Nathan’s Quantum Tech Newsletter: №14 — Quantum Internet
This is what I’ve seen in quantum tech in the last month, October 2018:
00 🌐 Focus: Quantum Internet
01 🗞 Tech News
10 📰 Research Highlights
11 🎲 Bonus Links
00 🌐 Focus: Quantum Internet
To obtain a truly ‘quantum internet’ we will need to develop specific hardware and deploy an infrastructure that can store and broadcast quantum information across a quantum network. Why would we want such a thing? Two main reasons are quantum-secure information sharing and applications of quantum computing capabilities.
The vision for a quantum internet dates back several decades, and as pointed out by H.J. Kimble, a fundamental point toward this goal is improving the control of light and matter at the quantum level. Photons of light are the best carriers of information, while various kinds of matter excitations currently offer the best performance in memory storage of quantum information and information processing (computing) capabilities. While impressive advancement has been seen in both this areas, a critical challenge remains in developing transducers between light and matter quantum excitations as well as repeaters that can help propagate information on longer distances and for longer times. Link
Satellite-enabled communication of quantum information is a step in this direction, a milestone recently pioneered by Chinese researchers, of which I previously covered here. Link.
At the same time, as Davide Castelvecchi reports for Nature, the current efforts underway towards this goal might soon unlock a number of limited quantum-internet features on a shorter timescale. For example, cybersecurity protocols in which quantum correlations are preserved at a single node of the network are more feasible than a full-fledged quantum internet which involves challenging constraints. Notably, some quantum internet features might come earlier than broad real-world applications of quantum computing, as they do not require implementing error correction over millions of qubits. Link
A roadmap in six stages for the development of the quantum internet, is contained in a review article by Delft-based physicists Stephanie Wehner, David Elkouss and Ronald Hanson published in Science. The authors point out that, akin to TCP/IP protocols for the ‘classical’ internet, quantum protocols need to be developed to smooth out interconnections in a multi-node network.
01 🗞 Tech News
The second Quantum to Business conference (Q2B) will be held in Mountain View, CA, on December 10th-12th. Link
Niccolò Somaschi, co-Founder of Paris-based Quandela, shared some thoughts on the transition from academia to business with Nature Physics blog. Link
Bleximo, an integrated-circuits startup for quantum computing, raises $1.5 mln in funding from several VCs. Link
More details on Atom Computing funding round led by Venrock. Link
Official document on the White House’s national strategic overview for quantum information science, drafted by the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Link
Berkeley Lab is focusing on making superconducting circuits with improved connectivity. Link
Huawei announced the plan to simulate a quantum computer. Link
The Financial Times published a couple of article recently covering some aspects of quantum technology. Link
The kick-off of the EU Quantum Flagship €1 bln research program will be in Vienna on October 29th-30th. Link
Applications are now open to join the EU Quantum Technology Flagship’s strategic advisory board. Link
10 📰 Research Highlights
The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou, and Donna Strickland “for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics.” Link
Quantum advantage on shallow circuits. Link
Computational complexity, step by step, an explanation by Ashley Montanaro. Link
Deterministic quantum teleportation through an optical fiber over 6km. Link
Applying quantum algorithms to constraint satisfaction problems. Link
Quantum computational supremacy. Link
Reinforcement Learning with Neural Networks for Quantum Feedback. Link
Reinforcement Learning Decoders for Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computation. Link1 Link2
Generation of non-classical light in a photon-number superposition. Link
A framework for algorithm deployment on cloud-based quantum computers. Link
Nature Physics runs a series of focus articles on quantum thermalization. Link
Deterministic generation of hybrid high-N00N states with Rydberg ions trapped in microwave cavities. Link
Entanglement 25 years after the first quantum teleportation experiments. Link
Restoring gauge invariance in cavity QED. Link
Observation of the superstrong coupling regime in circuit QED. Link
CMOS-Integrated Diamond Nitrogen-Vacancy Quantum Sensor. Link
Forecasting financial crashes with quantum computing (if you map them to a spin Hamiltonian). Link
Suppression of Qubit Crosstalk in a Tunable Coupling Superconducting Circuit. Link
Efficiently measuring a quantum device using machine learning. Link
Emulating quantum computation with artificial neural networks. Link
11 🎲 Bonus Links
Last month Michael Atiyah announced the demonstration of the Riemann hypothesis, a long-standing problem in mathematics on the occurrence of prime numbers. It claimed achieving so as a corollary of a connection between fundamental principles and the fine structure constant of atomic physics. In this blog post Sean Carroll explains why the fine structure constant is not a fundamental value but more of a function. Link
In a video lecture, MIT’s Peter Shor (the author of Shor’s factoring algorithm) gives an overview of curret challenges of noisy intermediate-scale quantum computing systems (NISQ) and reports on related work on the QAOA algorithm. Shor recalls also how he got into developing Shor’s algorithm: He was interested in physics as an undergrad; got inspired by two pioneering works in the field of quantum computing, by Vazirani and Simon’s problem paper, which gave him the idea for periodicity as a tool to exploit quantum coherence, e.g., the quantum Fourier Transform. Recommended video. Link
The New York Times reports on the challenges posed by VISA restrictions for US quantum computing research institutions and startups. Link
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© Nathan Shammah — 2019 and beyond.
