Mediaboss Marketing

Transcripts

Yuval Boger: Hello, Scott, and thank you for joining me today.

Scott Faris: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Yuval: So who are you, and what do you do?

Scott: Wow, thats a big question. So Im Scott Faris. Im the CEO of Infleqtion, a company formerly known as ColdQuanta. Ive been with the company now about a year and a half. Im excited to have taken on the opportunity. My last company was really tackling a hard problem. This is ten times harder, and so I always run to the hardest problem in the room. And so Im excited to continue working on this one.

Yuval: Of the things that appears unique about Infleqtion is that youve got such a broad product portfolio. Maybe you can describe the portfolio and how do you see that playing over time. Whats important now? Whats going to be important in the future?

Scott: Sure. So as you recognize when you say the word quantum, peoples eyes kind of glaze over and roll the back of their head and, What are you talking about? And so one of the things Ive learned over the years is how do you really describe the business in a way that people get? And the way Ive come to describe Infleqtion is that we have a really simple business model.

All that we do is we just simply shoot atoms with lasers. Thats it. Now in that is a lot to unpack, and certainly theres a lot in there. But from that simple concept of being able to identify, capture, trap, manage, manipulate, and measure atoms individually and in groups, that gives us the ability to really do a lot of things. On the most complex things that were working on is work in our gate-based computer. And thats something that were obviously quite excited about, but something that has a longer roadmap associated with it to get to real points of productivity.

On the other end of the spectrum, we do a lot of work in sensors, and theres a lot of history with the company. The company just celebrated its 16th birthday yesterday. So Infleqtions not a startup in a classical startup sense. Weve been around for 16 years. And so the first 15 years of that history and journey of the company was in research and it was really a lot of research in the area of quantum sensing. Both quantum sensing from neutral atoms but also work in ion traps. Because I like to say weve been doing this so long, weve actually had to invent a lot of the basic pieces that anybody doing work in neutral atom comes to us for the parts and pieces they need to build their experiments.

Yuval: So if Im a customer, I can go to you and buy parts and pieces.

Scott: Yeah.

Yuval: If I wanted to build my own quantum computer, I could also buy sensors, right? Or technology for sensors.

Scott: Yeah, so the way weve migrated the company, the simple way to think about this again, in the early days it was doing world-class research. We wanted to continue that legacy. We think thats an important part of the business. Weve been very fortunate that weve been able to partner with the U.S. Government and U.K. government and other governments as well as private companies to do some of the research.

When I joined a year, year and a half ago, it was really with the charge to look into our trophy case of sensors and prototypes that weve built over the years, and ask: which one of those actually has commercial market potential? And how do we think about now really building the commercial company alongside the research business? And so part of the name change actually was really to reflect that we are a commercial company. We are focused on bringing products to market, and products to market in volume.

Infleqtion, we thought, was appropriate as a name that shows what were about and why were here. But again, were also continuing on the research front. And so within Infleqtion we have whats called ColdQuanta Labs, thats our core old research group. And another way to think about it is that if youre familiar with Lockheed Martins Skunk Works, that is where they take their hardest problems, and its a dedicated team of people with just tremendous history.

Thats really the core of our business, where ColdQuanta Labs is our Skunk Works. And thats a model well continue to grow and expand. But for us right now, were focused on bringing our first generation of optical clocks to market, followed by work that were doing in Quantum RF, and then a variety of other things in positioning, navigation, and timing known as PNT and gravity measurement. And again, these are all things that we built prototypes for. But were very thoughtful about it. We like to say we do lots of things, but we dont do it all at the same time. And so right now, our focus is really about bringing clocks to commercial scale, really bringing the size, weight, and cost down so that we can build networks of clocks.

Yuval: Give me a tip as a CEO. I mean, is it difficult to turn an organization from a research mindset into a product mindset? Whats involved in it, and what would you advise others that might be trying to do the same?

Scott: It is difficult, and its really difficult with a company thats been really great at being a research company for 15 years because that is the DNA of the company. And for me, this was a unique opportunity because I saw the level of research and accolades, and respect that this organization had. And we didnt want to destroy that. And typically in a startup, you go through an early research phase where youre trying to figure out what you want to build. You eventually triangulate on an opportunity, and then the researchers need to become product people. They themselves need to go through a transformation.

One of the things that is unique about what were doing here, as I said, is were preserving that research legacy through ColdQuanta Labs. We want those physicists to continue to push forward on really defining the boundaries of what quantum sensing machines could look like, what quantum computing looks like, and were building a commercial organization next to it.

Thats a unique way of doing it. But I think in terms of advice, culture is key. Nomenclature is key. In a research company, you have PIs. In a commercial company, you have product line managers. And so just even titles make a big difference in how a company thinks about itself. And Ive done this my entire career. Ive done seven or eight large spinouts. The reality is most companies dont make it to the other side. The casualty rate is like 90%. And a lot of that has to do with culture. A lot of it has to do with commitment of just, Were going to be a commercial company. And in the early days of my career, I was working for a company that time wouldve been called an SBIR mill, for example. You know, we were living on three or $4 million a year of SBIR funding. This was in the 90s. And so thats a lot of money then.

And we made the decision to go cold turkey. Because we knew that once youre in that SBIR process, the whole mentality of the company is, Lets go get another grant to last another couple quarters. And we made a conscious decision that the only way to stop that was to basically stop writing proposals, focus on commercial products, and live or die by whether we could sell anything. Ive seen that happen time and time again, but its that kind of a really dramatic cultural shift that a company needs to figure out how to navigate through.

Yuval: You mentioned clocks. And I can understand why clocks are useful in a GPS setting, but where else would they be useful? And why is that an interesting business?

Scott: Everywhere. You know, its funny. I was thinking of my Apple Watch and you know The reality is that everything is calibrated against time today. Financial markets, data centers, databases, everything has timestamps associated with transactions. Thats to ensure the integrity of a transaction, to allow matching of transactions.

And so we live in a digital world. Everything is a transaction in the digital world, everything needs to be validated. And again, as we start thinking about machine learning and AI, the amount of data, what we do with data and the ability to manipulate things in a positive way and a negative way, requires more and more integrity.

The foundation of integrity is time. We knew something happened at a particular point of time. And we started thinking about that. It became more than, Okay, well yeah, I need this, so my car knows where it is. Or I know where my car is. And I spent seven years in the autonomy business. And again, one of the fatal flaws in that business is you couldnt rely on GPS. You know when you drive into crowded cities, you lose your GPS signal.

And so this idea of really thinking about time and recreating time as a new standard is really what weve started to push on. With atomic clocks, optical atomic clocks, you can tell time a thousand times more efficiently, 10,000 times more efficiently. But I think more importantly is that you can distribute time differently. Right now, the time comes from GPS constellations. Its a byproduct of positioning, navigation, and timing, known as PNT. You need timing. The T in PNT is timing.

But as weve seen with whats going on in the Ukraine and what weve seen going on elsewhere, a space-based time distribution system is no longer enough. And in fact, one of the challenges, it takes time to get time here. So when you broadcast a signal from a satellite to the earth, it takes time. And that latency is now actually becoming a barrier as well. And so what our view is, is that time needs to be rethought. It needs not only to be more accurate, it needs to be more reliable.

And you get there through terrestrial and space-time distribution infrastructure. Which now means you need lots and lots of precision clocks, like tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of clocks. Highly distributed, highly networked, which now means the clocks need to be inexpensive, they need to be robust, and they need to be accurate.

We can do the precision timing piece. The challenge now in clocks is how do we make them small, inexpensive. And this is really what were focused on at Infleqtion, is not only inventing the clocks but, How do we make them in high volume at really low cost?

Yuval: At the other end of the scale, you make quantum computers. Youre building quantum computers. Now some would say and I know the counterargument but would love to hear your perspective. Some would say that companies should focus, right? That you cant do clocks and sensors and software and quantum computers and many other things. Where is the synergy? Is that because its all laser shooting at atoms? Is that because its the same customer that needs everything? How do you see the synergies?

Scott: So you hit the nail on the head. We just shoot lasers at atoms, whether were building a computer, whether were building a clock, whether were building an RF receiver. Its the same fundamentals. Again, I oversimplify it. But in reality, its a photonics problem. Again, if you look particularly in the neutral atom space, the ion trap space, to a large degree, the industry is really being driven by a handful of laser companies that are providing scientific grade lasers for this particular purpose.

And thats great for research purposes. But to really make these things industrialized, to make them hardened, to make them scalable, and really to make them more reliable, the photonics ecosystem around the cores, the photonic cores, or the anatomic cores need to shrink. They need to become smaller, they need to become tightly packed. The lasers need to be better.

And so in our particular case, whats really unique about our business model is that were investing heavily in what I call the photonic core. Our CTO is a laser guy. Hes a photonics guy. Hes an AMO physicist, but he spent 20 years building industrial products and laser systems. And that was really a recognition on our part that we have a tremendous amount of people looking at the quantum physics issues. We were unbalanced in the people looking at the underlying issue, which was the photonics problems.

And so for the advancements that were making in shrinking down the sensors, making them more robust, packing more lasers in, weve been smart about it that that roadmap actually supports the underlying roadmap for our computer work. So the better we get at lasers and everything we do, the better the computer gets.

Yuval: You mentioned that you were at the company for about a year and a half and came from a different field. What is the thing that most surprised you in the company or in the market relative to where you thought was going to be going in?

Scott: I would say two things. A pleasant surprise is how similar it was to what I just did. Its the same problems. Right? In many cases, its tapping into the same networks of people. Again, the color of light changes. We have a different set of wavelengths that were working with now. These are unique wavelengths for quantum. But the fundamentals, the lasers need to be packaged. They need to be smaller. Again, everything I just talked about applied really for my last three companies.

And one of the things when I looked at this company, and I looked at the risks associated with it, I didnt really see this as a risk. I think others see it as a risk because they dont necessarily know where to go to find all of these capabilities. And again, they dont exist with a billboard, but they exist. They exist You know, my last company was in the LIDAR industry. Again, we didnt shoot lasers at atoms. We shot lasers at tires 300 meters away in the middle of the night moving 70 miles an hour.

We need to be really good at doing that. Otherwise, lives are in danger. Here, we need to shoot at atoms, we need to be good at that. And so the people that solve those types of problems can move from industry to industry. In fact, were starting to see more LIDAR people move into the quantum industry because of this.

Id say that the other surprise, the other side of the spectrum, was this issue of culture. And it was a 15-year-old startup, and as I said earlier, the culture was deeply embedded. It was ingrained in everybody, and that was great. Everyones passionate about quantum. But ultimately, the understanding of quantum research versus quantum product was a much harder road to traverse. Not because the people arent smart, not because the people arent really passionate about what they do. Its such a different world. And words matter. I joke that I say the word quality. And quality in a commercial company and quality in a research organization is the same word. They mean entirely different things.

And so you have to recognize that even words and how you use them, and how you think about things and present ideas to the research team to say, Hey, we need to build a quality organization. They say, Wait, we have one. Its like, Well, no, that works for prototypes. It does not work We cant repeat problems. Right? The quality system now has to catch things because if we make 10,000 of something thats expensive to mess up. If its just one of something thats recoverable.

So that to me, was an exciting personal journey, just really having to relearn a lot of things. And frankly, as a CEO, how to get people to come along and see the bigger picture.

Yuval: We see a lot of fluctuations in the capital markets. You know, stock markets go up and down. Public quantum computing companies may not have preserved the value that they had during their IPO. Lots of money is being spent in Europe and maybe less so in the U.S. How worried are you about that when youre trying to build so many different things that obviously require a lot of money?

Scott: Yeah. Well, I mean, the bottom line is this is deep tech. Right? Deep techs hard. Its expensive. I think one of my personal frustrations in the United States over the last 30 years is weve lost our appetite. And in many cases, weve actually lost the knowledge of how to invest in deep tech. Its hard, its bumpy, its by nature These are the hard problems. Again, my nature is I love going to the hardest problem in the room and see that as a challenge. And this is why I do things like this.

But it does require patient capital. It does require visionary capital. Again, a good example is just simply building a production prototype in a traditional venture model would be, Okay, great, now we can hand it off to someone to make it. You know, spending someone elses capital to figure out to make it. The reality is no one knows how to make it. And so not only do we have to invent the product, we have to invent the way to make it. In many cases, we have to invent parts of the supply chain that dont exist. And we have to onshore parts of the supply chain because theres also a national security aspect of this thats quite critical. So we have to onshore capabilities as well.

Thats not a traditional venture investment model. That is a model where sovereign wealth funds and non-traditional investors look at the return for literally creating an industry. And were not innovating on top of something trying to make it better. Were creating an entirely new industry from scratch. And this is, in many ways, were sitting in the 50s and 60s thinking about the semiconductor industry of today. And I think thats one of the challenges on compute, frankly, is that were sitting in the 1960s thinking about these multi-core processors that we take for granted today.

Again, theyre all possible, but the ecosystem doesnt exist. The supply chain doesnt exist. Theres a lot of, in some cases, different modalities. Theres material sciences that need to be solved. Theyre all solvable in time, but its a long, long investment. What I liked about what we do is that in terms of the neutral atom space is everything that we need to do to build anything already exists. We dont have to go and invent stuff in material science. Its already there. We have to figure out how to make it purposeful for what we need it to do, because its a general capability. Again, lasers are a great example. People are using these scientific lasers because theyre highly tunable. Because you cant buy lasers specifically for quantum. The markets not there. This is the traditional crossing the chasm challenge.

And we as a company have You know, were pushing forward to say, Look, its not only about inventing the product, but its also about, How do you make the product?' And so that takes us into thinking about how we collect capital on a global basis. But like I said, at the end of the day, the efficiency in the model is if were solving the photonics roadmap and were doing it intelligently, thats 80% of the problem that we have for most of our product portfolio.

Yuval: As we get closer to the end of our conversation today, I wanted to see if there are a couple of customer projects that you are particularly proud of or particularly happy to describe of the various things that you do.

Scott: Yeah, so I think we had a great announcement at Q2B with our Super.tech division in partnership with Morningstar, starting to think about on the software side. So again, we also have a software stack, a software layer and application layer of the organization. Im particularly excited about and Im proud about that. Again, that team did tremendous work.

Again, its early indications of what business models could be. But also at the same event, EPRI had run a competition for white papers. And two of our papers came in first and second place. One was thinking about quantum sensing networks in managing grid infrastructure. And thinking about how we could use clocks to do that, and how time as a service for grid infrastructure could transform the security and the efficiency of grids.

And so again, as we think about quantum its not like, Whats the hardest problem in the world we could throw at a quantum computer? Right? Those computers wont exist for a while. What can we do with todays infrastructure in todays capabilities, which may not even require compute, but could require some of the algorithm talent thats working on the compute problem, but now looking at sensing. Looking at distributed time networks, looking at distributing networks for quantum RF for example. And applying those same learnings around compute into these other areas.

Whats nice about that is were also continuing to learn about compute as we do that. But were doing it in a way where we have near-term products. We can start to try revenues at scale. And again, in the background continue to collect this learning and apply it into our compute efforts.

Yuval: And a hypothetical question, if you could have dinner with one of the quantum greats, dead or alive, who would that-

Scott: Well, thats a good question. Well, I dont You know, I dont know. Thats a really good Thats a great question. To me, I think I got to turn the table on you. Again, this isnt my view. This isnt a quantum problem. This is a business problem. And I think that my first interview when I came on board, it was my first day on the job, my first hour on the job actually, that I was asked this question is, Im looking at your credentials here, and I dont see that youre a physicist. I dont see that you actually have any technical or engineering background. And best I can tell youre a finance person. Im like, Yes. And the question became, Why is a finance person qualified to run a quantum company? Im like, Because we got a lot of brilliant quantum people working on the quantum problem, but we got to figure out how to turn this into a business.

And thats what I do. I engineer creation of high-value, high-growth businesses. And so to turn the question around, the one person I would want to have dinner with is Elon Musk, because the way he thinks about problem-solving and the way he is committed to these leaps of faith, we need these leap of faith thinking moments in quantum to make it real. Why? Because it is that hard. 99% of the time were faced with failure. And it is hard to keep going on day after day after day when it is so hard and so expensive, and theres failure after failure, but we need to do this, we have to do this. We have to do this because of national security reasons. We have to do this because this is the future. We have to do this because the semiconductor roadmap is coming to an end. Its getting more and more expensive to extend Moores law. And so again, we have to push through this and it just requires a very different type of leadership and thinking to drive through these hard problems.

One of our corporate values is grit. And we debated a lot about that. But grit is absolutely important, imperative, and necessary to make this happen. And thats why we said this is one of our values is that we will persevere, we will push through despite the adversity. And thats a leadership challenge.

Yuval: I certainly hope you will. Scott, thank you so much for joining me today.

Scott: Yeah, thank you. Thanks for taking the time.

Yuval Boger is an executive working at the intersection of quantum technology and business. Known as the Superposition Guy as well as the original Qubit Guy, he can be reached on LinkedIn or at this email.

March 27, 2023

Read more from the original source:
Podcast with Scott Faris, CEO of Infleqtion - Quantum Computing Report

Researchers have discovered a way to translate quantum information between different kinds of quantum technologies, with significant implications for quantum computing, communication, and networking.

The research, published in the journal Nature, was funded by the Army Research Office (ARO), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), and the NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Hybrid Quantum Architectures and Networks (HQAN), which is led by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. It represents a new way to convert quantum information from the format used by quantum computers to the format needed for quantum communication.

Photonsparticles of lightare essential for quantum information technologies, but different technologies use them at different frequencies. For example, some of the most common quantum computing technology is based on superconducting qubits, such as those used by tech giants Google and IBM; these qubits store quantum information in photons that move at microwave frequencies.

But if you want to build a quantum network, or connect quantum computers, you cant send around microwave photons because their grip on their quantum information is too weak to survive the trip.

A lot of the technologies that we use for classical communicationcell phones, Wi-Fi, GPS, and things like thatall use microwave frequencies of light, said Aishwarya Kumar, a postdoc at the James Franck Institute at University of Chicago and lead author on the paper. But you cant do that for quantum communication because the quantum information you need is in a single photon. And at microwave frequencies, that information will get buried in thermal noise.

The solution is to transfer the quantum information to a higher-frequency photon, called an optical photon, which is much more resilient against ambient noise. But the information cant be transferred directly from photon to photon; instead, we need intermediary matter. Some experiments design solid state devices for this purpose, but Kumars experiment aimed for something more fundamental: atoms.

The electrons in atoms are only ever allowed to have certain specific amounts of energy, called energy levels. If an electron is sitting at a lower energy level, it can be excited to a higher energy level by hitting it with a photon whose energy exactly matches the difference between the higher and lower level. Similarly, when an electron is forced to drop to a lower energy level, the atom then emits a photon with an energy that matches the energy difference between levels.

Rubidium atoms happen to have two gaps in their levels that Kumars technology exploits: one that exactly equals the energy of a microwave photon, and one that exactly equals the energy of an optical photon. By using lasers to shift the atoms electron energies up and down, the technology allows the atom to absorb a microwave photon with quantum information and then emit an optical photon with that quantum information. This translation between different modes of quantum information is called transduction.

Effectively using atoms for this purpose is made possible by the significant progress scientists have made in manipulating such small objects. We as a community have built remarkable technology in the last 20 or 30 years that lets us control essentially everything about the atoms, Kumar said. So the experiment is very controlled and efficient.

He says the other secret to their success is the fields progress in cavity quantum electrodynamics, where a photon is trapped in a superconducting, reflective chamber. Forcing the photon to bounce around in an enclosed space, the superconducting cavity strengthens the interaction between the photon and whatever matter is placed inside it.

Their chamber doesnt look very enclosedin fact, it more closely resembles a block of Swiss cheese. But what look like holes are actually tunnels that intersect in a very specific geometry, so that photons or atoms can be trapped at an intersection. Its a clever design that also allows researchers access to the chamber so they can inject the atoms and the photons.

The technology works both ways: it can transfer quantum information from microwave photons to optical photons, and vice versa. So it can be on either side of a long-distance connection between two superconducting qubit quantum computers, and serve as a fundamental building block to a quantum internet.

But Kumar thinks there may be a lot more applications for this technology than just quantum networking. Its core ability is to strongly entangle atoms and photonsan essential, and difficult task in many different quantum technologies across the field.

One of the things that we're really excited about is the ability of this platform to generate really efficient entanglement, he said. Entanglement is central to almost everything quantum that we care about, from computing to simulations to metrology and atomic clocks. Im excited to see what else we can do.

- This press release was originally published on the Chicago Quantum Exchange website

Read the rest here:
New Experiment Translates Quantum Information between ... - Lab Manager Magazine

BERKELEY, Calif., March 27, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rigetti Computing, Inc. (Nasdaq: RGTI) (Rigetti or the Company), a pioneer in full-stack quantum-classical computing, today announced its financial results for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31, 2022.

Fourth Quarter of 2022

Year-End 2022 Results

Executive Leadership Developments

We have strengthened our executive and operational management team and have implemented steps designed to improve our focus and operating efficiency, said Dr. Subodh Kulkarni, Rigetti Chief Executive Officer. This included reducing our workforce in order to focus the organization and our resources on nearer-term strategic priorities and preserve available cash resources.

Our next generation 84 qubit chip known as the Ankaa-1, with its new architecture of square lattice and tunable couplers, was internally deployed for testing this month. This chip is a leap forward in architectural design and is already showing superior performance compared with our prior generation 80 qubit Aspen M3 system based on our internal analysis.We are using the Ankaa-1 internally within Rigetti and initial performance is demonstrating improved median 2-qubit fidelity and faster gate speeds compared with the Aspen M3. We currently anticipate launching availability of Ankaa-1 to select customers in mid-2023 as we continue to work to improve Ankaa-1 performance with the goal of reaching median 2-qubit fidelity of 98% to support the anticipated Ankaa-2 84-qubit system. Ankaa-2 84-qubit system, with anticipated improved design and further improvement in performance is expected to be deployed and made available for external customers in the fourth quarter of 2023, following which we plan to continue work on the Ankaa-2 to reach 2-qubit fidelity of 99%.

In the event we reach 2-qubit fidelity of 99%, which we expect to reach in 2024, we plan to move to tiling 4 Ankaa chips to develop the anticipated 336 qubit Lyra system. We expect that if this milestone is achieved, it will enable vastly greater scale and serve as a key and exciting step to bring Rigetti closer to quantum advantage, said Kulkarni.

Outlook

At our current stage of development, we believe that executing toward our roadmap and achieving our technology milestones are key to fueling our goal of achieving quantum advantage. We believe Rigetti has enormous potential and could be able to contribute tremendous value as quantum computing potentially becomes mainstream by 2030. We remain focused on meeting our objectives, said Dr. Kulkarni.

Based on its current operating plan, Rigetti expects to have cash, cash equivalents, and available-for-sale securities of between $65-$75 million at the end of 2023. At this time, based on its current operating plan, Rigetti anticipates that it will need to raise additional funding by late 2024 or early 2025 to continue its research and development efforts and achieve its business objectives.

Conference Call and Webcast

Rigetti will host a conference call later today at 5:00 p.m. ET, or 2:00 p.m. PT, to discuss its fourth quarter and year end 2022 financial results.

You can listen to a live audio webcast of the conference call at https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/253j86pe or the "Events & Presentations" section of the Company's Investor Relations website athttps://investors.rigetti.com/. A replay of the conference call will be available at the same locations following the conclusion of the call for one year.

To participate in the live call, you must register using the following link: https://register.vevent.com/register/BIad8e205fd89b44f08963dfd7de0ac595. Once registered, you will receive dial-in numbers and a unique PIN number. When you dial in, you will input your PIN and be routed into the call. If you register and forget your PIN, or lose the registration confirmation email, simply re-register to receive a new PIN.

About Rigetti

Rigetti is a pioneer in full-stack quantum computing. The Company has operated quantum computers over the cloud since 2017 and serves global enterprise, government, and research clients through its Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services platform. The Companys proprietary quantum-classical infrastructure provides high performance integration with public and private clouds for practical quantum computing. Rigetti has developed the industrys first multi-chip quantum processor for scalable quantum computing systems. The Company designs and manufactures its chips in-house at Fab-1, the industrys first dedicated and integrated quantum device manufacturing facility. Learn more atwww.rigetti.com.

Cautionary Language Concerning Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws relating to the updated business plan, including with respect to its objectives and its technology roadmap, including its ability to achieve milestones including developing the Ankaa 84-qubit system to enable better performance than the Companys current 80-qubit Aspen-M system and achieve target gate fidelities, including at least median 2-qubit fidelity of 98% on Ankaa-1 and at least 99% median 2-qubit gate fidelity on the anticipated Ankaa-2 on the anticipated timing or at all; the Companys expectations with respect to the timing of next generation systems; the Companys ability to scale to develop the Lyra 336-qubit system and develop practical applications on the anticipated timing or at all; the Companys expectations with respect to the anticipated stages of quantum technology maturation, including its ability to develop a quantum computer that is able to solve a practical, operationally relevant problem significantly better, faster, or cheaper than a current classical solution and achieve narrow quantum advantage on the anticipated timing or at all; the Company's expectations with respect to the reduction in force, including anticipated benefits including anticipated reduction of operating expenses, anticipated preservation of available cash resources and anticipated expenses and charges associated with the reduction in force, as well as the expectation that the reduction in force will put the Company in a better position to deliver on the promise of quantum computing; expectations regarding cash, cash equivalents and available-for-sale securities at December 31, 2023 and the time by which the Company expects it will need to raise additional funding, including expectations with respect to capital expenditures; expectations with respect to management transitions; expectations with respect to the potential of the Company, including the potential for the Company to contribute tremendous value; and the potential of quantum computing to become mainstream and the timing thereof. These forward-looking statements are based upon estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by the Company and its management, are inherently uncertain. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations include, but are not limited to: the Companys ability to achieve milestones, technological advancements, including with respect to its technology roadmap, help unlock quantum computing, and develop practical applications; the ability of the Company to obtain government contractors successfully and in a timely manner; the potential of quantum computing; the ability of the Company to obtain government contracts and the availability of government funding; the ability of the Company to expand its QCaaS business; the success of the Companys partnerships and collaborations; the Companys ability to accelerate its development of multiple generations of quantum processors; the outcome of any legal proceedings that may be instituted against the Company or others; the ability to meet stock exchange listing standards; the ability to recognize the anticipated benefits of the business combination, which may be affected by, among other things, competition, the ability of the Company to grow and manage growth profitably, maintain relationships with customers and suppliers and attract and retain management and key employees; costs related to operating as a public company; changes in applicable laws or regulations; the possibility that the Company may be adversely affected by other economic, business, or competitive factors; the Companys estimates of expenses and profitability; the evolution of the markets in whichthe Company competes; the ability of the Company to execute on its technology roadmap; the ability of the Company to implement its strategic initiatives, expansion plans and continue to innovate its existing services; the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Companys business; the expected use of proceeds from the Companys past and future financings or other capital; the sufficiency of the Companys cash resources; unfavorable conditions in the Companys industry, the global economy or global supply chain, including financial and credit market fluctuations and uncertainty, rising inflation and interest rates, disruptions in banking systems, increased costs, international trade relations, political turmoil, natural catastrophes, warfare (such as the ongoing military conflict between Russia and Ukraine and related sanctions against Russia), and terrorist attacks; and other risks and uncertainties set forth in the section entitled Risk Factors and Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements in the Companys Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the three months ended September 30, 2022, the Companys future filings with the SEC, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022 and other documents filed by the Company from time to time with the SEC. These filings identify and address other important risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events and results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and the Company assumes no obligation and does not intend to update or revise these forward-looking statements other than as required by applicable law. The Company does not give any assurance that it will achieve its expectations.

ContactsRigetti Computing Investor Contact:IR@Rigetti.com

Rigetti Computing Media Contact:press@rigetti.com

1 In October 2021, the Company changed its fiscal year-end from January 31 to December 31, effective December 31, 2021.

See original here:
Rigetti Computing Reports Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year 2022 Results - GlobeNewswire

A single free electron propagates above the special layered structure that the researchers engineered, only a few tens of nanometers above it. During its movement, the electron emits discrete packets of radiation called photons. Between the electron and the photons it emitted, a connection of quantum entanglement is formed. Credit: Ella Maru Studio

The researchers from the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology have presented the first-ever experimental observation of Cherenkov radiation confined within a two-dimensional space. The results were surprising, as they set a new record for electron-radiation coupling strength and revealed the quantum properties of the radiation.

Cherenkov radiation is a unique physical phenomenon that has been utilized for a number of years in medical imaging, particle detection, and laser-driven electron accelerators. The researchers from Technion linked this phenomenon to potential future applications in photonic quantum computing and free-electron quantum light sources.

The study, which was published in Physical Review X, was headed by Ph.D. students Yuval Adiv and Shai Tsesses from the Technion, together with Hao Hu from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (now a professor at Nanjing university in China). It was supervised by Prof. Ido Kaminer and Prof. Guy Bartal of the Technion, in collaboration with colleagues from China: Prof. Hongsheng Chen, and Prof. Xiao Lin from Zhejiang University.

The interaction of free electrons with light underlies a plethora of known radiation phenomena and has led to numerous applications in science and industry. One of the most important of these interaction effects is the Cherenkov radiation electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle, such as an electron, travels through a medium at a speed greater than the phase velocity of light in that specific medium.

It is the optical equivalent of a supersonic boom, which occurs, for example, when a jet travels faster than the speed of sound. Consequently, Cherenkov radiation is sometimes called an optical shock wave. The phenomenon was discovered in 1934. In 1958, the scientists who discovered it were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Since then, during more than 80 years of research, the investigation of Cherenkov radiation led to the development of a wealth of applications, most of them for particle identification detectors and medical imaging. However, despite the intense preoccupation with the phenomenon, the bulk of theoretical research and all experimental demonstrations concerned Cherenkov radiation in three-dimensional space and based its description on classical electromagnetism.

Now, the Technion researchers present the first experimental observation of 2D Cherenkov radiation, demonstrating that in two-dimensional space, radiation behaves in a completely different manner for the first time, the quantum description of light is essential to explain the experimental results.

The researchers engineered a special multilayer structure enabling interaction between free electrons and light waves traveling along a surface. The smart engineering of the structure allowed for the first measurement of 2D Cherenkov radiation. The low dimensionality of the effect permitted a glimpse into the quantum nature of the process of radiation emission from free electrons: a count of the number of photons (quantum particles of light) emitted from a single electron and indirect evidence of the entanglement of the electrons with the light waves they emit.

In this context, entanglement means correlation between the properties of the electron and those of the light emitted, such that measuring one provides information about the other. It is worth noting that the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the performance of a series of experiments demonstrating the effects of quantum entanglement (in systems different from those demonstrated in the present research).

According to Yuval Adiv: The result of the study which surprised us the most concerns the efficiency of electron radiation emission in the experiment: whereas the most advanced experiments that preceded the present one achieved a regime in which approximately only one electron out of one hundred emitted radiation, here, we succeeded in achieving an interaction regime in which every electron emitted radiation. In other words, we were able to demonstrate an improvement of over two orders of magnitude in the interaction efficiency (also called the coupling strength). This result helps advance modern developments of efficient electron-driven radiation sources.

Prof. Kaminer commented: Radiation emitted from electrons is an old phenomenon that has been researched for over a hundred years and was assimilated into technology a long time ago, an example being the home microwave oven. For many years, it seemed that we had already discovered everything there was to know about electron radiation, and thus, the idea that this kind of radiation had already been fully described by classical physics became entrenched. In striking contrast to this concept, the experimental apparatus we built allows the quantum nature of electron radiation to be revealed. The new experiment that was now published explores the quantum-photonic nature of electron radiation.

He continues, The experiment is part of a paradigm shift in the way we understand this radiation, and more broadly, the relationship between electrons and the radiation they emit. For example, we now understand that free electrons can become entangled with the photons they emit. It is both surprising and exciting to see signs of this phenomenon in the experiment.

According to Shai Tsesses, In Yuval Adivs new experiment, we forced the electrons to travel in proximity to a photonic-plasmonic surface that I planned based on a technique developed in the lab of Prof. Guy Bartal. The electron velocity was accurately set to obtain a large coupling strength, greater than that obtained in normal situations, where coupling is to radiation in three dimensions. At the heart of the process, we observe the spontaneous quantum nature of radiation emission, obtained in discrete packets of energy called photons. In this way, the experiment sheds new light on the quantum nature of photons.

Reference: Observation of 2D Cherenkov Radiation by Yuval Adiv, Hao Hu, Shai Tsesses, Raphael Dahan, Kangpeng Wang, Yaniv Kurman, Alexey Gorlach, Hongsheng Chen, Xiao Lin, Guy Bartal and Ido Kaminer, 6 January 2023, Physical Review X.DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevX.13.011002

Read the original here:
Revealing Quantum Properties of Radiation 2D Interaction Takes ... - SciTechDaily

KT proposed quantum internet technology as an international standardization task at the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) SG 13 meeting held in Geneva from March 13 to 24. The proposal was approved on March 27th.

ITU-T is the standardization division of ITU, which oversees policies and standardization in the global telecommunications field. Technologies approved as standardization tasks by affiliated research groups are established as international standards after discussions among member countries. KT is currently the only domestic telecommunications company to enter the ITU chairperson and lead the global standardization of quantum technology.

Quantum Internet is a next-generation Internet technology that connects quantum computers, quantum sensors, and quantum cryptographic devices in the form of a quantum network by using the "photonic entanglement" phenomenon, in which photons can transmit each other's states even if they are far apart. As much as it uses quantum technology, it has a high level of security that existing Internet technologies cannot provide.

Accordingly, ITU-T SG 13, led by KT, is a new standardization topic constituting a network between quantum devices, a technology to expand the capacity of a quantum computer by interworking between quantum computers using a quantum network, and interworking between quantum sensors using a quantum network. It plans to develop technologies that enhance measurement precision.

The approval of the international standardization project for quantum internet technology narrows the gap and secures technological leadership in quantum internet, which is considered the final stage of quantum technology, in Korea, which has had difficulties in accelerating technology development due to delays in large-scale investment in quantum technology compared to advanced countries. It is meaningful in that it did.

In addition, the convergence technology between Quantum key distribution (QKD) and Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) proposed by KT was newly adopted as a standardization task. This technology presents a global regulation that fuses QKD technology that provides absolute security physically to increase the security of the PQC algorithm based on mathematical complexity.

By using this technology, security can be increased by using the quantum cryptographic key provided by QKD even when small and mobile devices such as smartphones or micro-drones move rapidly in random directions.

KT has recently secured commercialization technology for wired and wireless QKD, laying the groundwork for strengthening national security with our technology in the field of aviation and space communication in the future. It is also building an ecosystem for the domestic quantum industry by transferring about 10 self-developed quantum technologies to domestic companies.

Korea IT Times

Go here to see the original:
KT's quantum internet technology proposal approved as ... - Korea IT Times