Rice University’s Pengcheng Dai, Randall Hulet, Douglas Natelson, Han Pu, Ming Yi and Boris Yakobson attended the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship (VBFF) Symposium on Extreme Quantum Materials. The event showcased research on the physics of strongly correlated quantum materials and marked the start of a five-year research programme by Qimiao Si, who won a 2023 […]

Toshiba has developed Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) technology to secure sensitive data against future threats from powerful quantum computers. QKD generates symmetric encryption keys between two locations without sending the keys between them, using the physical entanglement properties of light particles through an optical fibre. This technology is immune to attacks from quantum computers and can detect if information has been intercepted. Toshiba offers two types of QKD devices: a multiplexed system that operates on data-carrying fibre, and a long-distance system for maximum key rate and range.

It’s a long journey to fault-tolerant quantum computation, but AWS and Amazon want to tackle this with a new chip they have been producing. The company has been involved in the quantum space for a while with its AWS Braket Service and the AWS Centre for Quantum Computing at Caltech. AWS and Peter Desantis spoke about how the new Qubit is more fault-tolerant, announcing the logical qubit built at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Center for Quantum Computing.

💾

Amazon has launched Braket Direct, a programme offering quantum researchers private access to quantum processing units (QPUs) without queues or wait times. The service also provides expert guidance and early access to limited-availability features and devices. Users can reserve entire machines for a period on IonQ Aria, QuEra Aquila, and Rigetti Aspen-M-3 devices. They can also engage with experts from IonQ, Oxford Quantum Circuits, QuEra, Rigetti, or Amazon Quantum Solutions Lab. The service offers access to experimental capabilities, starting with IonQ’s 30-qubit Forte device. Braket Direct is available in all AWS Regions where Amazon Braket is available.

Australia's research and development in quantum technology is facing challenges due to intense international competition, a shortage of skilled professionals, and insufficient domestic investment and industry capability. This information was revealed in a National Quantum Industry and Workforce Development Review published on 23 November.

The Qiskit Ecosystem, a quantum computing platform developed by IBM, has undergone significant changes to enhance community involvement in algorithm and application development. The qiskit.algorithms has been migrated to a standalone package, qiskit-algorithms, allowing for more flexible development cycles. The Qiskit applications modules, including qiskit-nature, qiskit-machine-learning, qiskit-optimization, and qiskit-finance, have also been moved to the qiskit-community GitHub organization. New maintainers from IBM Quantum partner institutions, including Algorithmiq, STFC Hartree Centre, and Quantagonia, have been welcomed. The changes aim to simplify the code base and make the libraries more accessible to external contributors.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and NVIDIA are expanding their strategic collaboration to deliver advanced infrastructure, software, and services for generative artificial intelligence (AI) innovations. AWS will be the first cloud provider to bring NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchips to the cloud, which will be available on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances.

Researchers from Quantinuum and Amgen have conducted a study on using quantum computers for computational biology. They built quantum models to perform sequence classification relevant to the design of therapeutic proteins. The models were run on emulators of state-of-the-art noisy quantum processors and then on the Quantinuum H1-1 trapped-ion quantum processor. The results were in close agreement with noiseless exact simulation. This work is the first application of near-term quantum computing to a task critical to the design of therapeutic proteins, suggesting potential for larger-scale applications in this and related fields. The work is published in Arxiv, "Peptide Binding Classification on Quantum Computers".

Q-CTRL, a global leader in quantum technology, has integrated its Q-CTRL Embedded Quantum software with IBM Quantum's Pay-As-You-Go Plan. This marks the first time a third-party software vendor's technology will be available on the IBM Quantum Pay-As-You-Go Plan. The integration aims to provide user-friendly functionality to address the primary challenge facing quantum computing end-users: unreliable results from algorithms run on today's hardware. The combination of Q-CTRL technology and IBM Quantum services reduces this burden, making it simpler to get useful results from real hardware by automatically addressing the problem of noise and hardware error.

Hear from Krysta Svore, Principal Research Manager of Microsoft Quantum, on how creating resilient logical qubits is crucial in developing quantum computers. Currently, according to Krysta Svore, the industry is approaching Level 2.

Riverlane has been chosen for Phase 2 of the Quantum Benchmarking programme funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The programme aims to develop key quantum computing metrics for practical problems. Riverlane's CEO, Steve Brierley, stated that the programme aligns with their mission to make quantum computing useful sooner. The company is working with universities such as the University of Southern California and the University of Sydney to identify benchmarks for practical problems in various fields. Principal Quantum Scientist at Riverlane, Hari Krovi, highlighted the importance of fault tolerance in quantum computing.

Quantum technologies are currently maturing at a breath-taking pace. These technologies exploit principles of quantum mechanics in suitably engineered systems, with bright prospects such as boosting computational efficiencies or communication security well beyond what is possible with devices based on today's 'classical' technologies.

Entanglement is a quantum phenomenon where the properties of two or more particles become interconnected in such a way that one cannot assign a definite state to each individual particle anymore. Rather, we have to consider all particles at once that share a certain state. The entanglement of the particles ultimately determines the properties of a material.

Scientists have developed a new way to study the shapes of atomic nuclei and their internal building blocks. The method relies on modeling the production of certain particles from high-energy collisions of electrons with nuclear targets. Such collisions will take place at the future Electron Ion Collider (EIC). The findings are published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

In the search for new particles and forces in nature, physicists are on the hunt for behaviors within atoms and molecules that are forbidden by the tried-and-true Standard Model of particle physics. Any deviations from this model could indicate what physicists affectionately refer to as "new physics."

Researchers from the University of Ottawa (uOttawa), in collaboration with the Weizmann Institute of Science and Lancaster University, have observed a hidden quantum transition that can only be seen depending on how observers perform measurements.

High-energy ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider are capable of producing a quark-gluon plasma. But are heavy atomic nuclei really necessary for its formation? And above all: how are secondary particles later born from this plasma? Further clues in the search for answers to these questions are provided by the latest analysis of collisions between protons and protons or ions, observed in the LHCb experiment.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched the Amazon Braket Digital Learning Plan, a free learning programme for quantum computing developers, educators, and enthusiasts. The free quantum computing course programme offers foundational knowledge on quantum computing and Amazon Braket, AWS's quantum computing service. Participants can earn a digital badge after completing a series of courses and scoring at least 80% on an assessment. The learning plan includes two online courses focusing on domain knowledge, Braket features, and hands-on tutorials. The initiative aims to support experienced quantum instructors, enable students to gain practical experience, and help customers develop their quantum applications.

The University of Tokyo (UTokyo) and IBM have launched Japan's first IBM Quantum System One, featuring a 127-qubit IBM Quantum Eagle processor. This is the first utility-scale processor in the region, defined by IBM as a quantum computer capable of exploring new scales of problems. The Quantum Innovation Initiative (QII) Consortium will use the system for quantum research in various fields including bioinformatics, high energy physics, materials science, and finance. UTokyo's Executive Vice President, Hiroaki Aihara, highlighted the potential of quantum computers to perform complex calculations beyond the capabilities of supercomputers.