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At the 2021 Quantum Symposium of the Dutch Payments Association, two CWI speakers will give a lecture on the latest developments: Harry Burhman (CWI, UvA, QuSoft) and Lo Ducas (CWI). The conference specifically focuses on quantum computing and security topics with contributions from academic researchers, representatives from the banking industry and authorities in their work area. The event gives a brief update on developments related to quantum computing, explores opportunities, prepares for the advent of the quantum computer and aims to strengthen the dialogue between the academic and industry community.

Abstracts of the CWI contributions:* Quantum algoritmes Prof. Harry Buhrman (CWI, UvA and QuSoft) Quantum computers promise to have a great impact on how we do information processing tasks. The extra power comes the quantum mechanical effects of superposition, interference, and entanglement. Quantum computers require a fundamentally different hardware. The basic building block is a the qubit and operations on these qubits are fundamentally different from the operations that one performs on classical bits. Hence the software that runs on quantum computers is also fundamentally different from the way we are used to program computers. A major driving (research) question is the following: For which computational problems does a quantum computer have an advantage and how big is that advantage? This question is deeply intertwined with fundamental questions in computer science and only a partial answer has been found so far.Recent years has seen great progress in the fabrication of reasonably stable qubits: 50-100 qubits are available now, with a projected growth to a 1000 qubits within the next 5 years. These qubits however are physical qubits that deteriorate and decohere over time. It is known that error correction in combination with fault tolerant computation offer a solution to this decoherence problem. However, this comes at a the price of using a multitude of physical qubits to implement a single stable or logical qubit. This overhead is at the moment and in the near future prohibitively large. We therefore have to develop applications for quantum computers that have a relatively large amount of qubits that decohere over time. I will describe what the impact of the above considerations is on the design of quantum algorithms.

* Quantum resistant cryptography: Standardization and Recommendation - Dr. Lo Ducas (Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica)'In this talk, I first introduce quantum-resistant cryptography, (a.k.a. post-quantum cryptography), explain why it is needed very soon, and explain its difference with quantum cryptography. I then overview the ongoing standardization process of NIST (US National Institute for Standards and Technology), and summarize the pros and cons of the expected portfolio of standards. I conclude with a few recommendations for a safe and orderly transition to security against the cautioned advent of quantum-capable adversaries.'

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Lectures by Harry Buhrman and Lo Ducas at Quantum Symposium of Dutch Payments Association - Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI)

Work is underway to build a quantum computer in Abu Dhabi, in the UAE, ushering an important milestone for the region in this breakthrough era in computing.

We are at the cusp of a new era with the advent of quantum computing, Faisal Al Bannai, Secretary-General of ATRC, said. We are proud to embark on building one of these wonderful machines which will help us in various fields, from discovering new medicines to making new materials to designing better batteries to various Artificial Intelligence applications.

A quantum computer uses quantum mechanics phenomena such as superposition and entanglement to generate and manipulate subatomic particles like electrons or photons - quantum bits also known as qubits - to create exponentially stronger processing powers that can help perform complex calculations that would take much longer to solve even by the worlds most powerful classical supercomputers.

Prof Latorre explained that preparatory work has already begun. The first step in the process is to build a laboratory, equip it and complete installation of the cleanroom equipment, all of which is on track. Once done, the first qubits will be prepared, characterised and benchmarked. We expect the first simple quantum chips Made in Abu Dhabi should come by the end of the summer, he said.

QRC is one of seven dedicated research centres at Technology Innovation Institute (TII).

Originally posted here:
UAE To Add A New Milestone by Building Its First Quantum Computer - Al-Bawaba

Quantum computing is a radically new way to store and process information based on the principles of quantum mechanics. While conventional computers store information in binary bits that are either 0s or 1s, quantum computers store information in quantum bits, or qubits. A qubit can be both 0 and 1 at the same time, and a series of qubits together remember many different things simultaneously.

Everyone agrees on the huge computational power this technology may bring about, but why are we still not there yet? To understand the challenges in this field and its potential solutions, we recently interviewed Shruti Puri, PhD, who works at the frontier of this exciting field. Puri is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Physics at Yale University, and a Physical Sciences & Engineering Finalist of the 2020 Blavatnik Regional Awards for Young Scientists, recognized for her remarkable theoretical discoveries in quantum error correction that may pave the way for robust quantum computing technologies.

What is the main challenge you are addressing in quantum computing?

Thanks to recent advances in research and development, there are already small to mid-sized quantum computers made available by big companies. But these quantum computers have not been able to implement any practical applications such as drug and materials discovery. The reason is that quantum computers at this moment are extremely fragile, and even very small noise from their working environment can very quickly destroy the delicate quantum states. As it is almost impossible to completely isolate the quantum states from the environment, we need a way to correct quantum states before they are destroyed.

At a first glance, quantum error correction seems impossible. Due to the measurement principle of quantum mechanics, we cannot directly probe a quantum state to check if there was an error in it or not, because such operations will destroy the quantum state itself.

Fortunately, in the 1990s, people found indirect ways to faithfully detect and correct errors in quantum states. They are, however, at a cost of large resource overheads. If one qubit is affected by noise, we have to use at least five additional qubits to correct this error. The more errors we want to correct, the larger number of additional qubits it will consume. A lot of research efforts, including my own, are devoted to improving quantum error correction techniques.

What is your discovery? How will this discovery help solve the challenge you mention above?

In recent years, I have been interested in new qubit designs that have some in-built protection against noise. In particular, I developed the Kerr-cat qubit, in which one type of quantum error is automatically suppressed by design. This reduces the total number of quantum errors by half! So, quantum computers that adopt Kerr-cat require far fewer physical qubits for error correction than the other quantum computers.

Kerr-cat is not the only qubit with this property, but what makes the Kerr-cat special is that it is possible to maintain this protection while a user tries to modify the quantum state in a certain non-trivial way. As a comparison, for ordinary qubits, the act of the user modifying the state automatically destroys the protection. Since its discovery, the Kerr-cat has generated a lot of interest in the community and opened up a new direction for quantum error correction.

As a theoretician, do you collaborate with experimentalists? How are these synergized efforts helping you?

Yes, I do collaborate quite closely with experimentalists. The synergy between experiments and theory is crucial for solving the practical challenges facing quantum information science. Sometimes an experimental observation or breakthrough will provide a new tool for a theorist with which they can explore or model new quantum effects. Other times, a new theoretical prediction will drive experimental progress.

At Yale, I have the privilege to work next to the theoretical group of Steve Girvin and the experimental groups of Michel Devoret and Rob Schoelkopf, who are world leaders in superconducting quantum information processing. The theoretical development of the Kerr-cat qubit was actually a result of trying to undo a bug in the experiment. Members of Michels group also contributed to the development of this theory. What is more, Michels group first experimentally demonstrated the Kerr-cat qubit. It was just an amazing feeling to see this theory come to life in the lab!

Are there any other experimental developments that you are excited about?

I am very excited about a new generation of qubits that are being developed in several other academic groups, which have some inherent protection against noise. Kerr-cat is one of them, along with Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill qubit, cat-codes, binomial codes, 0 qubit, etc. Several of these designs were developed by theorists in the early 2000s, and were not considered to be practical. But with experimental progress, these have now been demonstrated and are serious contenders for practical quantum information processing. In the coming years, the field of quantum error correction is going to be strongly influenced by the capabilities that will be enabled by these new qubit designs. So, I really look forward to learning how the experiments progress.

Interested in the latest experimental developments in quantum computer design and architecture? Register for the webinar Scaling up: New Advances in Building Quantum Computers, hosted by the New York Academy of Sciences on April 7. Featured speakers of this webinar include Andrew Houck, PhD, Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University and Deputy Director of the Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage, and Christopher Monroe, PhD, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at Duke University and Director of the Duke Quantum Center.

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The Route to Robust Quantum Computing: Interview with Shruti Puri | The New York Academy of Sciences - The New York Academy of Sciences

Millions without power; stores and banks shut down; vital services running on emergency generators if at all; lines of hapless people waiting for food and water. The experience that the state of Texas underwent this February will be only a preview of what we would all face in the event of a major cyberattack on our ever-vulnerable energy grid.

In the case of an attack by a future quantum computer, with its unprecedented power to decrypt existing encryption systems, the shutdown could be the most catastrophic disaster our country has ever experienced. Using data supplied by the global econometrics firm Oxford Economics, our researchers at Hudson Institutes Quantum Alliance Initiative have been working on a quantitative study of a future quantum cyberattack on the grid.Our preliminary data shows that protection of our power networks, needs to be an urgent national priority.

Experts have been warning us for years about how vulnerable the national power grid is to attacks by malicious actors like Russia, China, and Iran. The Department of Energy has a major task force, the North American Energy Resiliency Model (NAERM), looking into how to protect our energy grid from natural disasters but also terrorism and cyber assaults.

But a quantum computer attack would be far more protracted and far worse in its effects.Indeed, the smarter the grid is, with more supervision and control by computers, the more vulnerable it would be.

This is because a large-scale quantum computer in the future will be able to break into any encryption system currently protecting the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition computers that oversee the power grid.The structural design of a standard SCADA industrial control system relies on Remote Terminal Units (RTUs) and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs). These are the microprocessors that communicate and interact with field devices such as valves, pumps, and Human Machine Interface (HMI) software application that presents information to an operator or user about the state of an on-going process.That communication data is then routed from the processors to the SCADA computers, where the software displays and interprets the data allowing for operators to analyze and react to system events.

The danger is that a quantum computer will be able to gain access to these major nerve centers of the grid as if the attacker were a bona fide operator.This will allow the attacker to spread malware undetected throughout the grid, which will severely hinder response and recovery for weeks or months.

The notion of resilience in the nations power grid becomes obsolete.And instead of triggering a complete shutdown, a quantum intrusion can lead to sudden inexplicable power losses and sudden power surges that can melt down transformers and render entire power plants inoperable.

In short, the damage will be similar to that of an Electro-Magnetic Pulse (EMP) attack terrorism experts have feared for yearsbut stealthier, more unpredictable, and more protracted.

Even if the nations nuclear power plants are insulated from such an attack, the economic costs would be catastrophic.

How bad could the damage be?Our study indicates the direct economic cost of this quantum-led electricity outage would be over $8.6 trillion, with a disruptive impact extending over six fiscal quarters. Everything from financial markets to manufacturing and healthcare would be disrupted, for weeks or even months. Looking at the cost in terms of GDP at Risk or the integrated difference between the forecasted GDP growth for the economy and the estimations for GDP growth under the attack scenario, we have found that the total economic loss could extend over eight years or more at a cost of more than $20 trillion-roughly equivalent to the loss of an entire years output for the U.S. economy.

These numbers do not include the impact on Canadas economy, which is part of the North American Power Grid, or the global impact of a U.S. economy in a powerless free fall. Ironically, if Texas ignores the advice of Bill Gates and others that it join the national grid, it could be the one part of the country to emerge from such a disaster relatively unscathed.

What are the steps necessary to avoid such a scenario, and the devastating economic loss such an attack would entail?

First, we need to incentivize power companies to speed up protections for SCADA systems against conventional cyberattacks on the grid as well as future quantum ones. This means moving on deploying post-quantum cryptography, i.e. encryption based on algorithms that will withstand quantum intrusion, and quantum cryptography, i.e. encryption using quantum random number generation for its keys, to secure networks from hackers.

Second, we need to develop a national strategic reserve of Large Power Transformers (LPTs) that can be deployed in case of cyberattacks that specifically target LPTs, the essential sinews of the North American Power Grid.

Third, we need closer cooperation with Canada in working together on that grid, in order to mitigate the risks of attackwhether conventional today or quantum-based tomorrowas well as the damage done by natural disasters including climate change.

In the end, avoiding a Texas-like national shutdown of our power grid will be a matter of spending billions to offset the risk of losing trillions.Thats not a bad bargain when our entire economy, and economies around the world, are at risk.

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Texas Warned Us What Quantum Computers Will Do To The Power Grid - Forbes

Schematic of the four-qubit quantum processor made using semiconductor manufacturing technology. Credit: Nico Hendrickx (QuTech)

The heart of any computer, its central processing unit, is built using semiconductor technology, which is capable of putting billions of transistors onto a single chip. Now, researchers from the group of Menno Veldhorst at QuTech, a collaboration between TU Delft and TNO, have shown that this technology can be used to build a two-dimensional array of qubits to function as a quantum processor. Their work, a crucial milestone for scalable quantum technology, was published today (March 24, 2021) in Nature.

Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems that are impossible to address with classical computers. Whereas current quantum devices hold tens of qubits the basic building block of quantum technology a future universal quantum computer capable of running any quantum algorithm will likely consist of millions to billions of qubits. Quantum dot qubits hold the promise to be a scalable approach as they can be defined using standard semiconductor manufacturing techniques. Veldhorst: By putting four such qubits in a two-by-two grid, demonstrating universal control over all qubits, and operating a quantum circuit that entangles all qubits, we have made an important step forward in realizing a scalable approach for quantum computation.

Electrons trapped in quantum dots, semiconductor structures of only a few tens of nanometres in size, have been studied for more than two decades as a platform for quantum information. Despite all promises, scaling beyond two-qubit logic has remained elusive. To break this barrier, the groups of Menno Veldhorst and Giordano Scappucci decided to take an entirely different approach and started to work with holes (i.e. missing electrons) in germanium. Using this approach, the same electrodes needed to define the qubits could also be used to control and entangle them. No large additional structures have to be added next to each qubit such that our qubits are almost identical to the transistors in a computer chip, says Nico Hendrickx, graduate student in the group of Menno Veldhorst and first author of the article. Furthermore, we have obtained excellent control and can couple qubits at will, allowing us to program one, two, three, and four-qubit gates, promising highly compact quantum circuits.

Menno Veldhorst and Nico Hendrickx standing next to the setup hosting the germanium quantum processor. Credit: Marieke de Lorijn (QuTech)

After successfully creating the first germanium quantum dot qubit in 2019, the number of qubits on their chips has doubled every year. Four qubits by no means makes a universal quantum computer, of course, Veldhorst says. But by putting the qubits in a two-by-two grid we now know how to control and couple qubits along different directions. Any realistic architecture for integrating large numbers of qubits requires them to be interconnected along two dimensions.

Demonstrating four-qubit logic in germanium defines the state-of-the-art for the field of quantum dots and marks an important step toward dense, and extended, two-dimensional semiconductor qubit grids. Next to its compatibility with advanced semiconductor manufacturing, germanium is also a highly versatile material. It has exciting physics properties such as spin-orbit coupling and it can make contact to materials like superconductors. Germanium is therefore considered as an excellent platform in several quantum technologies. Veldhorst: Now that we know how to manufacture germanium and operate an array of qubits, the germanium quantum information route can truly begin.

Reference: A four-qubit germanium quantum processor by Nico W. Hendrickx, William I. L. Lawrie, Maximilian Russ, Floor van Riggelen, Sander L. de Snoo, Raymond N. Schouten, Amir Sammak, Giordano Scappucci and Menno Veldhorst, 24 March 2021, Nature.DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03332-6

Funding: The research is supported by NWO, the Dutch Research Council.

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Crucial Milestone for Scalable Quantum Technology: 2D Array of Semiconductor Qubits That Functions as a Quantum Processor - SciTechDaily