Category Archives: Quantum Computing

We Americans have a habit of bragging about our feats of technology. Our chief economic and military rivals namely Russia and China seldom do. They prefer to keep their secrets.

No one in this country is certain, then, how far the state-controlled economies of those nations have gone in developing quantum computing.

What is certain is that our national security, both militarily and economically, demands that the United States be first to perfect the technology. The reason for that was demonstrated in an announcement Wednesday by technology giant Google.

Google officials claim to have achieved a breakthrough in quantum computing. They say they have developed an experimental quantum computing processor capable of completing a complex mathematical calculation in less than four minutes.

Google says it would take the most advanced conventional supercomputer in existence about 10,000 years to do that.

Wrap your mind around that, if you can.

Other companies working with quantum computing, including IBM, Intel and Microsoft, say Google is exaggerating. IBM researchers told The Associated Press the test calculation used by Google actually could be handled by certain supercomputers in two and one-half days.

Still, you get the idea: Quantum computing will give the nation including its armed forces and industries that gets there first an enormous advantage over everyone else. The possibilities, ranging from near-perfect missile defense systems to vastly accelerated research on curing diseases, are virtually endless.

U.S. officials are cognizant of the ramifications of quantum computing, to the point that Washington has allocated $1.2 billion to support research during the next five years.

If that is not enough to ensure the United States stays in the lead in the quantum computing race, more should be provided. This is a competition we cannot afford to lose.

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Editorial: Quantum computing is a competition we can't afford to lose - The Winchester Star

Whats very small but set to be very big? Quantum technology, according to the UK government, which took the decision in June to reinvest in a scheme designed to move the science beyond academia and research laboratories and into commercial and practical use.

Some 1bn has already been invested in the UKs National Quantum Technologies Programme, which was set up in 2013. The government recently announced a further 153m of funding through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (which aims to ensure that 2.4 per cent of GDP is invested in R&D by 2027) plus 200m of investment from the private sector.

This means spending by industry is outstripping government investment for the first time, a good indication that the technology has stepped beyond an initial, broadly speculative stage. "Quantum is no longer an experimental science for the UK," says former science minister Chris Skidmore. "Investment by government and businesses is paying off as we become one of the worlds leading nations for quantum science and technologies."

Whereas "classical" computers are based on a structure of binary choices yes or no; on or off quantum computing is a lot more complicated. Classical chips rely on whether or not an electron is conducted from one atom to another around a circuit, but super-cooled quantum chips allow us to interface with the world at a much deeper level, taking into account properties such as superposition, entanglement or interference.

Confused? Think of a simple coin toss. Rather than being able to simply call heads or tails, superposition allows us to take into account when a coin spins, while entanglement is whether its properties are intrinsically linked with those of another coin.

To help harness this new potential in different areas, the governments programme works across four hubs: sensing and timing; imaging; computing and simulation; and communications.

One of the key advances that quantum computing is expected to bring is not just substantially greater processing speed but the ability to mimic and, therefore, understand and predict the ways that nature works.

For example, this could allow us to look directly inside the human body, see through smoke or mist, develop new drugs much more quickly and reliably by reviewing the effect on many molecules at the same time, or even make our traffic run smoothly. Meanwhile, the Met Office has already invested in this technology to improve weather forecasting.

Image: IBM Q System One quantum computer, photo by Misha Friedman/Getty Images

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Quantum investment soars in the UK to more than 1bn - Management Today

In 1936, Alan Turing proposed the Turing machine, which became the foundational reference point for theories about computing and computers. Around the same time, Konrad Zuse invented the Z1 computer, considered to be the first electromagnetic binary computer.

What happened next is history, and in our world today, computers are everywhere. Our lives are dramatically different from how they were even at the end of the 20th century, and our mobile phones have far more powerful CPUs than desktop computers did only few years ago. The advent of the Internet of Things brings computer power into every minute detail of our lives. The world wide web has had such a transformative effect on society that many people can't even remember a life before they were online.

The major catalyst behind this transformation was the discovery of silicon, and its use in the production of good transistors. This occurred over a period of more than 100 years, dating from when Michael Faraday first recorded the semiconductor effect in 1833, via Morris Tanenbaum, who built the first silicon transistor at Bell Labs in 1954, to the first integrated circuit in 1960.

We are about to embark on a similar journey in our quest for building the next-generation computer. Quantum physics, which emerged in the early 20th century, is so powerful and yet so unlike anything known before that even the inventors had a hard time understanding it in detail.

In the early 1980s, Richard Feynman, Paul Benioff and Yuri Manin provided the groundwork for a completely new paradigm of quantum computing, introducing the idea that quantum computing had the potential to solve problems that classical computing could not. And so quantum computing came into its own.

Peter Shor published an algorithm in 1994 capable of efficiently solving problems in cryptography that are hard to solve for classical computers that is, the vast majority of computers used today. In fact, Shor's algorithm continues to threaten the fundaments of most encryption deployed across the globe.

The problem was that, in 1994, there was no quantum computer in sight. In 1997, the first tiny quantum computer was built, but the field really took off only when the Canadian startup D-Wave revealed its 28-qubit quantum computer in 2007.

Similar to the trajectory of non-quantum communication, which took more than 100 years from discovery to mass use, quantum computers are now maturing very quickly. Today, many players are engaged in a battle over who can build the first powerful quantum computer. These include commercial entities such as IonQ, Rigetti, IBM, Google, Alibaba, Microsoft and Intel, while virtually all major nation states are spending billions of dollars on quantum computing development and research.

Quantum computers are powerful yet so difficult to build that whoever can crack the code will have a lasting powerful advantage. This cannot be understated. Heres a striking example of the power of quantum computing.

Quantum leaps: growth over the years

Image: Statista

To break a widely used RSA 2048-bit encryption, a classical computer with one trillion operations per second would need around 300 trillion years. This is such a long time that we all feel very safe.

A quantum computer using Shor's algorithm could achieve the same feat in just 10 seconds, with a modest 1 million operations per second. That's the power of quantum computers: 300 trillion years versus 10 seconds.

Another reason why nation states pour so much money into the field is precisely because, with it being so difficult, any achievement will directly yield a lasting advantage.

So where are quantum computers today, and where are they headed?

Considering the immense challenges to building quantum computers, I'd say we are roughly where we were in around 1970 with classical computers. We have some quantum computers, but they are still pretty unreliable compared to today's standard. We call them NISQ devices - Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum devices. Noisy because they are pretty bad, and intermediate-scale because of their small qubit number. But they work. There are a few public quantum computers available for anyone to programme on. IBM, Rigetti, Google and IonQ all provide public access with open-source tools to real quantum computing hardware. IBM even sells a quantum computer that you can put in your own data centre (the IBM Q System One).

But these are not yet powerful enough to break RSA 2048-bit keys, and probably won't be for another 10 to 20 years.

The comparison date of 1970 works from another angle, too. In October 1969, researchers sent the first message over the internet (it was called ARPANET then). When they tried to send the one word "login", the system crashed after sending "l" and "o". It later recovered and the message was successfully sent.

Today, we are also building a quantum communication system that doesn't communicate bits and bytes, but quantum states that quantum computers can understand. This is important so that we can build up a quantum version of the internet.

D-Wave, NASA, Google and the Universities Space Research Association created the D-Wave 1,097-qubit quantum computer.

Image: Reuters/Stephen Lam

It is also important as a way of encrypting communication, since the quantum channel provides some inherent physical guarantees about a transmission. Without going into too much detail, there is a fundamental property whereby the simple act of wiretapping or listening into a communication will be made detectable to the parties communicating. Not because they have a fancy system setup, but because of fundamental properties of the quantum channel.

But quantum computers are not just useful for cryptography applications and communication. One of the most immediate applications is in machine-learning, where we are already today on the cusp of a quantum advantage meaning that the quantum algorithm will outperform any classical algorithm. It is believed that quantum advantage for machine-learning can be achieved within the next 6-12 months. The near-term applications for quantum computing are endless: cryptography, machine-learning, chemistry, optimization, communication and many more. And this is just the start, with research increasingly extending to other areas.

Google and NASA have just announced that they have achieved 'quantum supremacy'. That is the ability of quantum computers to perform certain tasks that a classical computer simply cannot do in a reasonable timeframe. Their quantum computer solved a problem in 200 seconds that would take the worlds fastest supercomputer 10,000 years.

The problem that was solved is without any practical merits or implications, yet it demonstrates the huge potential quantum computers have and the ability to unlock that potential in the coming years.

This opens up a completely new era where we can now focus on building quantum computers with practical benefits and while this will still be many years away, it will be the new frontier in computation.

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Written by

Andreas Baumhof, Vice President Quantum Technologies, QuintessenceLabs

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

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Quantum computers: why Google, NASA and others are putting their chips on these dream machines - World Economic Forum

Has the era of quantum computing finally dawned? In a field long plagued by hype and hubris, theres reason for some cautious optimism.

A team of scientists at Googles research lab announced last week in the journal Nature that they had built a quantum computer that could perform calculations in about 200 seconds that would take a classical supercomputer some 10,000 years to do. An age of quantum supremacy was duly declared.

Rather uncharitably, IBM researchers were quick to point out that the feat was less than advertised. They estimated that by using all of the hard disk space at the worlds most powerful classical computer, the Summit OLCF-4 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, they could do the same calculation in 2.5 days, not 10,000 years. Googles claim to have achieved quantum supremacy that is, to have accomplished a task that traditional computers cant was premature.

This was to miss the bigger picture: A rudimentary quantum machine has improved on the fastest supercomputer ever built by a factor of 1,080 an immense achievement by any measure. Although the specific problem that Googles computer solved wont have much practical significance, simply getting the technology to work was a triumph; comparisons to the Wright brothers early flights arent far off the mark.

So is the world prepared for what comes next?

Quantum computers, to put it mildly, defy human intuition. They take advantage of the strange ways that matter behaves at the subatomic level to make calculations at extraordinary speed. In theory, they could one day lead to substantial advances in materials science, artificial intelligence, medicine, finance, communications, logistics and more. In all likelihood, no one has thought up the best uses for them yet.

They also pose some risks worth paying attention to. One is that the global race to master quantum computing is heating up, with unpredictable consequences. Last year, President Donald Trumps administration signed a $1.1 billion bill to prioritize the technology, which is a decent start. But the U.S. will need to do more to retain its global leadership. Congress should fund basic research at labs and universities, ensure the U.S. welcomes immigrants with relevant skills, invest in cutting-edge infrastructure, and use the governments vast leverage as a consumer to support promising quantum technologies.

A more distant worry is that advanced quantum computers could one day threaten the public-key cryptography that protects information across the digital world. Those systems are based on hard math problems that quantum computers might theoretically be able to crack with ease. Security researchers are well aware of the problem, and at work on creating post-quantum systems and standards. But vigilance and serious investment is nonetheless called for.

No doubt, the quantum-computing era will have its share of false starts, dashed hopes and fiendishly difficult problems to overcome. As Google is showing, though, thats how technology advances: bit by bit, into a very strange future.

Bloomberg Opinion

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Other voices: Welcome to the age of Quantum computing - St. Paul Pioneer Press

Volkswagen is launching in Lisbon the world's first pilot project for traffic optimization using a quantum computer. For this purpose, the Group is equipping MAN buses of the city of Lisbon with a traffic management system developed in-house. This system uses a D-Wave quantum computer and calculates the fastest route for each of the nine participating buses individually and almost in real-time. This way, passengers' travel times will be significantly reduced, even during peak traffic periods, and traffic flow will be improved. Volkswagen is testing its traffic optimization system during the WebSummit technology conference in Lisbon from November 4 to 8 - during the conference, buses will carry thousands of passengers through the city traffic in Lisbon.

Martin Hofmann, Volkswagen Group CIO, says: 'At Volkswagen, we want to further expand our expert knowledge in the field of quantum computing and to develop an in-depth understanding of the way this technology can be put to meaningful use within the company. Traffic optimization is one of the potential applications. Smart traffic management based on the performance capabilities of a quantum computer can provide effective support for cities and commuters.'

Vern Brownell, CEO of D-Wave, says: 'Volkswagen's use of quantum computing to tackle pervasive global problems like smart traffic management is an example of the real-world impact quantum applications will soon have on our cities, communities, and everyday lives. Since we built the first commercial quantum computer, D-Wave has been focused on designing systems that enable quantum application development and deliver business value. Volkswagen's pilot project is among the first that we know of to make production use of a quantum computer, and their ongoing innovation brings us closer than ever to realizing true, practical quantum computing.'

System includes two components: passenger number prediction and route optimization

The Volkswagen traffic management system includes two components - passenger number prediction and route optimization by quantum computing. For predictions, the development team from Volkswagen is using data analytics tools to identify stops with especially high passenger numbers at certain times. For this purpose, anonymized geo-coordinates and passenger flow data are used. The objective is to offer as many people as possible tailor-made transport possibilities and to ensure optimum utilization of the bus fleet.

For the pilot project in Lisbon, 26 stops were selected and connected to form four bus links. For example, one of these runs from the WebSummit conference facility to the Marqus de Pombal traffic node in the city center.

The Volkswagen team intends to continue the development of this prediction component. The idea is that bus operators should add temporary links to their scheduled services to serve stops with the largest passenger numbers. This would be a meaningful approach for major events in the city area, for example.

The Volkswagen experts have developed a quantum algorithm for route optimization between the stops. This algorithm calculates the fastest route for each individual bus in the fleet and optimizes it almost on a real-time basis. In contrast to conventional navigation services, the quantum algorithm assigns each bus an individual route. This way, each bus can drive around traffic bottlenecks along the route at an early stage and avoid traffic jams before they even arise.

The experts from Volkswagen expect this development to have a further positive effect. As the buses travel along individually optimized routes which are calculated to ensure that they can never cause congestion themselves, there will be a general improvement in traffic flow within the city.

Volkswagen intends to develop the system to market maturity

In the future, Volkswagen plans to develop its traffic optimization system to market maturity. For this reason, the Volkswagen developers have designed the system so that it can generally be applied to any city and to vehicle fleets of any size. Further pilot projects for cities in Germany and other European countries are already being considered. Volkswagen believes that such a traffic optimization system could be offered to public transport companies, taxi companies or fleet operators.

Volkswagen and quantum computing

Volkswagen is cooperating with its technology partners D-Wave and Google, who provide the experts with access to their computer systems. In 2016, the Volkswagen team already successfully demonstrated congestion-free route optimization for taxis in the Chinese capital Beijing. Since then, the development of the algorithm has been steadily continued and it has been protected by patents in the USA.

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Volkswagen : optimizing traffic flow with quantum computers - Quantaneo, the Quantum Computing Source

Sometimes being first isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Google raced past China this week in the quest for "quantum supremacy" with its claim that a machine developed by the company can solve a problem in 200 seconds that would take the world's fastest supercomputer 10,000 years.

But just as the Soviet Union was the first to put both a satellite and a human being into orbit, before going on to lose the space race, China may be poised to outstrip any American achievements in a specific field of quantum technology communication.

Beijing's gains in this area which could make its communications unhackable may leave US spies in the dark just as the US-China rivalry is heating up, a prospect that has led to great alarm in Washington.

Quantum supremacy

While Google's announcement has drawn skepticism from some of its rivals, and this would not be the first time a claim of "quantum supremacy" has been rebuffed , it nevertheless represents a clear step towards the rise of quantum computers.

"This is a hugely important milestone for the field," said Joe Fitzsimons, chief executive of Horizon Quantum Computing . "The Google result shows that for the first time there is a quantum processor that can do something that a conventional computer cannot do, or at least that a conventional computer cannot do without enormous effort."

In normal computers, data being processed exists in one state at a time a one, or a zero. Quantum computers , on the other hand, manipulate qubits, which can simultaneously be both a one and a zero, or any combination of the two. The difference means much faster processing speeds, and potentially solving problems and processing data that would take traditional machines millennia.

This will have applications well beyond physics and mathematics. Quantum computers could lead to breakthroughs in self-learning artificial intelligence (AI), provide medical insights by simulating incredibly complex biological molecules, and simultaneously break all existing cryptographic keys while setting the stage for uncrackable quantum encryption.

The last point is why many nation states led by the US and China have taken a strong interest in quantum computing. The first country to achieve quantum encryption could theoretically go completely "dark" to its rivals, hiding all its information from traditional digital surveillance methods. On the flip side, major gains in quantum computing could undo existing means of keeping data secret.

Quantum computers refer to supercomputers, like that built by Google, which use qubits to process huge amounts of data that would be beyond the capabilities of traditional machines. Quantum communication uses the nature of quantum particles to encrypt data in a way that it cannot be put under surveillance without warning the people being watched.

"Quantum computers are coming, and if it's going to be five, 10 or 15 years before we can decrypt any messages sent in the past, that definitely sends a chill down the spine of any security agency around the world," said Dimitris Angelakis , principal investigator at Singapore's Center for Quantum Technologies.

But while Google may have made an important step this week, the company is by no means alone in investing in quantum computing research, and the next major milestone an unambiguous demonstration of quantum advantage remains out of reach.

"Quantum advantage means demonstrating computational supremacy for a meaningful problem, showing that a quantum processor has been built which is more useful than a conventional computer for at least one problem," said Fitzsimons. "The path to large-scale quantum computing is more of a marathon than a sprint. The current result certainly places Google at the front of the pack, but there is still a long way to the finish line."

If Google is leading the pack, most of the runners clustered behind it are not fellow Silicon Valley companies, but their Chinese competitors and the country's well-funded research institutes.

Chinese qubits

In an influential paper last year for the Center for a New American Security, authors Elsa Kania and John Costello wrote that "China is positioning itself as a powerhouse in quantum science."

"At the highest levels, China's leaders recognize the strategic potential of quantum science and technology to enhance economic and military dimensions of national power," they argued. "These quantum ambitions are intertwined with China's national strategic objective to become a science and technology superpower."

For years now, China has been pouring billions of dollars into funding quantum research, with a particular focus on uncrackable encrypted communication, enabling it to dodge US surveillance.

The leading institution in this field is the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), one of the country's most prestigious schools, based in Hefei near Shanghai. Chinese President Xi Jinping visited USTC in 2016, where he met with Pan Jianwei, the schools' vice president and China's " father of quantum ."

Pan is widely recognized as one of the foremost experts in this field, and was named as one of Nature's top ten people who mattered in science for 2017 , for having "lit a fire under the country's efforts in quantum technology."

UTSC has led efforts to build a China-wide quantum communications network , which would link Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and five other cities via satellites and fiber-optic cables. In a presentation at a conference in Shanghai in August co-organized by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a United Nations body, Pan explained how quantum satellites could be used to provide "unconditional security" in transmitting data that would be unhackable and impervious to surveillance.

He also led the research team behind Micius, the world's first quantum satellite, launched by China in 2016 . Named for the ancient Chinese philosopher Mozi, the satellite successfully managed a video call in 2017 between Beijing and Vienna using quantum encryption, making it impossible to eavesdrop upon.

Pan is currently building a new quantum research lab in Hefei, into which the government has already pumped more than a billion dollars.

"We were only the follower and the learner at the birth of modern information science," he told MIT Technology Review last year . "Now we have a chance ... to be a leader."

Fitzsimons, the Horizon CEO, said that while China "has had tremendous accomplishments in the field of quantum communication," it lags behind the United States and Europe in terms of quantum computation.

"The focus on quantum computation in China came after quantum communication, and so is later in bearing fruit," he said. "In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in efforts both at universities in China and at technology companies, such as Alibaba, Baidu, Tencent and Huawei, focused on computation, which have begun to yield results."

Quantum arms race

The potential benefits of quantum computing to China have been recognized at the highest levels. Quantum technologies were highlighted in the country's 13th Five Year Plan , introduced in 2016, and that same year were mentioned by President Xi himself in a speech announcing the Belt and Road Initiative, his vast trade and infrastructure program.

As well as government funding, private Chinese companies like their Silicon Valley rivals are also getting into the quantum research game: Alibaba alone has pumped around $15 billion into labs focused on future technologies, including quantum computing.

According to Patinformatics , an analysis firm, Chinese organizations filed nearly twice as many patents related to quantum information technology (QIT) as the United States in 2017, and more than 70% of academic QIT patents since 2012 have been awarded to Chinese universities, with US institutions a distant second at 12%.

Beijing's massive funding, and the advances by Chinese scientists, have not gone unnoticed in Washington.

"China's advances in quantum science could impact the future military and strategic balance, perhaps even leapfrogging traditional US military-technological advantages," Kania and Costello wrote in their report, adding that the US "should build upon and redouble existing efforts to remain a leader, or at least a major contender, in the development of quantum technologies."

Their recommendations, and similar warnings from other experts, have borne fruit.

In August, President Donald Trump signed into law the National Quantum Initiative Act. The law authorized an extra $1.2 billion in research funding over five years, as well as establishing a national quantum committee to coordinate research and public funding for the field.

In the statement enacting the law, the White House said it would "ensure continued American leadership in quantum information science and technology applications."

While the United States is starting to match China for funding, Angelakis, the Singapore-based expert, said that "the biggest challenge in the field in the next few years is not money."

As the field grows, competition for talent is also growing -- a factor that is affected by geopolitics and security concerns over quantum technologies. Angelakis compared the situation to early research into nuclear energy, which rapidly got overtaken and co-opted by governments, with research classified and sharing of discoveries limited, though he was quick to point out that quantum technology does not have as devastating a military use.

"There's definitely a race going on and the current geopolitical situation is not helping the real science to progress," Angelakis said. "There are cases of people being denied visas ... it could be something that is very negative in the short term because we are still evolving this technology."

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The US just moved ahead of China in quantum computing - 10News

Massive Analytic, a London based artificial intelligence pioneer, and the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the UK's National Measurement Institute, have now completed their joint InnovateUK Analysis for Innovators project, the Metrological comparison between a generalised N-dimensional classical and quantum point cloud. The results of this project have opened avenues for both further R&D into quantum as well as ways to enhance Massive Analytics AI platforms.

The project set out to break new ground in quantum by proving that point clouds, created by fusing multi-modal sensor data, could be represented and processed on quantum computers as quantum point clouds. As a result of the project, teams at NPL and Massive Analytic have been successful in simulating transposing point cloud sensor data from an autonomous car onto quantum computers.

Ivan Rungger, senior research scientist at NPL said, Autonomous cars and other advancing technologies rely on the fast acquisition and analysis of sensor data, combining visual data with information such as temperature or humidity distributions. Using Massive Analytics data, we have produced a new method to represent these multi-modal inputs as general point cloud data on quantum computers. Our method simulates how the data can be ported to near term noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computers opening the doors for the commercialisation of these technologies in future.

Thanks to the collaboration Massive Analytic has developed a classical-quantum computing hybrid approach, where outputs from classical sensor technologies are modified to enable early applications on current state-of-the-art quantum computers of the order of tens of qubits. Massive Analytic intends to augment its patented AI, Artificial Precognition, with outputs from a quantum processor to further improve prediction accuracy across all its product lines to deliver even more value to its customers. This breakthrough also creates a host of new possibilities for processing IoT data and applying AI and machine learning to it.

The company was supported to participate in the Analysis for Innovators (A4I) scheme by Innovate UK. Funding from the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy enabled Massive Analytic to access the cutting-edge R&D, expertise and facilities at the National Physical Laboratory, to help overcome the companys unique measurement challenges.

Jonathan Mitchener, from Innovate UK said, Its great that our A4I programme can support key UK technology areas such as Quantum, and in conjunction with world class scientific partners, such as NPL, that A4I brings companies together with, support a growing and ambitious company to be more competitive in the new quantum computing space.

Following the success of the A4I project, NPL and Massive Analytic are in discussion to establish a long term collaboration to develop quantum technologies for data science applications, ranging from sensing to cyber security to precision medicine.

George Frangou, CEO and Founder of Massive Analytic said, Massive Analytic and the National Physical Laboratory in partnership are realising the benefits signposted by the Fourth Industrial revolution; linking Tech City to world class laboratories. With the Government now committed to being the leading European economy in Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing, we have the opportunity to create a partnership, which will be regarded as pre-eminent in our chosen domains.

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Massive Analytic and the National Physical Laboratory collaborate in quantum with successful first project - Quantaneo, the Quantum Computing Source

This is an edition ofQuintessence, a series about fundamental ideas in science.

Earlier this year, IBM unveiled a much-hyped device at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas: a black cylinder hanging at the centre of a locked glass cage. Light from a wide panel on top bounced off of it. It was a simulacrum of a computing machine but it looked futuristic, even too futuristic. It didnt look like any normal computer because it wasnt.

It is easy to forget that even the simplest function on any electronic device in use today is the result of many, many transistors working in tandem. A keystroke, a button press, a single tap all of it is about current flowing in and out of a transistor, the modern version of which was invented 72 years ago.

A bit, which is the most fundamental unit of computing, refers to the state of a transistor. If the transistor is on, the bit has a value of 1; if the transistor is off, the bit has a value of 0. Every instruction fed to a computer and output derived from it is a pattern of such 0s and 1s. The computers hardware and software manipulate these patterns using a set of rules called Boolean algebra. All this logic flows at blazing speeds, enabling humankind to make rapid technological advancements.

But even though transistors have become incredibly sophisticated over the years and engineers have become able to cram billions of them on tinier and tinier chips, they are still classical objects. The kind of computing they lend themselves to uses the simpler principles of classical physics and is therefore limited by the limitations of these principles. The deepest of them is this: transistors can either be on or off. A bit can only assume one value at a time.

This is where IBMs sleek machine turns the curve. Enclosed in the black cylinder lies the soul of a quantum computer, in the form of a chip that taps into a more esoteric set of computing possibilities.

Also read:A Walk With Steven Kivelson Through the Realm of Strange Materials

Quantum computers are devices that manipulate quantum bits, or qubits. But instead of using a transistor to perform this function, quantum computers directly encode this information onto elementary particles like electrons and photons, or even entire atoms. These particles are thus part of a quantum computers hardware, and because they play by quantum rules, they execute their functions as qubits through strange quantum mechanical effects.

One of these effects is superposition. Where a classical bit has two states 0 and 1 a qubit also has a state where it is neither 0 nor 1 (but not a third value). This value is a fuzzy combination of two states, like 40% 1 and 60% 0. That is, if a classical bit is like a mechanical switch that can be turned on or off, a qubit can be on and off at the same time but neither completely on or off. Classical objects cannot be in such superposition.

Most people have already heard of such behaviour in the form of the Schrdingers cat thought experiment. A cat and a bowl of poison are placed in a sealed box. Until an observer opens the box and checks, the cat a metaphor for subatomic particles is to be considered both dead and alive. Similarly, an unobserved electron can have a spin pointing up and down at the same time, but the moment it is observed, it defaults to one of the two states: either up or down.

Next, two classical bits can have one of the following four configurations: {0, 0}, {1, 1}, {1, 0} and {0, 1}. But two qubits can exist in a mixture of all four at the same time; indeed, N number of qubits can exist as a simultaneous mixture of 2N states, each one representing a possible solution. Put differently, instead of tackling a problem by pursuing one solution at a time like a classical computer, a quantum computer can pursue multiple potential solutions at once and, presumably, arrive at the optimal one faster.

Superposition explains how a single qubit can be more powerful than a single bit. To understand how multiple qubits can work together as computers will require physicists use another concept called entanglement.

Quantum entanglement establishes strong ties between particles such that if one particle changes in a particular way, the other one also changes in a corresponding way. For example, if two qubits are entangled and one of them reveals its state, the other qubit automatically reveals its state as well.

Though the components of a quantum computers are markedly different from those of a classical computer, they still have to behave like computers, including processing instructions and producing an answer to a question in a predictable amount of time. This means a set of entangled qubits in superposition should ultimately collapse into a meaningful configuration of 1s and 0s on demand.

This is tricky. A qubit has a finite probability of existing in one of two quantum states. So N qubits have a tendency to randomly settle into any one of the 2N possible states when measured. Eight qubits, for example, could settle into one of 256 states. To get around this problem, the qubits have to be subtly manipulated to increase their probability of chasing the correct, or more desirable, paths.

Scientists achieve this by orchestrating the qubits in such a way that the signatures of the undesirable quantum states cancel out and the right ones add up. This is how some quantum computing algorithms that can take advantage of this technique based on the idea of interference from high-school physics vastly outperform their classical counterparts.

Also read:The DIY Experiment That Captures All the Mystery of Quantum Physics

For example, a quantum computer could use Grovers algorithm named for the computer scientist Lov Kumar Grover to sift through very large, unstructured databases to find a specific entry faster than a classical machine can. Using Peter Shors algorithm, a quantum computer can find the factors of large integers that are prime numbers much faster than the best algorithms classical computers use.

Scientists in various fields would also like to understand how complex molecules behave and interact with each other. Powerful supercomputers struggle with the dynamics of such many-body interactions, but quantum computers are expected to have a knack for them because theyre networks of particles themselves.

On the flip side, quantum computers arent always better. There are many problems for which classical computers arent efficient and quantum computers arent either. In most of these cases, increasing the scale of the problem exponentially increases the amount of time the computer needs to find the answer. Quantum computers might be able to crack some of them efficiently but not some others.

It would also be prudent to move our eyes away from the horizon of infinite possibilities and towards the mountain range standing in the way. Qubits must be stable and work well together for a computer to compute. This is easier said than done. Multiple qubits in a superposition, and entangled with each other, tend to be quite fragile. Even the smallest physical vibration can destroy their collective coherence, interfere with their quantum nature and induce large errors that can render the machine useless.

Different research groups around the world have stretched engineering to its bleeding edge to prevent such decoherence. IBMs monolithic quantum computer cools its superconducting chip which carries the qubits to about 0.01 K, or 270-times colder than outer space.

Late last month, a paper quietly appeared on and promptly disappeared from a NASA website. In the paper, scientists from Google claimed to have performed a computing task way out of reach of even the best conventional computers using a quantum computer.

The company hasnt issued an official comment or shared a peer-reviewed paper. According to various news reports, its 53-qubit machine performed a purpose-built task a computation in about 200 seconds when a powerful classical machine would have required millennia. If independent experts are able validate Googles claim, it will be the first time a quantum computer will have surpassed a classical machine at a specific task.

That said, we are still decades away from a practically useful quantum computer. The transistor reigns supreme for now.

The author would like to thank Vedangi Pathak and Kevin Dsouza for discussions about quantum mechanics and computing.

Ronak Guptais doing a PhD in fluid mechanics at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

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What on Earth Is a Quantum Computer, and Why Should You Care? - The Wire

It's been a while now and Goldman Sachs still doesn't seem to have anyone to lead its proposed 'quantum computing research' team.

The firm doesn't date stamp its jobs, but we first noticed it was advertising for a 'Leader of a new quantum computing research team in R&D Engineering,' in early September. One month on, there don't seem to have been any takers: the job is still open.

Goldman didn't respond to a query on the role. It might be simply that the firm is taking its time and interviewing every quantum computing expert on the market. Or it might just be that quantumpeople are hard to come by.

Goldman's requirements are fairly precise: it wants someone who can identify applications for quantum computing across Goldman, who can talk to clients about quantum computing, who can liaise with Goldman staff and academics,and who can lead thenew quantum computingresearch team. The ideal would seem to be a quantum computingPhDwith client facing skills, which might be hard to come by.

In the meantime, Goldman has at least one quantum computing research already.Rajiv Krishnakumar joined the firm in March 2018 and began work in the Franchise Analytics Strategy and Technology (FAST) team, which is tasked with applying machine learning across the firm.Krishnakumar moved into the quantum computing research team as an associate last month. It probably helps that he has a PhD in applied physics from Stanford and that he spent six months as a postdoctoral research fellow in machine learning at Caltech.

Goldman Sachs seems to be unusual among banks in having a dedicated quantum computing research team. Others are certainly interested though -Roland Fejfar, head of technology business development at Morgan Stanley for EMEA and APAC, says on LinkedIn that one of his tasks is to look at 'disruptive technology' like quantum systems. And JPMorgan hired a quantum research scientist on a salary of $150k in New York in March 2019, according to the H1B Visa database.

Google claimed last month that it had built a quantum computer that could perform a calculation in three minutes and 20 seconds instead of the 10,000 years it would take the fastest traditional computer. When and if quantum computers become usable, experts have warned that all existing systems of encryption will become instantly meaningless.

Google is also looking for quantum recruiting talent. It's currently advertising nine roles, seven of which are related to quantum artificial intelligence (AI). All are in California. Goldman, by comparison, wants its quantum researchers in New York City - which may be a harder sell.

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Goldman Sachs can't seem to find anyone to lead its quantum computing team - eFinancialCareers

Todays conventional computers may soon reach their limits. Moores law, which predicts that it takes about two years to double the power of computers, is expected to reach a dead end soon. Dealing with more complex problems ahead needs quantum computers, where individual atoms store and process information.Serge Haroche,a French physicist who won the Nobel Prize in 2012 for his work on manipulating individual quantum systems, discussed the subject withShimona Kanwarduring a recent visit to India.

August saw an agreement between India and France on cooperation in the fields of quantum computing. Where do you see this association headed?

I think laboratory scale classical computing is a matter of technology and one can see in what direction it is going.Quantum computing is still a question of basic science. So, you cannot predict if and when it will lead to practical applications. There is big progress in quantum computing, quantum communication and quantum meteorology using quantum devices. There are laboratories working on these in India and France.

One way to combat the quantum decoherence is supercooling, but its impractical for commercialisation. What kind of solution will emerge?

There are methods called quantum error correction to combat decoherence. This works on paper but not to the level of precision which is required to get a quantum computer. It means if you get a practical device, it will be very cold and not like a laptop which everybody can have at home. There are lot of challenges to scale up to a size which is useful. There is lot of hype in the field of quantum devices. Many private companies which are involved in this want to make profit. Quantum computing is trapped between hype and hope. A hope that one day it will lead to something useful. But as always in science you get surprises and what will be useful is may be not what we expect now.It is very rare in science where you have a path which leads you to a discovery that is predicted 20-30 years ahead of time. For the time being, quantum computing is basic science and not applied yet. Those who promise quantum computers are overselling, I think.

Why are researchers not motivated to pursue basic science?

I think basic science is background. You cannot have applied if there is no basic. Basic science requires a lot of time. Before it gives us application, it takes a very long time. For instance, the first idea of the laser wasgiven by Einstein in 1916 and the first laser came up in 1960. It took 44 years between the basic discovery and the invention. Sometimes it takes less time, but on an average 10-20 years. The big problem we have as scientists is to make sure that people will give us money and keep patience, and not ask for short term results. You need to build an atmosphere of trust and give time to basic science to develop.I think one of the problems is that there are not many positions in basic science. If you do not nourish basic science, you will not have good applied science.

Can we have Chinas model where there is huge investment in science?

China invests a huge amount and has made advances in science in the last 20 years. They have very good science institutes. They do good science in physics and biology. China has one problem and that is lack of freedom. I think science cannot be disconnected from humanities. A good scientist needs to have freedom of soul, freedom to choose his topic and to work with passion. A good scientist is driven by his/her own curiosity. I am sure if China gives more freedom to its researchers, it will be much more productive than it is now.

CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research) has been a successful example of science diplomacy. What advice would it give?

CERN is a very big project as it involves thousands of researchers from all over the world. This is necessary as it is a project in high energy physics and requires huge instruments like big accelerators which no single country can manage. However, my area of working is in small scale physics. As a policy, small-scale physics is very interesting as it brings PhD students hands on with physics and they are responsible for their own project.So, it is a very different way of training people. I think for a country like India, this small-scale physics is good becauseit allows it to develop science in different institutes.A big project like CERN or space agency projects are interesting for governments as it gives them bigger media attention. I think the work you do on smaller scale, even if it does not attract attention, is more fruitful.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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'Quantum computing's trapped between hype and hope in science you get surprises and what's useful may not be what we expect now' - Times of India