. The Strangeworks IDE is platform-agnostic, and integrates all hardware, software frameworks, and supporting languages, the company said. To facilitate this goal, Strangeworks manages assembly, integrations, and product updates. Users can share their work privately with collaborators, or publicly. Users' work belongs to them and open sourcing is not required to utilize the Strangeworks platform.

Go here to read the rest:
Eight leading quantum computing companies in 2020 | ZDNet

Spinning atoms in a magnetic field notoriously behave in ways that scientists are yet to understand entirely. New research from MIT has now shed some light on the obscure laws that govern the smallest of particles, which could pave the way for further developments in the design of quantum devices that rely on atomic spin.

The team exposed spinning lithium atoms to magnetic forces of different strengths to observe how the quantum particles reacted both individually and as a group. They were faced in each scenario with a surprising choreography of atoms, revealing unexpected diversity of behavior in a well-known and studied magnetic material.

Spin, like mass or charge, is an intrinsic property of atoms: the particles rotate around an axis in either a clockwise manner (often described as "down") or anticlockwise ("up"). Based on their spin, atoms can react to magnetic fields in different ways, for example by aligning themselves with other atoms in a specific pattern.

SEE: Managing AI and ML in the enterprise 2020: Tech leaders increase project development and implementation (TechRepublic Premium)

The spin of many atoms together in a magnetic material that is exposed to a magnetic field can reach an equilibrium state, where all the atom spins are aligned; or the atoms can adopt dynamic behavior, where the spins across many atoms create a wave-like pattern.

MIT's research team focused on the way that atoms evolve from dynamic behavior back into an equilibrium state and found that the magnetic force that the atoms are exposed to plays a key part in determining the particles' behavior. Some magnets triggered a so-called "ballistic" behavior, where the atomic spins shot quickly back into an equilibrium state, while others revealed "diffusive behavior", with the particles spinning back to equilibrium in a much slower fashion.

"Studying one of the simplest magnetic materials, we have advanced the understanding of magnetism," said Wolfgang Ketterle, professor of physics at MIT and the leader of the research team. "When you find new phenomena in one of the simplest models in physics for magnetism, then you have a chance to fully describe and understand it. This is what gets me out of bed in the morning, and gets me excited."

To study the phenomenon, Ketterle's team brought the lithium atoms down to temperatures more than ten times colder than interstellar space, which freezes the particles to a near standstill and enables easier observation. Using lasers as a type of tweezer, the scientists then grabbed the atoms and arranged them into strings of beads. With 1,000 strings, each comprising 40 atoms, the team created an ultra-cold 40,000-strong atom lattice.

Pulsed magnetic forces of different strengths were then applied to the lattice, causing each atom along the string to tilt its spin in a wavelike manner. The researchers were able to image those wave patterns on a detector, and watched how the atoms gradually evolved from dynamic behavior to equilibrium, depending on the nature of the magnetic field that they were exposed to.

The process, explained Ketterle, is similar to plucking a guitar's strings: playing the strings brings them out of their equilibrium condition, and allows the scientists to watch what happens before they return to their original state.

"What we're doing here is, we're kind of plucking the string of spins. We're putting in this helix pattern, and then observing how this pattern behaves as a function of time," Ketterle said. "This allows us to see the effect of different magnetic forces between the spins."

Although some of this behavior had been theoretically predicted in the past, detailed observation of patterns of atomic spins had never been observed in detail until now. These patterns, however, were found to fit an existing mathematical model called the Heisenberg model, which is commonly used to predict magnetic behavior.

SEE: Quantum computers are coming. Get ready for them to change everything

Together with a team of scientists at Harvard, MIT's researchers were able to calculate the spin's dynamics. The results, therefore, aren't only useful to advance the knowledge of magnetism at a fundamental level; but they could also be used as a blueprint for a device that could predict the properties and behaviors of new materials at the quantum level.

"With all of the current excitement about the promise of quantum information science to solve practical problems in the future, it is great to see work like this actually coming to fruition today," said John Gillaspy, program officer in the Division of Physics at the National Science Foundation, and a funder of the research.

A higher-level understanding of quantum particles could also lead to the design of new technologies, such as spintronic devices, according to the researchers. Unlike electronics, which leverage the flow of electrons, spintronics tap the spin of quantum particles to transmit, process and store information. They hold promise, therefore, for quantum computing, where the spin of particles would constitute a bit of quantum information.

See original here:
Quantum computing: Strings of ultracold atoms reveal the surprising behavior of quantum particles - ZDNet

Anyon Systems's Quantum Computer

Anyon System's superconducting quantum processor.

MONTREAL, Dec. 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Anyon Systems Inc. (Anyon), a quantum computing company based in Montreal, Canada, announced today that it is to deliver Canadas first gate-based quantum computer for the Department of National Defenses Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC). The quantum computer will feature Anyons Yukon generation superconducting quantum processor. Named after Canadas westernmost territory, the quantum computer will enable DRDC researchers to explore quantum computing to solve problems of interest to their mission.

Quantum computing is expected to be a disruptive technology and is of strategic importance to many industries and government agencies. Anyon is focused on delivering large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computers to a wide group of early adopters including government agencies, high performance computing centers and universities in the near term, said Dr. Alireza Yazdi, founder and CEO of Anyon.

About Anyon Systems

Founded in 2014, Anyon Systems is the first Canadian company manufacturing gate-based quantum computing platform for universal quantum computation. Anyon Systems delivers turnkey gate-based quantum computers. The company is headquartered in Montreal, Quebec.

Media Contact:media@anyonsys.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/7c776a6e-2ef8-4875-b33a-06c3ccf9f8df

Excerpt from:
Anyon Systems to Deliver a Quantum Computer to the Canadian Department of National Defense - GlobeNewswire

DUBLIN and PARIS, Dec. 17, 2020 Atos today announces it will deliver its first GPU-acceleratedAtos Quantum Learning Machine Enhanced(Atos QLM E), the worlds highest-performing commercially available quantum simulator, to the Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC).

The Atos QLM E will be integrated with the Irish national supercomputer Kay and equipped with a variety of quantum software programming tools. As a hybrid HPC-Quantum Computing environment, the integrated Kay-Atos QLM E platform will serve theQuantum Programming Ireland (QPI) Initiativefor conducting R&D and national-level skills development activities in quantum technologies by ICHEC as well as other Irish organizations in academic, enterprise and public sector.

Offering up to 12 times more computation speed than the original Atos QLM, the Atos QLM E is also an integral component of the NEASQC project, in the 1 bn European flagship quantum initiative, of which Ireland is a partner along with 11 other European companies and research labs, andcoordinated by Atos.

Once the Atos QLM E is delivered on-premise, Atos will provide a fast-track training program and continue to enhance the system throughout its lifetime to ensure that it delivers the functionality required in this fast-moving discipline of quantum computing.

Prof. Jean-Christophe (JC) Desplat, Director at ICHEC, said:As Irelands high performance computing authority, were committed to using the power of technology to solve some of the toughest challenges across public, academic and enterprise sectors. Working with a number of partners across Europe, we look forward to utilizing the Atos QLM E related for R&D on a number of scientific and industry-relevant quantum computing use-casesand supporting scientific breakthroughs in high-performance computing.

Agns Boudot, Senior Vice President, Head of HPC & Quantum at Atos, said:As the first Atos QLM E deployed globally, this partnership marks an important milestone in our Quantum Program. We look forward to supporting ICHEC on their quantum journey, helping them explore with their users the huge potential that quantum computing offers. The solution will provide a scalable, future-proof, national framework for the porting of hybrid applications, and for the training and skills development of Irish researchers, and ICHECs partners across Europe.

Atos QLM E has been optimized to drastically reduce the simulation time of hybrid classical-quantum algorithms simulations, leading to quicker progress in application research.

Atos, a pioneer in quantum

In 2016, Atos launched Atos Quantum an ambitiousprogram to anticipate the future of quantum computing. As a result of this initiative,Atos was the first organization to offer aquantum noise simulation modulewithin its Atos QLM offer. Atos QLM is being used in numerous countries worldwide includingAustria,Finland,France,Germany,India, Italy,Japan,the Netherlands, Senegal,UKand theUnited States, empowering major research programs in various sectors like industry orenergy. Recently, Atos introduced Q-score, the first universal quantum metrics reference, applicable to all programmable quantum processors.

Source: Atos

See the rest here:
Atos Delivers Its First GPU-Accelerated Quantum Learning Machine to the Irish Centre for High-End Computing - HPCwire

Electrons inhabit a strange and topsy-turvy world. These infinitesimally small particles have never ceased to amaze and mystify despite the more than a century that scientists have studied them. Now, in an even more amazing twist, physicists have discovered that, under certain conditions, interacting electrons can create what are called topological quantum states. This finding, which was recently published in the journal Nature,holds great potential for revolutionizing electrical engineering, materials science and especially computer science.

Topological states of matter are particularly intriguing classes of quantum phenomena. Their study combines quantum physics with topology, which is the branch of theoretical mathematics that studies geometric properties that can be deformed but not intrinsically changed. Topological quantum states first came to the publics attention in 2016 when three scientists Princetons Duncan Haldane, who is Princetons Thomas D. Jones Professor of Mathematical Physics and Sherman Fairchild University Professor of Physics, together with David Thouless and Michael Kosterlitz were awarded the Nobel Prize for their work in uncovering the role of topology in electronic materials.

A Princeton-led team of physicists have discovered that, under certain conditions, interacting electrons can create what are called topological quantum states, which,has implications for many technological fields of study, especially information technology. To get the desired quantum effect, the researchersplaced two sheets of graphene on top of each other with the top layer twisted at the "magic" angle of 1.1 degrees, whichcreates a moir pattern. This diagram shows a scanning tunneling microscopeimaging the magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene.

Image courtesy of Kevin Nuckolls

The last decade has seen quite a lot of excitement about new topological quantum states of electrons, said Ali Yazdani, the Class of 1909 Professor of Physics at Princeton and the senior author of the study. Most of what we have uncovered in the last decade has been focused on how electrons get these topological properties, without thinking about them interacting with one another.

But by using a material known as magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene, Yazdani and his team were able to explore how interacting electrons can give rise to surprising phases of matter.

The remarkable properties of graphene were discovered two years ago when Pablo Jarillo-Herrero and his team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) used it to induce superconductivity a state in which electrons flow freely without any resistance. The discovery was immediately recognized as a new material platform for exploring unusual quantum phenomena.

Yazdani and his fellow researchers were intrigued by this discovery and set out to further explore the intricacies of superconductivity.

But what they discovered led them down a different and untrodden path.

This was a wonderful detour that came out of nowhere, said Kevin Nuckolls, the lead author of the paper and a graduate student in physics. It was totally unexpected, and something we noticed that was going to be important.

Following the example of Jarillo-Herrero and his team, Yazdani, Nuckolls and the other researchers focused their investigation on twisted bilayer graphene.

Its really a miracle material, Nuckolls said. Its a two-dimensional lattice of carbon atoms thats a great electrical conductor and is one of the strongest crystals known.

Graphene is produced in a deceptively simple but painstaking manner: a bulk crystal of graphite, the same pure graphite in pencils, is exfoliated using sticky tape to remove the top layers until finally reaching a single-atom-thin layer of carbon, with atoms arranged in a flat honeycomb lattice pattern.

To get the desired quantum effect, the Princeton researchers, following the work of Jarillo-Herrero, placed two sheets of graphene on top of each other with the top layer angled slightly. This twisting creates a moir pattern, which resembles and is named after a common French textile design. The important point, however, is the angle at which the top layer of graphene is positioned: precisely 1.1 degrees, the magic angle that produces the quantum effect.

Its such a weird glitch in nature, Nuckolls said, that it is exactly this one angle that needs to be achieved. Angling the top layer of graphene at 1.2 degrees, for example, produces no effect.

The researchers generated extremely low temperatures and created a slight magnetic field. They then used a machine called a scanning tunneling microscope, which relies on a technique called quantum tunneling rather than light to view the atomic and subatomic world. They directed the microscopes conductive metal tip on the surface of the magic-angle twisted graphene and were able to detect the energy levels of the electrons.

They found that the magic-angle graphene changed how electrons moved on the graphene sheet. It creates a condition which forces the electrons to be at the same energy, said Yazdani. We call this a flat band.

When electrons have the same energy are in a flat band material they interact with each other very strongly. This interplay can make electrons do many exotic things, Yazdani said.

One of these exotic things, the researchers discovered, was the creation of unexpected and spontaneous topological states.

This twisting of the graphene creates the right conditions to create a very strong interaction between electrons, Yazdani explained. And this interaction unexpectedly favors electrons to organize themselves into a series of topological quantum states.

The researchers discovered that the interaction between electrons creates topological insulators:unique devices that whose interiors do not conduct electricity but whose edges allow the continuous and unimpeded movement ofelectrons. This diagram depicts thedifferent insulating states of the magic-angle graphene, each characterized by an integer called its Chern number, which distinguishes between different topological phases.

Image courtesy of Kevin Nuckolls

Specifically, they discovered that the interaction between electrons creates what are called topological insulators. These are unique devices that act as insulators in their interiors, which means that the electrons inside are not free to move around and therefore do not conduct electricity. However, the electrons on the edges are free to move around, meaning they are conductive. Moreover, because of the special properties of topology, the electrons flowing along the edges are not hampered by any defects or deformations. They flow continuously and effectively circumvent the constraints such as minute imperfections in a materials surface that typically impede the movement of electrons.

During the course of the work, Yazdanis experimental group teamed up two other Princetonians Andrei Bernevig, professor of physics, and Biao Lian, assistant professor of physics to understand the underlying physical mechanism for their findings.

Our theory shows that two important ingredients interactions and topology which in nature mostly appear decoupled from each other, combine in this system, Bernevig said. This coupling creates the topological insulator states that were observed experimentally.

Although the field of quantum topology is relatively new, itcouldtransform computer science. People talk a lot about its relevance to quantum computing, where you can use these topological quantum states to make better types of quantum bits, Yazdani said. The motivation for what were trying to do is to understand how quantum information can be encoded inside a topological phase. Research in this area is producing exciting new science and can have potential impact in advancing quantum information technologies.

Yazdani and his team will continue their research into understanding how the interactions of electrons give rise to different topological states.

The interplay between the topology and superconductivity in this material system is quite fascinating and is something we will try to understand next, Yazdani said.

In addition to Yazdani, Nuckolls, Bernevig and Lian, contributors to the study included co-first authors Myungchul Oh and Dillon Wong, postdoctoral research associates, as well as Kenji Watanabe and Takashi Taniguchi of the National Institute for Material Science in Japan.

Strongly Correlated Chern Insulators in Magic-Angle Twisted Bilayer Graphene, by Kevin P. Nuckolls, Myungchul Oh, Dillon Wong, Biao Lian, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, B. Andrei Bernevig and Ali Yazdani, was published Dec. 14 in the journal Nature (DOI:10.1038/s41586-020-3028-8). This work was primarily supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundations EPiQS initiative (GBMF4530, GBMF9469) and the Department of Energy (DE-FG02-07ER46419 and DE-SC0016239). Other support for the experimental work was provided by the National Science Foundation (Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers through the Princeton Center for Complex Materials (NSF-DMR-1420541, NSF-DMR-1904442) and EAGER DMR-1643312), ExxonMobil through the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton, the Princeton Catalysis Initiative, the Elemental Strategy Initiative conducted by Japans Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (JPMXP0112101001, JSPS KAKENHI grant JP20H0035, and CREST JPMJCR15F3), the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science at Princeton University, the Simons Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the Schmidt Fund for Innovative Research, BSF Israel US foundation (2018226), the Office of Naval Research (N00014-20-1-2303) and the Princeton Global Network Funds.

More:
'Magic' angle graphene and the creation of unexpected topological quantum states - Princeton University