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KINGSTON, R.I. Oct. 12, 2021 University of California, Berkeley Professor Umesh Vazirani, a pioneer in quantum computing algorithms and complexity theory, will deliver the annual University of Rhode Island Cruickshank Lecture on Monday, Oct. 18, in conjunction with the three-day Frontiers in Quantum Computing conference.

Frontiers in Quantum Computing, which celebrates the launch this semester of URIs new masters degree in quantum computing, will take place Oct. 18-20 on the Kingston Campus. More than 30 experts in the fields of quantum computing and quantum information science will deliver daily talks on such topics as the future of quantum computing, research and industry developments, and educational initiatives for the next generation of experts in the field.

This will be an impressive gathering, said Vanita Srinivasa, director of URIs Quantum Information Science program and a conference organizer. These scientists have made seminal contributions to quantum computing and quantum information science. We have speakers who are well-established in quantum information science, even before it was a major field, and we have speakers who are up and coming and are now among the top researchers in their fields.

Vazirani, the Roger A. Strauch Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at UC Berkeley and director of the Berkeley Quantum Computation Center, is considered one of the founders of the field of quantum computing. His talk will explore quantum computings impact on the foundations of quantum mechanics and the philosophy of science.

There are several different theories about how quantum mechanics can be interpreted. Advances in quantum computing will change our understanding of the foundations of quantum mechanics and maybe our overall view of the universe, said Leonard Kahn, chair of the URIDepartment of Physicswho helped organize the conference.

Vaziranis virtual talk, A Quantum Wave in Computing, will be presented to an in-person audience in room 100 of the Beaupre Center for Chemical and Forensic Sciences, 140 Flagg Road, on the Kingston campus, at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 18. The lecture can also be viewed live with a link from the conferenceswebsite.

The conferences list of speakers includes U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, who will deliver an address at 9:45 am. on the opening day of the conference, along with experts from around the U.S. as well as Australia, Canada, Netherlands, and Denmark.

Jacob Taylor, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Joint Quantum Institute Fellow, and founder of the national effort overseeing implementation of the National Quantum Initiative Act, will deliver the conferences opening keynote address on Monday, Oct. 18, at 8 a.m. in the Ballroom of the Memorial Union.

Charles Tahan, assistant director for Quantum Information Science and director of the National Quantum Coordination Office in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OTSP), will give the keynote address before the roundtable discussion on the future of quantum computing on Tuesday, Oct. 19, at 5:15 p.m. in the ballroom, which is sponsored by D-Wave.

The panel will include Taylor, the first assistant director for Quantum Information Science at the OSTP; Michelle Simmons, a pioneer in atomic electronics and silicon-based quantum computing and director of the Australian Research Councils Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology; Catherine McGeoch, Senior Scientist with D-Wave; and Christopher Lirakis, IBM Quantum Lead For Quantum Systems Deployment.

The panelists will provide their perspectives on the future of quantum computing from industry, government and academia, said Srinivasa. The future is uncertain, but hopeful, and there are exciting challenges along the way. Quantum computing technology has progressed from something thats been a dream to something that can actually be built.

Quantum computers have the promise of solving key problems that would take a prohibitively long time to execute on classical computers. Because of the nature of the quantum bit, as compared to the classical bit, some of those intractable calculations can be done on a quantum computer in minutes rather than thousands of years. The impact on many problems from molecular simulations to encryption of credit card data will have far-reaching consequences.

I dont think theres been a time when theres been this much publicity and press about quantum computing, said Kahn. Theres clearly a path forward but there are a lot of hurdles along the way.

With the conference celebrating URIs masters in quantum computing, education will be an important topic. Daily speakers will explore education initiatives, including developing curriculum at all levels to make the field more accessible to students. Presentations will include Chandralekha Singh, president of the American Association of Physics Teachers; Charles Robinson, IBM Quantum Computing Public Sector leader; and Robert Joynt, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Other topics include implementation of quantum computing and industry developments, including talks by Christopher Savoie 92, founder and chief executive officer of Zapata Computing and a conference organizer, and Andrew King, director of Performance Research at D-Wave.

Its going to be amazing science that will be talked about at the conference, said Srinivasa, whose research focuses on quantum information processing theory for semiconductor systems. Christopher Savoie has commented that this conference is equivalent to any of the major conferences on quantum computing that hes been to.

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Frontiers in Quantum Computing is free and open to the public. Except for the Cruickshank Lecture, all events will be held in the Memorial Union Ballroom, 50 Lower College Road, on the Kingston Campus. While events are in-person, some speakers will take part virtually. All sessions can also be viewed online. For more information or to take part, go to the conferenceswebsite.

The conference is sponsored by Zapata Computing, D-Wave, IBM Quantum, PSSC Labs, and Microway, along with URIs College of Arts and Sciences, University Libraries, Information Technology Services, the Office of the Provost, and the Department of Physics.

The Alexander M. Cruickshank Endowed Lectureship was established in 1999. It is named for Alexander M. Cruickshank, who served on the URI chemistry faculty for 30 years and was subsequently the director of the Gordon Research Conferences until his retirement in 1993. The lecture series is sponsored by the URI Department of Physics, the Gordon Research Center and URIs College of Arts and Sciences.

For more information, contact Leonard Kahn atlenkahn@uri.edu.

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Quantum computing pioneer Umesh Vazirani to give Cruickshank Lecture as part of three-day conference - EurekAlert

The stock price of IonQ Inc (NYSE: IONQ) increased by over 3.6% during intraday trading today. Investors are responding positively to researchers from The University of Maryland and IonQ (a leader in trapped-ion quantum computing) publishing results in the journal Nature that show a significant breakthrough in error correction technology for quantum computers.

In collaboration with scientists from Duke University and the Georgia Institute of Technology, this work demonstrated for the first time how quantum computers can overcome quantum computing errors, a key technical obstacle to large-scale use cases like financial market prediction or drug discovery.

Currently, quantum computers suffer from errors when qubits encounter environmental interference. And quantum error correction works by combining multiple qubits together to form a logical qubit that more securely stores quantum information.

But storing information by itself is not enough. Quantum algorithms also need to access and manipulate the information. And to interact with information in a logical qubit without creating more errors, the logical qubit needs to be fault-tolerant.

The study (completed at the University of Maryland, peer-reviewed, and published in the journalNature) demonstrates how trapped ion systems like IonQs can soon deploy fault-tolerant logical qubits to overcome the problem of error correction at scale. And by successfully creating the first fault-tolerant logical qubit a qubit that is resilient to a failure in any one component the team has laid the foundation for quantum computers that are both reliable and large enough for practical uses such as risk modeling or shipping route optimization.

The team had demonstrated that this could be achieved with minimal overhead, requiring only nine physical qubits to encode one logical qubit. And this will allow IonQ to apply error correction only when needed, in the amount needed, while minimizing qubit cost.

Behind the study are recently graduated UMD PhD students and current IonQ quantum engineers Laird Egan and Daiwei Zhu, IonQ cofounder Chris Monroe as well as IonQ technical advisor and Duke Professor Ken Brown. And coauthors of the paper include: UMD and Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) research scientist Marko Cetina; postdoctoral researcher Crystal Noel; graduate students Andrew Risinger and Debopriyo Biswas; Duke University graduate student Dripto M. Debroy and postdoctoral researcher Michael Newman; and Georgia Institute of Technology graduate student Muyuan Li.

This news follows on the heels of other significant technological developments from IonQ. And the company recently demonstrated the industrys first Reconfigurable Multicore Quantum Architecture (RMQA) technology, which can dynamically configure 4 chains of 16 ions into quantum computing cores.

And the company also recently debuted patent-pending evaporated glass traps: technology that lays the foundation for continual improvements to IonQs hardware and supports a significant increase in the number of ions that can be trapped in IonQs quantum computers. It recently became the first quantum computer company whose systems are available for use via all major cloud providers. IonQ also recently became the first publicly-traded, pure-play quantum computing company.

KEY QUOTES:

This is about significantly reducing the overhead in computational power that is typically required for error correction in quantum computers. If a computer spends all its time and power correcting errors, thats not a useful computer. What this paper shows is how the trapped ion approach used in IonQ systems can leapfrog others to fault tolerance by taking small, unreliable parts and turning them into a very reliable device. Competitors are likely to need orders of magnitude more qubits to achieve similar error correction results.

Peter Chapman, President and CEO of IonQ

Disclaimer: This content is intended for informational purposes. Before making any investment, you should do your own analysis.

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IONQ Stock: Why It Increased Today - Pulse 2.0

COLLEGE PARK, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Researchers from The University of Maryland and IonQ, Inc. (IonQ) (NYSE: IONQ), a leader in trapped-ion quantum computing, on Monday published results in the journal Nature that show a significant breakthrough in error correction technology for quantum computers. In collaboration with scientists from Duke University and the Georgia Institute of Technology, this work demonstrates for the first time how quantum computers can overcome quantum computing errors, a key technical obstacle to large-scale use cases like financial market prediction or drug discovery.

Quantum computers suffer from errors when qubits encounter environmental interference. Quantum error correction works by combining multiple qubits together to form a logical qubit that more securely stores quantum information. But storing information by itself is not enough; quantum algorithms also need to access and manipulate the information. To interact with information in a logical qubit without creating more errors, the logical qubit needs to be fault-tolerant.

The study, completed at the University of Maryland, peer-reviewed, and published in the journal Nature, demonstrates how trapped ion systems like IonQs can soon deploy fault-tolerant logical qubits to overcome the problem of error correction at scale. By successfully creating the first fault-tolerant logical qubit a qubit that is resilient to a failure in any one component the team has laid the foundation for quantum computers that are both reliable and large enough for practical uses such as risk modeling or shipping route optimization. The team demonstrated that this could be achieved with minimal overhead, requiring only nine physical qubits to encode one logical qubit. This will allow IonQ to apply error correction only when needed, in the amount needed, while minimizing qubit cost.

This is about significantly reducing the overhead in computational power that is typically required for error correction in quantum computers," said Peter Chapman, President and CEO of IonQ. "If a computer spends all its time and power correcting errors, that's not a useful computer. What this paper shows is how the trapped ion approach used in IonQ systems can leapfrog others to fault tolerance by taking small, unreliable parts and turning them into a very reliable device. Competitors are likely to need orders of magnitude more qubits to achieve similar error correction results.

Behind todays study are recently graduated UMD PhD students and current IonQ quantum engineers, Laird Egan and Daiwei Zhu, IonQ cofounder Chris Monroe as well as IonQ technical advisor and Duke Professor Ken Brown. Coauthors of the paper include: UMD and Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) research scientist Marko Cetina; postdoctoral researcher Crystal Noel; graduate students Andrew Risinger and Debopriyo Biswas; Duke University graduate student Dripto M. Debroy and postdoctoral researcher Michael Newman; and Georgia Institute of Technology graduate student Muyuan Li.

The news follows on the heels of other significant technological developments from IonQ. The company recently demonstrated the industrys first Reconfigurable Multicore Quantum Architecture (RMQA) technology, which can dynamically configure 4 chains of 16 ions into quantum computing cores. The company also recently debuted patent-pending evaporated glass traps: technology that lays the foundation for continual improvements to IonQs hardware and supports a significant increase in the number of ions that can be trapped in IonQs quantum computers. Furthermore, it recently became the first quantum computer company whose systems are available for use via all major cloud providers. Last week, IonQ also became the first publicly-traded, pure-play quantum computing company.

About IonQ

IonQ, Inc. is a leader in quantum computing, with a proven track record of innovation and deployment. IonQs next-generation quantum computer is the worlds most powerful trapped-ion quantum computer, and IonQ has defined what it believes is the best path forward to scale. IonQ is the only company with its quantum systems available through the cloud on Amazon Braket, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, as well as through direct API access. IonQ was founded in 2015 by Christopher Monroe and Jungsang Kim based on 25 years of pioneering research. To learn more, visit http://www.ionq.com.

About the University of Maryland

The University of Maryland, College Park is the state's flagship university and one of the nation's preeminent public research universities. A global leader in research, entrepreneurship and innovation, the university is home to more than 40,000 students,10,000 faculty and staff, and 297 academic programs. As one of the nations top producers of Fulbright scholars, its faculty includes two Nobel laureates, three Pulitzer Prize winners and 58 members of the national academies. The institution has a $2.2 billion operating budget and secures more than $1 billion annually in research funding together with the University of Maryland, Baltimore. For more information about the University of Maryland, College Park, visit http://www.umd.edu.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Some of the forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking words. Statements that are not historical in nature, including the words anticipate, expect, suggests, plan, believe, intend, estimates, targets, projects, should, could, would, may, will, forecast and other similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These statements include those related to the Companys ability to further develop and advance its quantum computers and achieve scale; and the ability of competitors to achieve similar error correction results. Forward-looking statements are predictions, projections and other statements about future events that are based on current expectations and assumptions and, as a result, are subject to risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause actual future events to differ materially from the forward-looking statements in this press release, including but not limited to: market adoption of quantum computing solutions and the Companys products, services and solutions; the ability of the Company to protect its intellectual property; changes in the competitive industries in which the Company operates; changes in laws and regulations affecting the Companys business; the Companys ability to implement its business plans, forecasts and other expectations, and identify and realize additional partnerships and opportunities; and the risk of downturns in the market and the technology industry including, but not limited to, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive. You should carefully consider the foregoing factors and the other risks and uncertainties described in the Risk Factors section of the registration statement on Form S-4 and other documents filed by the Company from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 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 do not intend to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. The Company does not give any assurance that it will achieve its expectations.

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IonQ and University of Maryland Researchers Demonstrate Fault-Tolerant Error Correction, Critical for Unlocking the Full Potential of Quantum...

Venture capital firms are pouring billions into quantum computing companies, hedging bets that the technology will pay off big time some day.

Rigetti, which makes quantum hardware, announced a $1.5bn merger with Supernova Partners Acquisition Company II, a finance house focusing on strategic acquisitions. Rigetti, which was valued at $1.04bn before the deal, will now be publicly traded.

Before Rigetti's deal, quantum computer hardware and software companies raked in close to $1.02bn from venture capital investments this year, according to numbers provided to The Register by financial research firm PitchBook. That was a significant increase from $684m invested by VC firms in 2020, and $188m in 2019.

Prior to the Rigetti transaction, the biggest deal was a $450mn investment in PsiQuantum, which was valued at $3.15bn, in a round led by venture capital firm BlackRock on July 27.

Quantum computers process information differently way than classical computing. Quantum computers encode information in qubits, and store exponentially more information in the form of 1s, 0s or a superposition of both. These computers can evaluate data simultaneously, while classical computers evaluate data sequentially, simply put.

Theoretically, that makes quantum computers significantly more powerful, and enables applications like drug discovery, which are limited by the constraints of classical computers.

Rigetti and PsiQuantum are startups in a growing field of quantum computer makers that includes heavyweights IBM and Google, which are building superconducting quantum systems based on transmon qubits. D-Wave offers a quantum-annealing system based on flux bits to solve limited-sized problems, but this week said it was building a new superconducting system to solve larger problems.

Quantum computers show promise but still immature, with questions around stability, said Linley Gwennap, president of Linley Group, in a research note last month.

"Solving the error-rate problem will require substantially new approaches. If researchers can meet that challenge, quantum processors will provide an excellent complement to classical processors," Gwennap wrote.

If quantum ever works, there could be a huge market, hence the VC interest, but the technology is years away from significant revenue, Gwennap told The Register.

Deals by SPAC (special purpose acquisition companies) like Supernova Partners tend to be highly speculative, but the venture firm's due diligence on Rigetti was more around the possible rewards if quantum computers live up to their hype.

Rigetti's quantum technology is scalable, practical and manufacturable, said Supernova's chief financial officer Michael Clifton, in a press conference this week related to the deal.

"Quantum is expected to be as important as mobile and cloud have been over the last two decades," Clifton said, adding, "we were focused on large addressable markets, differentiated technologies and excellent management teams."

Rigetti's quantum computer is modular and scalable with qubit systems linked through faster interconnects. The company's introductory system in 2018 had 8 qubits, and will scale it up to 80 qubit multichip system with high-density I/O and 3D signalling. The company's roadmap includes a 1000-qubit system in 2024 that is "error mitigating," and a 4000-qubit system in 2026 with full error correction features.

Rigetti designs and makes the quantum computers chips in its own fabrication plant, which helps accelerate the delivery of chips. Amazon offers access to Rigetti's quantum hardware through AWS.

IT leaders in non-tech companies are taking quantum computing seriously, IDC said in May.

A survey by the analyst house in April revealed companies would allocate more than 19 per cent the annual IT budgets to quantum computing in 2023, growing from 7 per cent in 2021. Investments would in at quantum algorithms and systems available through the cloud to boost AI and cybersecurity.

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Quantum computing startups pull in millions as VCs rush to get ahead of the game - The Register

Scientists will use quantum computing tools to eventually help them detect molecules in outer space that could be precursors to life.

Quantum computers are assisting researchers in scouting the universe in search of life outside of our planet -- and although it's far from certain they'll find actual aliens, the outcomes of the experiment could be almost as exciting.

Zapata Computing, which provides quantum software services, has announced a new partnership with the UK's University of Hull, which will see scientists use quantum computing tools to eventually help them detect molecules in outer space that could be precursors to life.

During the eight-week program, quantum resources will be combined with classical computing tools to resolve complex calculations with better accuracy, with the end goal of finding out whether quantum computing could provide a useful boost to the work of astrophysicists, despite the technology's current limitations.

See also: There are two types of quantum computing. Now one company says it wants to offer both.

Detecting life in space is as tricky a task as it sounds. It all comes down to finding evidence of molecules that have the potential to create and sustain life -- and because scientists don't have the means to go out and observe the molecules for themselves, they have to rely on alternative methods.

Typically, astrophysicists pay attention to light, which can be analyzed through telescopes. This is because light -- for example, infrared radiation generated by nearby stars -- often interacts with molecules in outer space. And when it does, the particles vibrate, rotate, and absorb some of the light, leaving a specific signature on the spectral data that can be picked up by scientists back on Earth.

Therefore, for researchers, all that is left to do is detect those signatures and trace back to which molecules they correspond.

The problem? MIT researchershave previously established that over 14,000 moleculescould indicate signs of life in exoplanets' atmospheres. In other words, there is still a long way to go before astrophysicists have drawn a database of all the different ways that those molecules might interact with light -- of all the signatures that they should be looking for when pointing their telescopes to other planets.

That's the challenge that the University of Hull has set for itself: the institution's Centre for Astrophysics is effectively hoping to generate a database of detectable biological signatures.

For over two decades, explains David Benoit, senior lecturer in molecular physics and astrochemistry at the University of Hull, researchers have been using classical means to try and predict those signatures. Still, the method is rapidly running out of steam.

The calculations carried out by the researchers at the center in Hull involve describing exactly how electrons interact with each other within a molecule of interest -- think hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and so on. "On classical computers, we can describe the interactions, but the problem is this is a factorial algorithm, meaning that the more electrons you have, the faster your problem is going to grow," Benoit tells ZDNet.

"We can do it with two hydrogen atoms, for example, but by the time you have something much bigger, like CO2, you're starting to lose your nerve a little bit because you're using a supercomputer, and even they don't have enough memory or computing power to do that exactly."

Simulating these interactions with classical means, therefore, ultimately comes at the cost of accuracy. But as Benoit says, you don't want to be the one claiming to have detected life on an exo-planet when it was actually something else.

Unlike classical computers, however, quantum systems are built on the principles of quantum mechanics -- those that govern the behavior of particles when they are taken at their smallest scale: the same principles as those that underlie the behavior of electrons and atoms in a molecule.

This prompted Benoit to approach Zapata with a "crazy idea": to use quantum computers to solve the quantum problem of life in space.

"The system is quantum, so instead of taking a classical computer that has to simulate all of the quantum things, you can take a quantum thing and measure it instead to try and extract the quantum data we want," explains Benoit.

Quantum computers, by nature, could therefore allow for accurate calculations of the patterns that define the behavior of complex quantum systems like molecules without calling for the huge compute power that a classical simulation would require.

The data that is extracted from the quantum calculation about the behavior of electrons can then be combined with classical methods to simulate the signature of molecules of interest in space when they come into contact with light.

It remains true that the quantum computers that are currently available to carry out this type of calculation are limited: most systems don't break the 100-qubit count, which is not enough to model very complex molecules.

See also: Preparing for the 'golden age' of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Benoit explains that this has not put off the center's researchers. "We are going to take something small and extrapolate the quantum behavior from that small system to the real one," says Benoit. "We can already use the data we get from a few qubits, because we know the data is exact. Then, we can extrapolate."

That is not to say that the time has come to get rid of the center's supercomputers, continues Benoit. The program is only starting, and over the course of the next eight weeks, the researchers will be finding out whether it is possible at all to extract those exact physics on a small scale, thanks to a quantum computer, in order to assist large-scale calculations.

"It's trying to see how far we can push quantum computing," says Benoit, "and see if it really works, if it's really as good as we think it is."

If the project succeeds, it could constitute an early use case for quantum computers -- one that could demonstrate the usefulness of the technology despite its current technical limitations. That in itself is a pretty good achievement; the next milestone could be the discovery of our exo-planet neighbors.

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Scientists are using quantum computing to help them discover signs of life on other planets - ZDNet