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Research from the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis has found a missing piece in the puzzle of optical quantum computing.

Jung-Tsung Shen, associate professor in the Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering, has developed a deterministic, high-fidelity two-bit quantum logic gate that takes advantage of a new form of light. This new logic gate is orders of magnitude more efficient than the current technology.

In the ideal case, the fidelity can be as high as 97%, Shen said.

His research was published in May 2021 in the journal Physical Review A.

The potential of quantum computers is bound to the unusual properties of superposition the ability of a quantum system to contain many distinct properties, or states, at the same time and entanglement two particles acting as if they are correlated in a non-classical manner, despite being physically removed from each other.

Where voltage determines the value of a bit (a 1 or a 0) in a classical computer, researchers often use individual electrons as qubits, the quantum equivalent. Electrons have several traits that suit them well to the task: they are easily manipulated by an electric or magnetic field and they interact with each other. Interaction is a benefit when you need two bits to be entangled letting the wilderness of quantum mechanics manifest.

But their propensity to interact is also a problem. Everything from stray magnetic fields to power lines can influence electrons, making them hard to truly control.

For the past two decades, however, some scientists have been trying to use photons as qubits instead of electrons. If computers are going to have a true impact, we need to look into creating the platform using light, Shen said.

Photons have no charge, which can lead to the opposite problems: they do not interact with the environment like electrons, but they also do not interact with each other. It has also been challenging to engineer and to create ad hoc (effective) inter-photon interactions. Or so traditional thinking went.

Less than a decade ago, scientists working on this problem discovered that, even if they werent entangled as they entered a logic gate, the act of measuring the two photons when they exited led them to behave as if they had been.The unique features of measurement are another wild manifestation of quantum mechanics.

Quantum mechanics is not difficult, but its full of surprises, Shen said.

The measurement discovery was groundbreaking, but not quite game-changing. Thats because for every 1,000,000 photons, only one pair became entangled. Researchers have since been more successful, but, Shen said, Its still not good enough for a computer, which has to carry out millions to billions of operations per second.

Shen was able to build a two-bit quantum logic gate with such efficiency because of the discovery of a new class of quantum photonic states photonic dimers, photons entangled in both space and frequency. His prediction of their existence was experimentally validated in 2013, and he has since been finding applications for this new form of light.

When a single photon enters a logic gate, nothing notable happens it goes in and comes out. But when there are two photons, Thats when we predicted the two can make a new state, photonic dimers. It turns out this new state is crucial.

Mathematically, there are many ways to design a logic gate for two-bit operations. These different designs are called equivalent. The specific logic gate that Shen and his research group designed is the controlled-phase gate (or controlled-Z gate). The principal function of the controlled-phase gate is that the two photons that come out are in the negative state of the two photons that went in.

In classical circuits, there is no minus sign, Shen said. But in quantum computing, it turns out the minus sign exists and is crucial.

Quantum mechanics is not difficult, but its full of surprises.

When two independent photons (representing two optical qubits) enter the logic gate, The design of the logic gate is such that the two photons can form a photonic dimer, Shen said. It turns out the new quantum photonic state is crucial as it enables the output state to have the correct sign that is essential to the optical logic operations.

Shen has been working with the University of Michigan to test his design, which is a solid-state logic gate one that can operate under moderate conditions. So far, he says, results seem positive.

Shen says this result, while baffling to most, is clear as day to those in the know.

Its like a puzzle, he said. It may be complicated to do, but once its done, just by glancing at it, you will know its correct.

The McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis promotes independent inquiry and education with an emphasis on scientific excellence, innovation and collaboration without boundaries. McKelvey Engineering has top-ranked research and graduate programs across departments, particularly in biomedical engineering, environmental engineering and computing, and has one of the most selective undergraduate programs in the country. With 140 full-time faculty, 1,387 undergraduate students, 1,448 graduate students and 21,000 living alumni, we are working to solve some of societys greatest challenges; to prepare students to become leaders and innovate throughout their careers; and to be a catalyst of economic development for the St. Louis region and beyond.

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, ECCS grants nos. 1608049 and 1838996. It was also supported by the 2018 NSF Quantum Leap (RAISE) Award.

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A new piece of the quantum computing puzzle - Washington University in St. Louis Newsroom

Polaris Quantum Biotech is reinventing drug discovery, reducing the time it takes to find candidate molecules for drug development from the typical three years to just four months. As with other successful efforts to redesign established processes, Polaris is betting on scalability and automation. The startup, co-founded by Shahar Keinan and Bill Shipman, came out of stealth a year ago, revealing the first-ever drug discovery platform using a quantum computer, cost-efficiently scanning billions of molecules from a large chemical space.

Dr. Shahar Keinan, CEO, Polaris Quantum Biotech

Having worked in the drug development industry for years, Polaris founders decided to try and address the two major challenges they identified: The technology used and the business model. We wanted to solve both of these problems together, says Polaris CEO, Shahar Keinan.

The technology-related part of their solution was to use quantum computing, rather than classical computers, to speed-up the process. In terms of the business model, in contrast to the research labs (or Contract Research Organizations) that provide molecular discovery as a service to large pharmaceutical companies, Polaris is licensing their discoveries. With this business model, says Keinan, you need a diverse portfolio in order to diversify your risk. Diversity here is defined as the target disease, the specific protein targeted, and even the delivery mechanism.

Based on industry benchmarks, out of 100 assets (i.e., drug blueprints, lead compounds), between 1 to 5 will be used in a drug that will be sold commercially. Between 75 to 80 may reach clinical testing but typically this number could be reduced to no more than 25 over subsequent testing phases. Polaris is paid at each stage in the drugs journey to the market, and increasingly more as each hurdle is passed successfully.

The lead compounds Polaris develops target specific biological processes that are known to be the cause of a specific disease and are designed to get involved in the process in a way that arrests its further development or eliminates it altogether. We take this big biological machine and put a wrench into it, says Keinan. The trick is to find a molecule that will do exactly what it is expected to do but will not do other, not useful or potentially harmful, things to other biological processes in the human body.

Polaris is developing an ecosystem around its drug discovery platform, enlisting various hardware and software resources to assist it. Last year, it partnered with Fujitsus quantum-inspired Digital Annealer technology, initially targeting dengue fever, a mosquito-borne condition that is present in over 100 countries worldwide, killing as many as 22,000 people each year. Another quantum computing provider Polaris is working with is D-Wave Systems, accessing its quantum annealing technology through the AWS cloud service.

Yet another Polaris partnership was announced recently, collaborating with Auransa to discover treatments for neglected diseases disproportionately affecting women.An example is endometriosis, an incurable condition affecting millions of women caused when tissue that lines the womb grows elsewhere in the abdomen. Auransa is using AI to develop precision medicine solutions in areas of unmet medical needs, and in this partnership, Auransa finds the biological target and Polaris finds the arrow (the lead compound) that will hit the targets bullseye.

Over the last decade, there has been a growing application of AI (or machine/deep learning) to drug discovery and pharmaceutical company executives expect it to be the emerging technology that will have the greatest impact on their industry in 2021. Last year, a survey of life science organizations found that 31% were set to begin quantum computing evaluation in 2020 and a further 39% were planning to evaluate it in 2021 or have quantum computing on their radar. Polaris Quantum Biotech could well be at the center of a perfect storm that will accelerate the pace of drug discovery.

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This Startup Is Using Quantum Computing And AI To Cut Drug Discovery Time From 3 Years To 4 Months - Forbes

LOS ALAMITOS, Calif., June 24, 2021 The IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE21), a multidisciplinary event bridging the gap between the science of quantum computing and the development of an industry surrounding it, reveals its full keynote lineup. Taking place 18-22 October 2021 virtually, QCE21 will deliver a series of world-class keynote presentations, as well as workforce-building tutorials, community-building workshops, technical paper presentations, stimulating panels, and innovative posters. Register here.

Also known as IEEE Quantum Week, QCE21 is unique by integrating dimensions from academic and business conferences and will reveal cutting edge research and developments featuring quantum research, practice, applications, education, and training.

QCE21s Keynote Speakers include the following quantum groundbreakers and leaders:

Alan Baratz D-Wave Systems, President & CEOJames S. Clarke Intel Labs, Director of Quantum HardwareDavid J. Dean Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Director Quantum Science CenterJay Gambetta IBM Quantum, IBM Fellow & VP Quantum ComputingSonika Johri IonQ, Senior Quantum Applications Research ScientistAnthony Megrant Google Quantum AI, Lead Research ScientistPrineha Narang Harvard University & Aliro Quantum, Professor & CTOBrian Neyenhuis Honeywell Quantum Solutions, Commercial Operations LeaderUrbasi Sinha Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, ProfessorKrista Svore Microsoft, General Manager Quantum Systems

Through participation from the international quantum community, QCE21 has developed an extensive conference program with world-class keynote speakers, technical paper presentations, innovative posters, exciting exhibits, technical briefings, workforce-building tutorials, community-building workshops, stimulating panels, and Birds-of-Feather sessions.

Papers accepted by QCE21 will be submitted to the IEEE Xplore Digital Library, and the best papers will be invited to the journals IEEE Transactions on Quantum Engineering (TQE) and ACM Transactions on Quantum Computing (TQC).

QCE21 is co-sponsored by IEEE Computer Society, IEEE Communications Society, IEEE Council of Superconductivity, IEEE Future Directions Committee, IEEE Photonics Society, IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society, IEEE Electronics Packaging Society, IEEE Signal Processing Society (SP), and IEEE Electron Device Society (EDS).

The inaugural 2020 IEEE Quantum Week built a solid foundation and was highly successful over 800 people from 45 countries and 225 companies attended the premier event that delivered 270+ hours of programming on quantum computing and engineering.

The second annual 2021 Quantum Week will virtually connect a wide range of leading quantum professionals, researchers, educators, entrepreneurs, champions, and enthusiasts to exchange and share their experiences, challenges, research results, innovations, applications, and enthusiasm, on all aspects of quantum computing, engineering and technologies. The IEEE Quantum Week schedule will take place during Mountain Daylight Time (MDT).

Visit IEEE QCE21 for all event news including sponsorship and exhibitor opportunities.

QCE21 Registration Package provides Virtual Access to IEEE Quantum Week Oct 18-22, 2021 as well as On-Demand Access to all recorded events until the end of December 2021 featuring over 270 hours of programming in the realm of quantum computing and engineering.

About the IEEE Computer Society

TheIEEE Computer Societyis the worlds home for computer science, engineering, and technology. A global leader in providing access to computer science research, analysis, and information, the IEEE Computer Society offers a comprehensive array of unmatched products, services, and opportunities for individuals at all stages of their professional career. Known as the premier organization that empowers the people who drive technology, the IEEE Computer Society offers international conferences, peer-reviewed publications, a unique digital library, and training programs.

Source: IEEE

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Keynotes Announced for IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering - HPCwire

Back in October of 1927, the worlds leading scientists descended upon Brussels for the fifth Solvay Conference an exclusive, invite-only conference that is dedicated to discussing and solving the outstanding preeminent open problems in physics and chemistry.

In attendance were scientists that, today, we praise as the brightest minds in the history of mankind.

Albert Einstein was there so was Erwin Schrodinger, who devised the famous Schrodingers cat experiment and Werner Heisenberg, the man behind the world-changing Heisenberg uncertainty principle and Louis de Broglie. Max Born. Neils Bohr. Max Planck.

The list goes on and on. Of the 29 scientists who met in Brussels in October 1927, 17 of them went on to win a Nobel Prize.

These are the minds that collectively created the scientific foundation upon which the modern world is built.

And yet, when they all descended upon Brussels nearly 94 years ago, they got stumped by one concept one concept that for nearly a century has remained the elusive key to unlocking the full potential of humankind.

And now, for the first time ever, that concept which stumped even Einstein is turning into a disruptive reality, via a breakthrough technology that will change the world as we know it.

So what exactly were Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, and the rest of those Nobel Laureates talking about in Brussels back in 1927?

Quantum mechanics.

Now, to be clear, quantum mechanics is a big, complex topic that would require 500 pages to fully understand, but heres my best job at making a Cliffs Notes version in 500 words instead

For centuries, scientists had developed, tested, and validated the laws of the physical world which became known as classical mechanics. These laws scientifically explained how things worked. Why they worked. Where they came from. So on and so forth.

But the discovery of the electron in 1897 by J.J. Thomson unveiled a new, subatomic world of supper-small things that didnt obey the laws of classical mechanics. The biggest differences were two-fold.

First, in classical mechanics, objects are in one place, at one time. You are either at the store, or at home.

But, in quantum mechanics, subatomic particles can theoretically exist in multiple places at once before they are observed. A single subatomic particle can exist in point A and point B at the same time, until we observe it, at which point it only exists at either point A or point B.

So, the true location of a subatomic particle is some combination of all its possible locations.

This is called quantum superposition.

Second, in classical mechanics, objects can only work with things that are also real. You cant use your imaginary friend to help move the couch. You need your real friend to help you.

But, in quantum mechanics, all of those probabilistic states of subatomic particles are not independent. Theyre entangled. That is, if we know something about the probabilistic positioning of one subatomic particle, then we know something about the probabilistic positioning of another subatomic particle meaning that these already super-complex particles can actually work together to create a super-complex ecosystem.

This is called quantum entanglement.

So, in short, subatomic particles can theoretically have multiple probabilistic states at once, and all those probabilistic states can work together again, all at once to accomplish some task.

And that, in a nutshell, is the scientific breakthrough that stumped Einstein back in the early 1900s.

It goes against everything classical mechanics had taught us about the world. It goes against common sense. But its true. Its real. And, now, for the first time ever, we are leaning how to harness this unique phenomenon to change everything about everything

That is, the study of quantum theory has made huge advancements over the past century, especially so over the past decade, wherein scientists at leading technology companies have started to figure out how to harness the powers of quantum mechanics to make a new generation of super quantum computers that are infinitely faster and more powerful than even todays fastest supercomputers.

In short, todays computers are built on top of the laws of classical mechanics. That is, they store information on what are called bits which can store data binarily as either 1 or 0.

But what if you could harness the power of quantum mechanics to turn those classical bits into quantum bits or qubits that can leverage superpositioning to be both 1 and 0 data stores at the same time?

Even further, what if you could take those quantum bits and leverage entanglement to get all of the multi-state bits to work together to solve computationally taxing problems?

You would theoretically create a machine with so much computational power that it would make even todays most advanced supercomputers look like they are from the Stone Age.

Thats exactly what is happening today.

Google has built a quantum computer that solved a mathematical calculation in 200 seconds, that took the worlds most advanced classical supercomputer IBM Summit 10,000 years to do. That means Googles quantum computer is about 158 million times faster than the worlds fastest supercomputer.

Thats not hyperbole. Thats a real number.

Imagine the possibilities if we could broadly create a new set of quantum computers 158 million times faster than even todays fastest computers.

Wed finally have the level of AI that you see in movies. Thats because the biggest limitation to AI today is the robustness of machine learning algorithms, which are constrained by supercomputing capacity. Expand that capacity, and you get infinitely improved machine learning algos, and infinitely smarter AI.

We could eradicate disease. We already have tools like gene editing, but the effectiveness of gene editing relies of the robustness of the underlying computing capacity to identify, target, insert, cut, and repair genes. Insert quantum computing capacity, and all that happens without an error in seconds allowing for us to truly fix anything about anyone.

We could finally have that million-mile EV. We can only improve batteries if we can test them, and we can only test them in the real-world so much. Therefore, the key to unlocking a million-mile battery is through cellular simulation, and the quickness and effectiveness of cellular simulation rests upon the robustness of the underlying computing capacity. Make that capacity 158 million times bigger, and cellular simulation will happen 158 million times faster.

The applications here are truly endless.

And thats why the Boston Consulting Group believes quantum computing will be the next trillion-dollar industry.

I couldnt agree more. Over the next two decades, quantum computing is going to change everything about everything.

And thats why, Ive made my first-ever foray into quantum computing stocks recently, adding the best quantum computing stock to buy today in my ultra-exclusive newsletter service, Exponential Growth Report.

You can learn more about my premium newsletter subscription services, and my top picks in the worlds emerging megatrends, by becoming a free subscriber to Hypergrowth Investing. By signing up, youll also get my latest research report, 11 Electric Vehicle Stocks for 2021, sent directly to your inbox.

In Hypergrowth, my team and I cover the preeminent megatrends of today, and the top stocks to buy within them, sending a free issue to your inbox each day at 7:30 a.m. Eastern. Im talking about markets with hidden gems that could score investors 10X, 50X, or even 100X upside.

And you can learn all about my premium subscription services where I compile the best-of-the-best in the hypergrowth investing world. My latest pick in Exponential Growth Report is the top quantum computing company in the world a name no one has heard about yet which could one day be as big as Amazon Web Services or Google cloud.

This is the next big thing.

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On the date of publication, Luke Lango did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article.

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Quantum Computing Stumped Einstein 100 Years Ago. Today, It's Ready to Change the World. - InvestorPlace

A tunable coupler can switch the qubit-qubit interaction on and off. Unwanted, residual (ZZ) interaction between the two qubits is eliminated by harnessing higher energy levels of the coupler. Credit: Krantz Nanoart

MIT researchers demonstrate a way to sharply reduce errors in two-qubit gates, a significant advance toward fully realizing quantum computation.

MIT researchers have made a significant advance on the road toward the full realization of quantum computation, demonstrating a technique that eliminates common errors in the most essential operation of quantum algorithms, the two-qubit operation or gate.

Despite tremendous progress toward being able to perform computations with low error rates with superconducting quantum bits (qubits), errors in two-qubit gates, one of the building blocks of quantum computation, persist, says Youngkyu Sung, an MIT graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science who is the lead author of a paper on this topicpublished on June 16, 2021, in Physical Review X. We have demonstrated a way to sharply reduce those errors.

In quantum computers, the processing of information is an extremely delicate process performed by the fragile qubits, which are highly susceptible to decoherence, the loss of their quantum mechanical behavior. In previous research conducted by Sung and the research group he works with, MIT Engineering Quantum Systems, tunable couplers were proposed, allowing researchers to turn two-qubit interactions on and off to control their operations while preserving the fragile qubits. The tunable coupler idea represented a significant advance and was cited, for example, by Google as being key to their recent demonstration of the advantage that quantum computing holds over classical computing.

Still, addressing error mechanisms is like peeling an onion: Peeling one layer reveals the next. In this case, even when using tunable couplers, the two-qubit gates were still prone to errors that resulted from residual unwanted interactions between the two qubits and between the qubits and the coupler. Such unwanted interactions were generally ignored prior to tunable couplers, as they did not stand out but now they do. And, because such residual errors increase with the number of qubits and gates, they stand in the way of building larger-scale quantum processors. ThePhysical Review Xpaper provides a new approach to reduce such errors.

We have now taken the tunable coupler concept further and demonstrated near 99.9 percent fidelity for the two major types of two-qubit gates, known as Controlled-Z gates and iSWAP gates, says William D. Oliver, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, MIT Lincoln Laboratory fellow, director of the Center for Quantum Engineering, and associate director of the Research Laboratory of Electronics, home of the Engineering Quantum Systems group. Higher-fidelity gates increase the number of operations one can perform, and more operations translates to implementing more sophisticated algorithms at larger scales.

To eliminate the error-provoking qubit-qubit interactions, the researchers harnessed higher energy levels of the coupler to cancel out the problematic interactions. In previous work, such energy levels of the coupler were ignored, although they induced non-negligible two-qubit interactions.

Better control and design of the coupler is a key to tailoring the qubit-qubit interaction as we desire. This can be realized by engineering the multilevel dynamics that exist, Sung says.

The next generation of quantum computers will be error-corrected, meaning that additional qubits will be added to improve the robustness of quantum computation.

Qubit errors can be actively addressed by adding redundancy, says Oliver, pointing out, however, that such a process only works if the gates are sufficiently good above a certain fidelity threshold that depends on the error correction protocol. The most lenient thresholds today are around 99 percent. However, in practice, one seeks gate fidelities that are much higher than this threshold to live with reasonable levels of hardware redundancy.

The devices used in the research, made at MITs Lincoln Laboratory, were fundamental to achieving the demonstrated gains in fidelity in the two-qubit operations, Oliver says.

Fabricating high-coherence devices is step one to implementing high-fidelity control, he says.

Sung says high rates of error in two-qubit gates significantly limit the capability of quantum hardware to run quantum applications that are typically hard to solve with classical computers, such as quantum chemistry simulation and solving optimization problems.

Up to this point, only small molecules have been simulated on quantum computers, simulations that can easily be performed on classical computers.

In this sense, our new approach to reduce the two-qubit gate errors is timely in the field of quantum computation and helps address one of the most critical quantum hardware issues today, he says.

Reference: Realization of High-Fidelity CZ and ZZ-Free iSWAP Gates with a Tunable Coupler by Youngkyu Sung, Leon Ding, Jochen Braumller, Antti Vepslinen, Bharath Kannan, Morten Kjaergaard, Ami Greene, Gabriel O. Samach, Chris McNally, David Kim, Alexander Melville, Bethany M. Niedzielski, Mollie E. Schwartz, Jonilyn L. Yoder, Terry P. Orlando, Simon Gustavsson and William D. Oliver, 16 June 2021, Physical Review X.DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevX.11.021058

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MIT Makes a Significant Advance Toward the Full Realization of Quantum Computation - SciTechDaily