Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Australian Quantum Research in Global "Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2015"

UNSW quantum research in global ‘Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2015'


14 DEC 2015

UNSW, Sydney
Physics World, the magazine of the UK’s Institute of Physics, has named an advance in quantum computing by engineers at UNSW among its global “Top Ten Breakthroughs of 2015”.

Physics World, the magazine of the UK’s Institute of Physics, has named an advance by engineers at UNSW Australia among its global “Top Ten Breakthroughs of 2015”.

[caption id="attachment_717" align="aligncenter" width="563"]Australian Quantum Research in Global "Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2015" www.quantumcomputingtechnologyaustralia.com-114    Australian Quantum Research in Global "Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2015"[/caption]

The research, in which a team of Australian engineers built a quantum logic gate in silicon for the first time, potentially clears the final hurdle to making silicon quantum computers a reality. Led by Andrew Dzurak, a Scientia Professor at the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications at UNSW, it appeared in October this year in the international journal Nature.

The Top Ten is chosen by a panel of editors and reporters of Physics World, one of the world's leading physics magazines. Research must be “fundamentally important, a significant advance in knowledge and show a strong connection between theory and experiment”, the magazine said.



It is a recognition that building a quantum logic gate in silicon is a crucial advance for quantum computing – one of the many our centre at UNSW has made recently.




Dzurak, who is also Director of the NSW node of the Australian National Fabrication Facilitywhich makes nanofabrication of precision components for quantum research possible, welcomed the recognition for his team which forms part of the UNSW-based Australian Research Council Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology (CQC2T).

“It is a recognition that building a quantum logic gate in silicon is a crucial advance for quantum computing – one of the many our centre at UNSW has made recently,” said Dzurak. “This has been recognised by the Australian government and our industry partners, who this week committed another $46 million in additional funding for our quest to make quantum computers a reality.”

On Tuesday, Telstra announced an in-principle commitment of $10 million plus in-kind support over the next five years to CQC2T – the same day that the Commonwealth Bank of Australia also pledgedanother $10 million, on top of its $5 million investment in December 2014.

Scientia Professor Michelle Simmons, who heads CQC2T with 180 researchers, said the investments sent a “very powerful message about supporting internationally leading Australian research in areas of breakthrough technology.

“It has been an amazing week for the silicon quantum computing teams at UNSW and the University of Melbourne,” Simmons said. “We are thrilled that leading Australian companies such as the Commonwealth Bank and Telstra are getting behind our world-leading research. It is clear recognition of the fantastic work at our centre over the past decade, and we hope this investment will form the basis of new industries here in Australia.”

Dr Menno Veldhorst, a UNSW Research Fellow and the lead author of the Nature paper, was equally delighted. “We’ve shown that a two-qubit logic gate – the central building block of a quantum computer – can be made in silicon, which we thought was a big deal. It’s nice to see that this has been recognised by our peers, and attracted industry attention.

“Because we use largely the same device technology as existing computer chips, we believe what we have made will be much easier to make into a full-scale processor chip than for any of the leading designs, which mostly rely on exotic elements and technologies. This makes building a quantum computer much more feasible, since it is based on the same manufacturing technology as today’s computer industry,” he added.

Dzurak noted that the team had recently “patented a design for a full-scale quantum computer chip that would allow for millions of our qubits, all doing the types of calculations that we’ve just experimentally demonstrated”.

The advance represents the final physical component needed to realise the promise of super-powerful silicon quantum computers, which harness the science of the very small – the strange behaviour of subatomic particles – to solve computing challenges that are beyond the reach of even today’s fastest supercomputers.

In classical computers, data is rendered as binary bits, which are always in one of two states: 0 or 1. However, a quantum bit (or ‘qubit’) can exist in both of these states at once, a condition known as a superposition. A qubit operation exploits this quantum weirdness by allowing many computations to be performed in parallel (a two-qubit system performs the operation on 4 values, a three-qubit system on 8, and so on).

“If quantum computers are to become a reality, the ability to conduct one- and two-qubit calculations are essential,” said Dzurak, who jointly led the team that in 2012 who demonstrated the first ever silicon qubit, also reported in Nature.

Until now, it had not been possible to make two quantum bits ‘talk’ to each other – and thereby create a logic gate – using silicon. “The silicon chip in your smartphone or tablet already has around one billion transistors on it, with each transistor less than 100 billionths of a metre in size,” said Veldhorst.

“We’ve morphed those silicon transistors into quantum bits by ensuring that each has only one electron associated with it. We then store the binary code of 0 or 1 on the ‘spin’ of the electron, which is associated with the electron’s tiny magnetic field,” he added.

Building a full-scale quantum processor would have major applications in the finance, security and healthcare sectors, allowing the identification and development of new medicines by greatly accelerating the computer-aided design of pharmaceutical compounds (and minimising lengthy trial and error testing); the development of new, lighter and stronger materials spanning consumer electronics to aircraft; and faster searching of massive databases.

Other researchers involved in the ‘top 10’ Nature paper include Professor Kohei M. Itoh of Japan’s Keio University – who provided specialised silicon wafers for the project – along with UNSW’s School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications Dr Henry Yang and Professor Andrea Morello, who leads the quantum spin control research team at CQC2T.

In November, Morello’s team proved – with the highest score ever obtained – that a quantum version of computer code can be written, and manipulated, using two quantum bits in a silicon microchip. This removes lingering doubts that such operations can be made reliably enough to allow powerful quantum computers to become a reality.

Only a month earlier, a team led by Simmons and CQC2T’s deputy director, Professor Lloyd Hollenbergof the University of Melbourne designed a 3D silicon chip architecture based on single atom quantum bits, compatible with atomic-scale fabrication techniques – providing a blueprint to build a large-scale quantum computer.

The full Physics World list of Top Ten Breakthroughs of 2015 can be found here.

News Release Source : UNSW quantum research in global ‘Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2015'

Image Credit : UNSW

UNSW to Receive AU$10m from Telstra for Quantum Computing

Telstra matches $10m CBA pledge for quantum computing race


08 DEC 2015

UNSW, Sydney
UNSW’s flagship quantum computing project has received a second major injection of funds from Australia’s corporate sector, with Telstra matching a Commonwealth Bank pledge of $10 million.






UNSW’s flagship quantum computing project has received a second major injection of funds from Australia’s corporate sector, with Telstra matching a Commonwealth Bank pledge of $10 million.

[caption id="attachment_713" align="aligncenter" width="563"]UNSW to Receive AU$10m from Telstra for Quantum Computing www.quantumcomputingtechnologyaustralia.com-113         UNSW to Receive AU$10m from Telstra for Quantum Computing[/caption]

Telstra announced an in-principle commitment of $10 million plus in-kind support over the next five years to the UNSW-based Australian Research Council Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology, led by Scientia Professor Michelle Simmons.

It follows a similar $10 million pledge from the Commonwealth Bank earlier today after the federal government promised $26 million to the Centre as part of its $1.1 billion National Innovation and Science Agenda unveiled this week.



Telstra is ready and willing to play a role in building for the future. We must come together to plan for future generations through technological advancements. This partnership is a solid demonstration of this commitment.




Telstra chief executive officer Andrew Penn said the company was thrilled to be involved in such a dynamic, world-leading project.

“The potential of quantum computing is significant for countries across the globe, and we are excited to be part of this important initiative to build the world’s first silicon-based quantum computer in Sydney,” said Mr Penn.

“Telstra is ready and willing to play a role in building for the future. We must come together to plan for future generations through technological advancements. This partnership is a solid demonstration of this commitment.”

Professor Simmons, who leads the centre with more that 180 researchers, said the investment sent a “very powerful message about supporting internationally leading Australia research in areas of breakthrough technology”.

“It has been an amazing week for the silicon quantum computing teams at UNSW and the University of Melbourne. We are thrilled that Australian technology leaders Telstra are getting behind our world-leading research. It is recognition of the fantastic work that many researchers across these nodes have achieved over the past decade and we hope this investment will form the basis of new industries here in Australia,” Professor Simmons said.




Lloyd Hollenberg and Charles Hill


Melbourne University's Dr Charles Hill and Professor Lloyd Hollenberg, the Centre's Deputy Director





UNSW President and Vice-Chancellor Ian Jacobs thanked the government, Telstra and the CBA, hailing the collaboration as a powerful example of “what can happen when a culture of innovation is fostered from the top”.

“What a week for innovation, industry collaboration and UNSW’s world-leading quantum computing researchers,” said Professor Jacobs.

“The University applauds the vision and commitment of two of Australia's iconic corporates, the Commonwealth Bank and Telstra, in recognising the global significance and promise that quantum computing holds for the future.”

Quantum computing in silicon is an entirely new system at the atomic scale and Australia leads the world in single-atom engineering. In the long term, a single quantum computer has the potential to exceed the combined power of all the computers currently on Earth for certain high-value applications including data processing and drug development.



We are already at the forefront here, and now is the time to back our success, invest the money and see some results.




Industry, Innovation and Science Minister Christopher Pyne told the National Press Club that Australian researchers were currently winning the global quantum computing race and the government intended to cement their position.

“We are already at the forefront here, and now is the time to back our success, invest the money and see some results,” said Mr Pyne.

Telstra’s chief said quantum computing represented an “important leap in innovation” and would open a world of new possibilities.

“We want to help those possibilities become a reality,” Mr Penn said.

“Through this investment, and in partnership with other corporate partners such as the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, we can work together to put Australia at the forefront of global innovation.”

As well as financial support Mr Penn said Telstra would offer the resources of its data science team, including the skills and knowledge of Telstra’s chief scientist Dr Hugh Bradlow.







               Image Credit : UNSW

Commonwealth Bank Invests $10m to Quantum Computing Flagship

Commonwealth Bank commits $10m to quantum computing flagship


08 DEC 2015

UNSW Sydney
CBA’s $10 million pledge to support UNSW's quantum computing research sends a powerful message about industry collaboration on world-leading Australian innovation, and builds on major government investment announced this week.

UNSW welcomes the Commonwealth Bank’s $10 million pledge to support the University’s bid to build the world’s first silicon-based quantum computer, following a major government investment in the project this week.

[caption id="attachment_708" align="aligncenter" width="563"]Commonwealth Bank Invests $10m to Quantum Computing Flagship www.quantumcomputingtechnologyaustralia.com-112          Commonwealth Bank Invests $10m to Quantum Computing Flagship[/caption]

The UNSW-based Australian Research Council Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology received a $26 million boost as part of the federal government’s $1.1 billion National Innovation and Science Agenda unveiled on Monday.


World-leading innovation can happen – and is happening – in Australia.



Led by UNSW Scientia Professor Michelle Simmons, the Centre is leading the global race to build the world’s first quantum computer, a technology the government said would “transform Australian and global business”.

Following the innovation funding announcement, CBA chief executive Ian Narev on Tuesday said the bank intended to invest an additional $10 million over five years, building on an initial $5 millioncommitted in December 2014.

Mr Narev said Professor Simmons’ trailblazing work was proof that “world-leading innovation can happen – and is happening – in Australia”.

“For innovation to thrive there must be collaboration between governments, research institutions, businesses and entrepreneurs,” he said.

“Our investment has a long-term focus and is an example of potential collaboration and commercialisation.”

Professor Simmons was delighted by the announcement, which she said underscored the Commonwealth Bank’s position as a visionary technology leader.

“This investment sends a very powerful message about supporting internationally leading Australian research in areas of breakthrough technology,” she said.

“We are very much looking forward to extending our positive interactions with the bank to secure this technology for Australia’s future.”

UNSW President and Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Jacobs thanked the Bank for its funding commitment to the Centre’s ground-breaking and globally significant work.

“By working effectively with industry, government and leaders across the entire innovation ecosystem, universities can have a profound impact,” said Professor Jacobs.



We are very much looking forward to extending our positive interactions with the bank to secure this technology for Australia’s future.




Quantum computing in silicon is an entirely new system at the atomic scale and Australia leads the world in single-atom engineering. In the long term, a single quantum computer has the potential to exceed the combined power of all the computers currently on Earth for certain high-value applications including data processing and drug development.

David Whiteing, chief information officer at CBA, said quantum computing would increase the speed and power of computers “beyond what we can currently imagine”.

“This is still some time in the future, but the time for investment is now,” he said.

News Release Source : Commonwealth Bank commits $10m to quantum computing flagship

Image Credit : UNSW

Saturday, December 19, 2015

Scientists Demonstrates 'Hybrid' Logic Gate as Work Towards Quantum Computer Continues

Oxford team demonstrates 'hybrid' logic gate as work towards quantum computer continues


Just over a year ago, the UK government announced an investment of £270m over five years to help get quantum technology out of laboratories and into the marketplace.

[caption id="attachment_703" align="aligncenter" width="468"]Scientists Demonstrates 'Hybrid' Logic Gate as Work Towards Quantum Computer Continues www.quantumcomputingtechnologyaustralia.com-111 Scientists Demonstrates 'Hybrid' Logic Gate as Work Towards                           Quantum Computer Continues[/caption]

Oxford was chosen to lead one of four EPSRC-funded 'Hubs' looking at different aspects of quantum technology - in Oxford's case, shaping the future of quantum networking and computing, towards the ultimate goal of developing a functioning quantum computer.

Since then, the Networked Quantum Information Technologies (NQIT - pronounced 'N-kit') Hub, based at Oxford but involving nearly 30 academic and industrial partners, has been focusing on developing quantum technologies that could dwarf the processing power of today's supercomputers.

A new paper by Oxford researchers, published in the journal Nature, demonstrates how the work of the Hub is progressing.

Professor David Lucas of Oxford's Department of Physics, co-leader, with Professor Andrew Steane, of the ion trap quantum computing group, explains: 'The development of a "quantum computer" is one of the outstanding technological challenges of the 21st century. A quantum computer is a machine that processes information according to the rules of quantum physics, which govern the behaviour of microscopic particles at the scale of atoms and smaller.

'An important point is that it is not merely a different technology for computing in the same way our everyday computers work; it is at a very fundamental level a different way of processing information. It turns out that this quantum-mechanical way of manipulating information gives quantum computers the ability to solve certain problems far more efficiently than any conceivable conventional computer. One such problem is related to breaking secure codes, while another is searching large data sets. Quantum computers are naturally well-suited to simulating other quantum systems, which may help, for example, our understanding of complex molecules relevant to chemistry and biology.'

One of the leading technologies for building a quantum computer is trapped atomic ions, and a principal goal of the NQIT project is to develop the constituent elements of a quantum computer based on these ions.

Professor Lucas says: 'Each trapped ion (a single atom, with one electron removed) is used to represent one "quantum bit" of information. The quantum states of the ions are controlled with laser pulses of precise frequency and duration. Two different species of ion are needed in the computer: one to store information (a "memory qubit") and one to link different parts of the computer together via photons (an "interface qubit").'

The Nature paper, whose lead author is Magdalen College Junior Research Fellow Chris Ballance, demonstrates the all-important quantum 'logic gate' between two different species of ion - in this case two isotopes of calcium, the abundant isotope calcium-40 and the rare isotope calcium-43.

Professor Lucas says: 'The Oxford team has previously shown that calcium-43 makes the best single-qubit memory ever demonstrated, across all physical systems, while the calcium-40 ion has a simpler structure which is well-suited for use as an "interface qubit". The logic gate, which was first demonstrated for same-species ions at NIST Boulder (USA) in 2003, allows quantum information to be transferred from one qubit to another; in the present work, the qubits reside in the two different isotopes, stored in the same ion trap. The Oxford work was the first to demonstrate that this type of logic gate is possible with the demanding precision necessary to build a quantum computer.

'In a nice piece of "spin-off science" from this technological achievement, we were able to perform a "Bell test", by first using the high-precision logic gate to generate an entangled state of the two different-species ions, then manipulating and measuring them independently. This is a test which probes the non-local nature of quantum mechanics; that is, the fact that an entangled state of two separated particles has properties that cannot be mimicked by a classical system. This was the first time such a test had been performed on two different species of atom separated by many times the atomic size.'

While Professor Lucas cautions that the so-called 'locality loophole' is still present in this experiment, there is no doubt the work is an important contribution to the growing body of research exploring the physics of entanglement. He says: 'The significance of the work for trapped-ion quantum computing is that we show that quantum logic gates between different isotopic species are possible, can be driven by a relatively simple laser system, and can work with precision beyond the so-called "fault-tolerant threshold" precision of approximately 99% - the precision necessary to implement the techniques of quantum error correction, without which a quantum computer of useful size cannot be built.'

In the long term, it is likely that different atomic elements will be required, rather than different isotopes. In closely related work published in the same issue of Nature, by Ting Rei Tan et al, the NIST Ion Storage group has demonstrated a different type of quantum logic gate using ions of two different elements (beryllium and magnesium).

News Source Release : Oxford team demonstrates 'hybrid' logic gate as work towards quantum computer continues

Image Credit : UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

More Information Link : www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/research/ion-trap-quantum-computing-group

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Quantum Entanglement Achieved at Room Temperature

Strange quantum phenomenon achieved at room temperature in semiconductor wafers




























Entanglement is one of the strangest phenomena predicted by quantum mechanics, the theory that underlies most of modern physics: It says that two particles can be so inextricably connected that the state of one particle can instantly influence the state of the other—no matter how far apart they are.

[caption id="attachment_699" align="aligncenter" width="650"]Quantum Entanglement Achieved at Room Temperature www.quantumcomputingtechnologyaustralia.com-110                                          Quantum Entanglement Achieved at Room Temperature[/caption]

A century ago, entanglement was at the center of intense theoretical debate, leaving scientists like Albert Einstein baffled. Today, entanglement is accepted as a fact of nature and is actively being explored as a resource for future technologies including quantum computers, quantum communication networks and high-precision quantum sensors.

Entanglement is also one of nature’s most elusive phenomena. Producing entanglement between particles requires that they start out in a highly ordered state, which is disfavored by thermodynamics, the process that governs the interactions between heat and other forms of energy. This poses a particularly formidable challenge when trying to realize entanglement at the macroscopic scale, among huge numbers of particles.

“The macroscopic world that we are used to seems very tidy, but it is completely disordered at the atomic scale. The laws of thermodynamics generally prevent us from observing quantum phenomena in macroscopic objects,” said Paul Klimov, a graduate student in the Institute for Molecular Engineering and lead author of new research on quantum entanglement. The institute is a partnership between UChicago and Argonne National Laboratory.

Previously, scientists have overcome the thermodynamic barrier and achieved macroscopic entanglement in solids and liquids by going to ultra-low temperatures (-270 degrees Celsius) and applying huge magnetic fields (1,000 times larger than that of a typical refrigerator magnet) or using chemical reactions. In the Nov. 20 issue of Science Advances, Klimov and other researchers in Prof. David Awschalom’s group at the Institute for Molecular Engineering have demonstrated that macroscopic entanglement can be generated at room temperature and in a small magnetic field.

The researchers used infrared laser light to order (preferentially align) the magnetic states of thousands of electrons and nuclei and then electromagnetic pulses, similar to those used for conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), to entangle them. This procedure caused pairs of electrons and nuclei in a macroscopic 40 micrometer-cubed volume (the volume of a red blood cell) of the semiconductor SiC to become entangled.

“We know that the spin states of atomic nuclei associated with semiconductor defects have excellent quantum properties at room temperature,” said Awschalom, the Liew Family Professor in Molecular Engineering and a senior scientist at Argonne. “They are coherent, long-lived and controllable with photonics and electronics. Given these quantum ‘pieces,’ creating entangled quantum states seemed like an attainable goal.”

In addition to being of fundamental physical interest, “the ability to produce robust entangled states in an electronic-grade semiconductor at ambient conditions has important implications on future quantum devices,” Awschalom said.

In the short term, the techniques used here in combination with sophisticated devices enabled by advanced SiC device-fabrication protocols could enable quantum sensors that use entanglement as a resource for beating the sensitivity limit of traditional (non-quantum) sensors. Given that the entanglement works at ambient conditions and that SiC is bio-friendly, biological sensing inside a living organism is one particularly exciting application.

“We are excited about entanglement-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging probes, which could have important biomedical applications,” said Abram Falk of IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center and a co-author of the research findings.

In the long term, it might even be possible to go from entangled states on the same SiC chip to entangled states across distant SiC chips. Such efforts could be facilitated by physical phenomena that allow macroscopic quantum states, as opposed to single quantum states (in single atoms), to interact very strongly with one another, which is important for producing entanglement with a high success rate. Such long-distance entangled states have been proposed for synchronizing global positioning satellites and for communicating information in a manner that is fundamentally secured from eavesdroppers by the laws of physics.

News Source Release : Strange quantum phenomenon achieved at room temperature in semiconductor wafers

Image Credit : The University of Chicago