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.

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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.

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.

OQC, a global leader in quantum compute-as-a-service, has announced the public availability of OQC Toshiko, the world's first enterprise-ready quantum computing platform. The 32-qubit platform is deployed to commercial data centres, allowing businesses worldwide to access the technology. SBI Investment, Japan's leading venture capital fund, is leading OQC's $100m funding round. The platform is named after Toshiko Yuasa, the first female Japanese physicist. OQC is collaborating with global companies including Equinix, NVIDIA, AWS and McKinsey to bring quantum computing out of the lab and into the enterprise.

Atom Computing, a Boulder-based company, has developed a scalable, high-fidelity method for midcircuit measurement in quantum computing. The team used a single-species tweezer array of neutral 171Yb atoms to perform nondestructive state-selective and site-selective detection. This allows a subset of qubits to be measured while causing only percent-level errors on the remaining qubits. The technique also demonstrated the ability to reuse ancilla qubits and perform conditional refilling of ancilla sites to correct for occasional atom loss, while maintaining the coherence of data qubits. The research was led by M. A. Norcia and B. J. Bloom.

The University of Western Australia (UWA) has introduced Western Australia's first undergraduate quantum computing major. The course was announced by UWA Vice-Chancellor Amit Chakma at Quantum West, an industry event hosted by UWA. The course aims to equip students with the understanding and technical knowledge required in the rapidly advancing field of quantum computing. The new major is part of UWA’s comprehensive education pipeline for quantum technology, which includes Quantum Girls, a national programme designed to inspire young people and their teachers. Students can also pursue a Masters or PhD in quantum computing at UWA.

A team of researchers, including Alex Kerzner and Luca Dellantonio from softwareQ Inc., the Institute for Quantum Computing, and Transmutex SA, have developed a quantum algorithm that can find the smallest eigenvalue of a Hermitian matrix faster than classical algorithms. The algorithm combines Quantum Phase Estimation and Quantum Amplitude Estimation to achieve a quadratic speedup. This development could have applications in quantum chemistry and materials science.

Rumors suggest that Alibaba Group's DAMO Academy has shuttered its Quantum Lab. Alibaba denied rumors of its Quantum Laboratory's closure, announcing its donation to Zhejiang University. The lab and its quantum experimental equipment will also be available to other universities and research institutions.

The field of quantum computing, a subset of quantum information science, is rapidly growing and promises to revolutionize industries from healthcare to finance. As traditional computing approaches its physical limits, quantum computing offers a paradigm shift, harnessing the principles of quantum mechanics to process vast amounts of data in ways previously thought impossible. If you're contemplating a career in this exciting domain, here's what you need to know, all contained in this article.