The State of Quantum

Although universal fault-tolerant quantum computers – with millions of physical quantum bits (or qubits) – may be a decade or two away, quantum computing research continues apace. It has been hypothesized that quantum computers will one day revolutionize information processing across a host of military and civilian applications from pharmaceuticals discovery, to advanced batteries, to machine learning, to cryptography. A key missing element in the race toward fault-tolerant quantum systems, however, is meaningful metrics to quantify how useful or transformative large quantum computers will actually be once they exist.

Quantum computers are poised to become major technological drivers over the coming decades. But to get there, scientists need to experiment with quantum machines that relatively few universities or companies have. Now, scientists can use Sandia’s QSCOUT for research that might not be possible at their home institutions, without the cost or restrictions of using a commercial testbed.

The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science has established five National Quantum Information Science (QIS) Research Centers.  These centers will accelerate the transformational advances in basic science and quantum-based technologies needed to assure continued U.S. leadership in QIS, consistent with the National Quantum Initiative Act.  Led by Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Co-design Center for  Quantum Advantage (C²QA) is one of these centers building the fundamental tools necessary to create scalable, distributed, and fault-tolerant quantum computer systems.

The DOE Office of Science program in Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) announces its interest in entanglement management and control in transparent optical quantum communications networks. Recently, tremendous progress has been made in understanding how quantum information with its complex characterization can be geographically distributed to achieve extraordinary capabilities that are impossible using classical optical telecommunication networks. This process involves quantum entanglement, a complex and valuable but perishable resource in which the transmitted quantum information is encoded. Although the transmission of an entanglement state over a dedicated single-hop channel has been successfully demonstrated, the distribution of a large number (several thousand) of entangled states in multi-hop and multiuser mesh-topology quantum networks remains an open challenge.

ARLINGTON, Virginia, March 15, 2021 – The Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C) today announced the appointment of its new executive director, Celia Merzbacher, effective immediately. Merzbacher has served as deputy director since 2019 and is taking over from Joseph Broz, who led the consortium from its inception and built the organization’s initial framework. Managed by SRI International and founded with support from NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), QED-C aims to enable and grow the emerging quantum industry and the associated supply chain. “We are delighted that Celia Merzbacher will be taking over the leadership of QED-C. She excels in bringing together all of the stakeholders—from industry, academia and government—who will be critical to the formation of a quantum ecosystem,” stated SRI CEO Bill Jeffrey. 

Principal Director for Quantum Science in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Dr. Paul Lopata, discusses the opportunities for quantum science to support defense department activities and the importance of engaging with  academia and the private sector for advancing quantum science and developing a skilled engineering workforce. See Dr. Lopata’s comments and read more here.

A team of researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, along with external collaborators, has taken an important step toward developing efficient quantum communications networks that connect quantum devices while preserving the delicate states of the particles used to transmit information by harnessing the frequency, or color, of light. Such capabilities could contribute to more practical and large-scale quantum networks exponentially more powerful and secure than the classical networks we have today.

DOE and NASA Request for Information (RFI) includes query about possible “experiments on the ISS that make use of quantum sensor technologies and capabilities in the HEP, APD, or BPS community”. The RFI goes on to indicate that such experiments are of particular interest. Click here to learn more.

ROME, N.Y. – Researchers at the Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate here have measured the energy relaxation and coherence times of superconducting quantum bits (qubits), two important characteristics that determine how long qubits can retain quantum information.