Monthly Archives: April 2021

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When it comes to grappling with the future of quantum computing, enterprises are scrambling to figure just how seriously they should take this new computing architecture. Many executives are trapped between the anxiety of missing the next wave of innovation and the fear of being played for suckers by people overhyping quantums revolutionary potential.

Thats why the approach to quantum by pharmaceutical giant Merck offers a clear-eyed roadmap for other enterprises to follow. The company is taking a cautious but informed approach that includes setting up an internal working group and partnering with quantum startup Seeqc to monitor developments while keeping an open mind.

According to Philipp Harbach, a theoretical chemist who is head of Mercks In Silico Research group, a big part of the challenge remains trying to keep expectations of executives reasonable even as startup funding to quantum soars and the hype continues to mount.

We are not evangelists of quantum computers, Harbach said. But we are also not skeptics. We are just realistic. If you talk to academics, they tell you there is no commercial value. And if you talk to our management, they tell you in 3 years they want a product out of it. So, there are two worlds colliding that are not very compatible. I think thats typical for every hype cycle.

Mercks desire for the dream of quantum computing to become reality is understandable. The fundamental nature of its business biology and chemistry means the company has been building molecular or quantum level models for more than a century.

Part of the role of the In Silico Research group is to develop those models that can solve quantum problems using evolving technologies such as data analytics and AI and applying them to natural sciences to make experimental work less time-consuming.

But those models are always limited and imperfect because they are being calculated on non-quantum platforms that cant fully mimic the complexity of interactions. If someone can build a fully fault-tolerant quantum computer that operates at sufficient scale and cost, Merck could unlock a new generation of efficiencies and scientific breakthroughs.

The quantum computer will be another augmentation to a classical computer, Harbach said. It wont be a replacement, but an augmentation which will tackle some of these problems in a way that we cannot imagine. Hopefully, it will speed them up in a way that the efficacy of the methods we are employing will be boosted.

About 3 years ago, Merck decided it was time to start educating itself about the emerging quantum sector. The companys venture capital arm, M Ventures, began looking within the company for experts who could help it with due diligence as it began to assess quantum startups. That included mapping out the players and the whole value chain of quantum computing, according to Harbach.

That led to the formal creation of the Quantum Computing Task Force, which has roughly 50 members who try to communicate with quantum players large and small as well as peers among Mercks own competition.

We are basically an interest group trying to understand this topic, Harbach said. Thats why we have a quite good overview and understanding on timelines, player possibilities, and applications.

As part of that exploration, M Ventures eventually began investing in quantum-related startups. In April 2020, the venture fund announced a $5 million investment in Seeqc, a New York-based startup that bills itself as the Digital Quantum Computing company.

We thought that it might be good to have partners in the hardware part and in the software part, Harbach said. Seeqc will partner with us within Merck to really work on problems basically as a hardware partner.

Seeqc is developing a hybrid approach that it believes will make quantum computing useful sooner. The idea is to combine classical computing architectures with quantum computing. It does this through its system-on-a-chip design.

This technology was originally developed at Hypres, a semiconductor electronics developer which spun out Seeqc last year. The M Ventures funding for Seeqc followed a previous $6.8 million seed round. Seeqc raised a subsequent round of $22 million last September in a round led by EQT Ventures.

According to Seeqc CEO John Levy, the companys technology allows it to address some of the fundamental challenges facing quantum systems. Despite rapid advancements in recent years, quantum computers remain too unstable to deliver the high-performance computing needed to justify their costs.

Part of the reason for that is that qubits, the unit of quantum computing power, need to be kept at near-freezing temperatures to process. Scaling then becomes costly and difficult because a system operating with thousands of qubits would be immensely complex to manage, in part because of the massive heating issue.

Levy said Seeqc can address that problem by placing classic microchips over a qubit array to stabilize the environment at cryogenic temperatures while maintaining speed and reducing latency. The company uses a single-flux quantum technology that it has developed and that replaces the microwave pulses being used in other quantum systems. As a result, the company says its platform enables quantum computing at about 1/400 of the cost of current systems in development.

We have taken much of the complexity that youve seen in a quantum computer and weve removed almost all of that by building a set of chips that weve designed, Levy said.

Just as important is a philosophical approach Seeqc is taking. Its not building a general-purpose quantum computer. Instead, it plans to build application-specific ones that are tailored specifically to the problems a client is trying to solve. Because Seeqc has its own chip foundry, it can customize its chips to the needs of application developers as they create different algorithms, Levy said.

In that spirit, Mercks Quantum Computing Task Force is working closely with Seeqc to create viable quantum computers that can be used by its various businesses.

Their technology is a key technology to scale a quantum computer, which is actually much more important because it will make quantum computers bigger and cheaper, Harbach said. And this is, of course, essential for the whole market.

For all this activity, Harbachs view of quantums potential remains sober. He sees nothing on the market that will have any commercial impact, certainly not for Merck. At this point, many of the companys questions remain academic.

What we are basically interested in is how or will the quantum computer hardware ever be scalable to a level that it can tackle problems of realistic size to us, Harbach said. And the same question also goes to the software side. Will there ever be algorithms that can basically mimic these problems on a quantum computer efficiently so that they dont run into noise problems? We are not interested in simulating a molecule right now on a quantum computer. Everything we try to understand is about the timelines: What will be possible and when will it possible.

Harbach has watched the rise in quantum startup funding and various milestone announcements but remains dubious of many of these claims.

They are creating a new market where theres not even the technology ready for it, Harbach said. You have to stay realistic. Theres a lot of money at the moment from governments and VCs. Theres a lot of boost from consultancies because they try to sell the consultancy. And if you talk to experts, its the other way around. They tell you not before 15 years.

The questions Merck asks internally are split into 2 fundamental categories: When will there be a quantum computer that can be more efficient at processing its current quantum models? And when will there be a quantum computer that is so powerful that it opens up new problems and new solutions that the company cannot even imagine today?

Quantum will be a thing, definitely, Harbach said. The only question is when, and Im really, really sure it wont be in the next two years. I wouldnt even say three years. There will be a quantum winter. Winter is coming.

Excerpt from:

How Merck works with Seeqc to cut through quantum computing hype - VentureBeat

Researchers from Spain, Finland and France have demonstrated that magnetism and superconductivity can coexist in graphene, opening a path towards graphene-based topological qubits.

Schematic illustration of the interplay of magnetism and superconductivity in a graphene grain boundary, a potential building block for carbon-based topological qubits Credit: Jose Lado/Aalto University

In the quantum realm, electrons can behave in interesting ways. Magnetism is one of these behaviors that can be seen in everyday life, as is the rarer phenomena of superconductivity. Intriguingly, these two behaviors are often antagonists - the existence of one of them often destroys the other. However, if these two opposite quantum states are forced to coexist artificially, an elusive state called a topological superconductor appears, which is useful for researchers trying to make topological qubits.

Topological qubits are exciting as one of the potential technologies for future quantum computers. In particular, topological qubits provide the basis for topological quantum computing, which is attractive because it is much less sensitive to interference from its surroundings from perturbing the measurements. However, designing and controlling topological qubits has remained a problem, largely due to the difficulty of finding materials capable of hosting these states, such as topological superconductors.

To overcome the elusiveness of topological superconductors, which are very hard to find in natural materials, physicists have developed ways to engineer these states by combining common materials. The basic ingredients to engineer topological superconductors magnetism and superconductivity often require combining dramatically different materials. Whats more, creating a topological superconducting material requires being able to finely tune the magnetism and superconductivity, so researchers have to prove that their material can be both magnetic and superconductive at the same time, and that they can control both properties. In their search for such a material, researchers have turned to graphene.

Graphene represents a controllable and common material and has been suggested as one of the critical materials for quantum technologies. However, the coexistence of magnetism and superconductivity has remained elusive in graphene, despite long-standing experimental efforts that demonstrated the existence of these two states independently. This fundamental limitation represents a critical obstacle towards the development of artificial topological superconductivity in graphene.

In a recent breakthrough experiment, researchers at the UAM in Spain, CNRS in France, and INL in Portugal, together with the theoretical support of Prof. Jose Lado at Aalto University, have demonstrated an initial step along a pathway towards topological qubits in graphene. The researchers demonstrated that single layers of graphene can host simultaneous magnetism and superconductivity, by measuring quantum excitations unique to this interplay. This breakthrough finding was accomplished by combining the magnetism of crystal domains in graphene, and the superconductivity of deposited metallic islands.

This experiment shows that two key paradigmatic quantum orders, superconductivity, and magnetism, can simultaneously coexist in graphene, said Professor Jose Lado, Ultimately, this experiment demonstrates that graphene can simultaneously host the necessary ingredients for topological superconductivity. While in the current experiment we have not yet observed topological superconductivity, building on top of this experiment we can potentially open a new pathway towards carbon-based topological qubits.

The researchers induced superconductivity in graphene by depositing an island of a conventional superconductor close to grain boundaries, naturally forming seams in the graphene which have a slightly different magnetic properties to the rest of the material. The superconductivity and grain boundary magnetism was demonstrated to give rise to Yu-Shiba-Rusinov states, which can only exists in a material when magnetism and superconductivity coexisting together. The phenomena the team observed in the experiment matched up with the theoretical model developed by Professor Lado, showing that the researchers can fully control the quantum phenomena in their designer hybrid system.

The demonstration of Yu-Shiba-Rusinov states in graphene is the first step towards the ultimate development of graphene-based topological qubits. In particular, by carefully controlling Yu-Shiba-Rusinov states, topological superconductivity and Majorana states can be created. Topological qubits based on Majorana states can potentially drastically overcome the limitations of current qubits, protecting quantum information by exploiting the nature of these unconventional states. The emergence of these states requires meticulous control of the system parameters. The current experiment establishes the critical starting point towards this goal, which can be built upon to hopefully open a disruptive road to carbon-based topological quantum computers.

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Researchers take a step towards achieving topological qubits in graphene - Graphene-Info

Six Stanford University researchers are among the 120 newly elected members of the National Academy of Sciences. Scientists are elected to the NAS by their peers.

The six Stanford faculty members newly elected to the National Academy of Sciences. (Image credit: Andrew Brodhead)

The new members from Stanford are Savas Dimopoulos, the Hamamoto Family Professor and professor of physics in the School of Humanities and Sciences; Daniel Freedman, a visiting professor at theStanford Institute for Theoretical Physics (SITP) and professor of applied mathematics and theoretical physics, emeritus, at MIT; Judith Frydman, professor of biology and the Donald Kennedy Chair in the School of Humanities and Sciences, and professor of genetics in the Stanford School of Medicine; Kathryn A. Kam Moler, vice provost and dean of research, and the Marvin Chodorow Professor and professor of applied physics and of physics in the School of Humanities and Sciences; Tirin Moore, professor of neurobiology in the Stanford School of Medicine; and John Rickford, professor of linguistics and the J.E. Wallace Sterling Professor in the Humanities, emeritus, in the School of Humanities and Sciences.

Savas Dimopoulos collaborates on a number of experiments that use the dramatic advances in atom interferometry to do fundamental physics. These include testing Einsteins theory of general relativity to fifteen decimal precision, atom neutrality to thirty decimals, and looking for modifications of quantum mechanics. He is also designing an atom-interferometric gravity-wave detector that will allow us to look at the universe with gravity waves instead of light.

Daniel Freedmans research is in quantum field theory, quantum gravity and string theory with an emphasis on the role of supersymmetry. Freedman, along with physicists Sergio Ferrara and Peter van Nieuwenhuizen, developed the theory of supergravity. A combination of the principles of supersymmetry and general relatively, supergravity is a deeply influential blueprint for unifying all of natures fundamental interactions.

Judith Frydman uses a multidisciplinary approach to address fundamental questions about protein folding and degradation, and molecular chaperones, which help facilitate protein folding. In addition, this work aims to define how impairment of cellular folding and quality control are linked to disease, including cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, and examine whether reengineering chaperone networks can provide therapeutic strategies.

Kam Molers research involves developing new tools to measure magnetic properties of quantum materials and devices on micron length-scales. These tools can then be used to investigate fundamental materials physics, superconducting devices and exotic Josephson effects a phenomenon in superconductors that shows promise for quantum computing.

Tirin Moore studies the activity of single neurons and populations of neurons in areas of the brain that relate to visual and motor functions. His lab explores the consequences of changes in that activity and aims to develop innovative approaches to fundamental problems in systems and circuit-level neuroscience.

John Rickfords research and teaching are focused on sociolinguistics the relation between linguistic variation and change and social structure. He is especially interested in the relation between language and ethnicity, social class and style, language variation and change, pidgin and creole languages, African American Vernacular English, and the applications of linguistics to educational problems.

The academy is a private, nonprofit institution that was created in 1863 to advise the nation on issues related to science and technology. Scholars are elected in recognition of their outstanding contributions to research. This years election brings the total of active academy members to 2,461.

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Six faculty elected to National Academy of Sciences - Stanford Today - Stanford University News

HOUSTON, April 27, 2021 Hewlett Packard Enterprisetoday announced it has been awarded $40M SGD to build a new supercomputer for the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore, the national high-performance computing (HPC) resource center dedicated to supporting science and engineering computing needs for academic, research and industry communities. The new system, which will be 8X faster compared to NSCCs existing pool of HPC resources, will expand and augment ongoing research efforts by enabling tools such as artificial intelligence (AI) and deep machine learning to optimize modeling, simulation and even software simulation for quantum computing. NSCC will use the system to unlock scientific discoveries across medicine, diseases, climate, engineering and more.

The new supercomputer was funded through a SGD200 million investment that was announced by the Singapore government in March 2019 to boost Singapores high-performance computing resources.

Fueling a new supercomputing journey at the National Supercomputing Centre Singapore

The NSCCs new supercomputer will be built and powered using theHPE Cray EX supercomputer, which is an HPC system designed to support next-generation supercomputing, such as Exascale-class systems, that also features a full stack of purpose-built technologies across compute, software, storage and networking to harness insights from vast, complex data more quickly and efficiently. The advanced performance will help tackle compute and data-intensive modeling and simulation needs requiring higher speed and targeted HPC and artificial intelligence capabilities.

The new system will be housed in a new data center designed to increase sustainability and reduce energy consumption. To further support NSCCs mission for a greener data center, the new system will leverage liquid-cooling capabilities made possible through the HPE Cray EX supercomputer to increase energy efficiency and power density by transferring heat generated by the new supercomputer with a liquid-cooled process.

The combination of these advanced technologies will enable the NSCCs existing community of researchers and scientists further their R&D efforts to make breakthroughs in a range of areas, some of which include:

We are inspired by how Singapores community of scientists have leveraged high performance computing to improve ongoing research efforts. We are honored to continue empowering their mission by building them a powerful system using the HPE Cray EX supercomputer that delivers comprehensive, purposely-engineered technologies for demanding research, said Bill Mannel, vice president and general manager, HPE. The new system will deliver a significant boost to R&D, allowing Singapores community of scientists and engineers to make greater contributions that will unlock innovation, economic value, and overall, strengthen the nations position in becoming more digitally-driven.

Supercomputers have enabled the scientific community in Singapore to make significant strides in their research, said Associate Professor Tan Tin Wee, Chief Executive at the National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore. The new system will provide the necessary resources to meet the growing supercomputing needs of our researchers, and to enable more of such significant scientific breakthroughs at the national and global level.

The NSCCs supercomputer unlocks new level of scientific discovery with advanced technologies

The HPE Cray EX supercomputer powering NSCCs new supercomputer is a purpose-built system designed specifically to deliver petaflop to exaflop performance with the worlds most energy-efficient footprint. It also includes the HPE Cray EX software stack for software-defined capabilities that allow the NSCCs users to gain the high-performance of a supercomputer, but through the operational experience of a cloud. Additionally, HPE will integrate the following next-generation technologies with the HPE Cray EX supercomputer:

The new system will be operational in early 2022. To learn more about NSCC and Singapores national HPC resources, please visitwww.nscc.sg

About Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) is the global edge-to-cloud platform as-a-service company that helps organizations accelerate outcomes by unlocking value from all of their data, everywhere. Built on decades of reimagining the future and innovating to advance the way people live and work, HPE delivers unique, open and intelligent technology solutions, with a consistent experience across all clouds and edges, to help customers develop new business models, engage in new ways, and increase operational performance. For more information, visit:www.hpe.com.

Source: HPE

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Selected to Build New Supercomputer for the National Supercomputing Centre Singapore - HPCwire

An international research team has proven that the imaginary part of quantum mechanics can be observed in action in the real world.

For almost a century, physicists have been intrigued by the fundamental question: why are complex numbers so important in quantum mechanics, that is, numbers containing a component with the imaginary number i? Usually, it was assumed that they are only a mathematical trick to facilitate the description of phenomena, and only results expressed in real numbers have a physical meaning. However, a Polish-Chinese-Canadian team of researchers has proved that the imaginary part of quantum mechanics can be observed in action in the real world.

We need to significantly reconstruct our naive ideas about the ability of numbers to describe the physical world. Until now, it seemed that only real numbers were related to measurable physical quantities. However, research conducted by the team of Dr. Alexander Streltsov from the Centre for Quantum Optical Technologies (QOT) at the University of Warsaw with the participation of scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei and the University of Calgary, found quantum states of entangled photons that cannot be distinguished without resorting to complex numbers. Moreover, the researchers also conducted an experiment confirming the importance of complex numbers for quantum mechanics. Articles describing the theory and measurements have just appeared in the journals Physical Review Letters and Physical Review A.

Photons can be so entangled that within quantum mechanics their states cannot be described without using complex numbers. Credit: QOT/jch

In physics, complex numbers were considered to be purely mathematical in nature. It is true that although they play a basic role in quantum mechanics equations, they were treated simply as a tool, something to facilitate calculations for physicists. Now, we have theoretically and experimentally proved that there are quantum states that can only be distinguished when the calculations are performed with the indispensable participation of complex numbers, explains Dr. Streltsov.

Complex numbers are made up of two components, real and imaginary. They have the form a + bi, where the numbers a and b are real. The bi component is responsible for the specific features of complex numbers. The key role here is played by the imaginary number i, i.e. the square root of -1.

There is nothing in the physical world that can be directly related to the number i. If there are 2 or 3 apples on a table, this is natural. When we take one apple away, we can speak of a physical deficiency and describe it with the negative integer -1. We can cut the apple into two or three sections, obtaining the physical equivalents of the rational numbers 1/2 or 1/3. If the table is a perfect square, its diagonal will be the (irrational) square root of 2 multiplied by the length of the side. At the same time, with the best will in the world, it is still impossible to put i apples on the table.

The photon source used to produce quantum states requiring description by complex numbers. Credit: USTC

The surprising career of complex numbers in physics is related to the fact that they can be used to describe all sorts of oscillations much more conveniently than with the use of popular trigonometric functions. Calculations are therefore carried out using complex numbers, and then at the end only the real numbers in them are taken into account.

Compared to other physical theories, quantum mechanics is special because it has to describe objects that can behave like particles under some conditions, and like waves in others. The basic equation of this theory, taken as a postulate, is the Schrdinger equation. It describes changes in time of a certain function, called the wave function, which is related to the probability distribution of finding a system in a specific state. However, the imaginary number i openly appears next to the wave function in the Schrdinger equation.

For decades, there has been a debate as to whether one can create coherent and complete quantum mechanics with real numbers alone. So, we decided to find quantum states that could be distinguished from each other only by using complex numbers. The decisive moment was the experiment where we created these states and physically checked whether they were distinguishable or not, says Dr. Streltsov, whose research was funded by the Foundation for Polish Science.

The experiment verifying the role of complex numbers in quantum mechanics can be presented in the form of a game played by Alice and Bob with the participation of a master conducting the game. Using a device with lasers and crystals, the game master binds two photons into one of two quantum states, absolutely requiring the use of complex numbers to distinguish between them. Then, one photon is sent to Alice and the other to Bob. Each of them measures their photon and then communicates with the other to establish any existing correlations.

Lets assume Alice and Bobs measurement results can only take on the values of 0 or 1. Alice sees a nonsensical sequence of 0s and 1s, as does Bob. However, if they communicate, they can establish links between the relevant measurements. If the game master sends them a correlated state, when one sees a result of 0, so will the other. If they receive an anti-correlated state, when Alice measures 0, Bob will have 1. By mutual agreement, Alice and Bob could distinguish our states, but only if their quantum nature was fundamentally complex, says Dr. Streltsov.

An approach known as quantum resource theory was used for the theoretical description. The experiment itself with local discrimination between entangled two-photon states was carried out in the laboratory at Hefei using linear optics techniques. The quantum states prepared by the researchers turned out to be distinguishable, which proves that complex numbers are an integral, indelible part of quantum mechanics.

The achievement of the Polish-Chinese-Canadian team of researchers is of fundamental importance, but it is so profound that it may translate into new quantum technologies. In particular, research into the role of complex numbers in quantum mechanics can help to better understand the sources of the efficiency of quantum computers, qualitatively new computing machines capable of solving some problems at speeds unattainable by classical computers.

References:

Operational Resource Theory of Imaginarity by Kang-Da Wu, Tulja Varun Kondra, Swapan Rana, Carlo Maria Scandolo, Guo-Yong Xiang, Chuan-Feng Li, Guang-Can Guo and Alexander Streltsov, 1 March 2021, Physical Review Letters.DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.090401

Resource theory of imaginarity: Quantification and state conversion by Kang-Da Wu, Tulja Varun Kondra, Swapan Rana, Carlo Maria Scandolo, Guo-Yong Xiang, Chuan-Feng Li, Guang-Can Guo and Alexander Streltsov, 1 March 2021, Physical Review A.DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.103.032401

The Centre for Quantum Optical Technologies at the University of Warsaw (UW) is a unit of the International Research Agendas program implemented by the Foundation for Polish Science from the funds of the Intelligent Development Operational Programme. The seat of the unit is the Centre of New Technologies at the University of Warsaw. The unit conducts research on the use of quantum phenomena such as quantum superposition or entanglement in optical technologies. These phenomena have potential applications in communications, where they can ensure the security of data transmission, in imaging, where they help to improve resolution, and in metrology to increase the accuracy of measurements. The Centre for Quantum Optical Technologies at the University of Warsaw is actively looking for opportunities to cooperate with external entities in order to use the research results in practice.

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Physicists Prove That the Imaginary Part of Quantum Mechanics Really Exists! - SciTechDaily