Item 1.01 Entry into a Material Definitive Agreement.

On May 6, 2020, Quantum Computing Inc. (the "Company") executed an unsecuredpromissory note (the "Note") with BB&T/Truist Bank N.A. to evidence a loan tothe Company in the amount of $218,371 (the "Loan") under the Paycheck ProtectionProgram (the "PPP") established under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and EconomicSecurity Act (the "CARES Act"), administered by the U.S. Small BusinessAdministration (the "SBA").

In accordance with the requirements of the CARES Act, the Company expects to usethe proceeds from the Loan exclusively for qualified expenses under the PPP,including payroll costs, mortgage interest, rent and utility costs. Interestwill accrue on the outstanding balance of the Note at a rate of 1.00% per annum.The Company expects to apply for forgiveness of up to the entire amount of theNote. Notwithstanding the Company's eligibility to apply for forgiveness, noassurance can be given that the Company will obtain forgiveness of all or anyportion of the amounts due under the Note. The amount of forgiveness under theNote is calculated in accordance with the requirements of the PPP, including theprovisions of Section 1106 of the CARES Act, subject to limitations and ongoingrule-making by the SBA and the maintenance of employee and compensation levels.

Subject to any forgiveness granted under the PPP, the Note is scheduled tomature two years from the date of first disbursement under the Note. The Notemay be prepaid at any time prior to maturity with no prepayment penalties. TheNote provides for customary events of default, including, among others, thoserelating to failure to make payments, bankruptcy, and significant changes inownership. The occurrence of an event of default may result in the requiredimmediate repayment of all amounts outstanding and/or filing suit and obtainingjudgment against the Company. The Company's obligations under the Note are notsecured by any collateral or personal guarantees.

Item 2.03 Creation of Direct Financial Obligation or an Obligation under an

The discussion of the Loan set forth in Item 1.01 of this Current Report on Form8-K is incorporated in this Item 2.03 by reference.

Item 9.01. Financial Statements and Exhibits.

Edgar Online, source Glimpses

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QUANTUM COMPUTING INC. : Entry into a Material Definitive Agreement, Creation of a Direct Financial Obligation or an Obligation under an Off-Balance...

What Ben Sasse sees out of China from his seat on the Senate Intelligence Committee scares him, and he's convinced Americans aren't taking the threat seriously."China is the biggest long-term threat," the Nebraska Republican said during a KETV NewsWatch 7 interview from Capitol Hill. "There isn't enough urgency or agreement about that problem."Over the past few years, the Chinese government has flexed its growing military and economic might with countries across the Pacific Ocean. It's made substantial investments in 5G technology, and one of its biggest tech manufacturers, Huawei, supplies those networks around the globe.Hauwei has drawn scrutiny from U.S. national security experts for its ties to the Chinese government.Sasse explained 5G technology allows more advanced uses for artificial intelligence, and ultimately quantum computing.Once deployed, effective quantum algorithms can enable machine learning. In the hands of an adversary, the development could allow computers to break codes with little effort, revealing U.S. intelligence assets."The Chinese communist party cannot beat us in the long-term tech race, and right now they are closing on us really fast," Sasse said.In the video above, watch Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., question President Trump's nominee for Director of National Intelligence on Chinese government initiatives during a Senate hearing May 5.The national security implications also play out in pandemics, Sasse said, citing years of drills at the Pentagon."Most of those exercises said a pandemic would be the biggest problem," he said.The pandemic finally arrived in the form of COVID-19, and the U.S. government was left scrambling to contain it.Sasse says it's time to get serious about investing in health preparedness. The self-described "small government guy" wants more serious federal investment in vaccine accelerator programs and a "Shark Tank" for therapeutics."We need to have more red team, blue team, green team exercises inside the public health space, the vaccine development space," Sasse said.While public health experts try to contain the virus, it has already wrecked havoc across the world's biggest economy.As coronavirus closures crippled the U.S., Congress spent more than $3 trillion to rescue American businesses and the American people. More than 33 million Americans lost their jobs since the pandemic began."The average small business has about 16 days of cash on hand, and this thing has been going on for a couple of months," Sasse said. "So there's a lot more that needs to be done."The American people would seem to agree.Three quarters of Americans in swing states want sustained, direct payments during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a poll published Wednesday by CNBC. But before he signs off on more relief, Sasse wants to see what's working and what's not."Congress and the executive branch have spent way too much of the next generation's money without knowing whether it's going to be effective," he said. "So we need to start evaluating what we've already started to do before people start advocating to spread more money out of helicopters."Sasse also wants to see COVID-19 legal shields for health care workers and small businesses.He told KETV NewsWatch 7 he's open to spending money on data-driven job re-training programs that can get Nebraskans back to work.While those efforts are short-term efforts to rescue the economy, Sasse said the U.S. can't afford to forget the long-term challenges.Investing in robust efforts to shore up global health preparedness are critical, he said. Especially when he considers the China threat."They want to dominate the globe from a national security standpoint," said Sasse. "And viruses are one of many tools they might consider using."

What Ben Sasse sees out of China from his seat on the Senate Intelligence Committee scares him, and he's convinced Americans aren't taking the threat seriously.

"China is the biggest long-term threat," the Nebraska Republican said during a KETV NewsWatch 7 interview from Capitol Hill. "There isn't enough urgency or agreement about that problem."

Over the past few years, the Chinese government has flexed its growing military and economic might with countries across the Pacific Ocean. It's made substantial investments in 5G technology, and one of its biggest tech manufacturers, Huawei, supplies those networks around the globe.

Hauwei has drawn scrutiny from U.S. national security experts for its ties to the Chinese government.

Sasse explained 5G technology allows more advanced uses for artificial intelligence, and ultimately quantum computing.

Once deployed, effective quantum algorithms can enable machine learning. In the hands of an adversary, the development could allow computers to break codes with little effort, revealing U.S. intelligence assets.

"The Chinese communist party cannot beat us in the long-term tech race, and right now they are closing on us really fast," Sasse said.

In the video above, watch Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., question President Trump's nominee for Director of National Intelligence on Chinese government initiatives during a Senate hearing May 5.

The national security implications also play out in pandemics, Sasse said, citing years of drills at the Pentagon.

"Most of those exercises said a pandemic would be the biggest problem," he said.

The pandemic finally arrived in the form of COVID-19, and the U.S. government was left scrambling to contain it.

Sasse says it's time to get serious about investing in health preparedness. The self-described "small government guy" wants more serious federal investment in vaccine accelerator programs and a "Shark Tank" for therapeutics.

"We need to have more red team, blue team, green team exercises inside the public health space, the vaccine development space," Sasse said.

While public health experts try to contain the virus, it has already wrecked havoc across the world's biggest economy.

As coronavirus closures crippled the U.S., Congress spent more than $3 trillion to rescue American businesses and the American people. More than 33 million Americans lost their jobs since the pandemic began.

"The average small business has about 16 days of cash on hand, and this thing has been going on for a couple of months," Sasse said. "So there's a lot more that needs to be done."

The American people would seem to agree.

Three quarters of Americans in swing states want sustained, direct payments during the coronavirus pandemic, according to a poll published Wednesday by CNBC.

But before he signs off on more relief, Sasse wants to see what's working and what's not.

"Congress and the executive branch have spent way too much of the next generation's money without knowing whether it's going to be effective," he said. "So we need to start evaluating what we've already started to do before people start advocating to spread more money out of helicopters."

Sasse also wants to see COVID-19 legal shields for health care workers and small businesses.

He told KETV NewsWatch 7 he's open to spending money on data-driven job re-training programs that can get Nebraskans back to work.

While those efforts are short-term efforts to rescue the economy, Sasse said the U.S. can't afford to forget the long-term challenges.

Investing in robust efforts to shore up global health preparedness are critical, he said. Especially when he considers the China threat.

"They want to dominate the globe from a national security standpoint," said Sasse. "And viruses are one of many tools they might consider using."

See the original post here:

The pandemic and national security go hand-in-hand for Nebraska's Ben Sasse - KETV Omaha

Researchers at Princeton have discovered superconducting currents traveling along the outer edges of a superconductor with topological properties, suggesting a route to topological superconductivity that could be useful in future quantum computers. The superconductivity is represented by the black center of the diagram indicating no resistance to the current flow. The jagged pattern indicates the oscillation of the superconductivity which varies with the strength of an applied magnetic field. Credit: Stephan Kim, Princeton University

Princeton researchers detect a supercurrent a current flowing without energy loss at the edge of a superconductor with a topological twist.

A discovery that long eluded physicists has been detected in a laboratory at Princeton. A team of physicists detected superconducting currents the flow of electrons without wasting energy along the exterior edge of a superconducting material. The finding was published May 1 in the journal Science.

The superconductor that the researchers studied is also a topological semi-metal, a material that comes with its own unusual electronic properties. The finding suggests ways to unlock a new era of topological superconductivity that could have value for quantum computing.

To our knowledge, this is the first observation of an edge supercurrent in any superconductor, said Nai Phuan Ong, Princetons Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics and the senior author on the study.

Our motivating question was, what happens when the interior of the material is not an insulator but a superconductor? Ong said. What novel features arise when superconductivity occurs in a topological material?

Although conventional superconductors already enjoy widespread usage in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and long-distance transmission lines, new types of superconductivity could unleash the ability to move beyond the limitations of our familiar technologies.

Researchers at Princeton and elsewhere have been exploring the connections between superconductivity and topological insulators materials whose non-conformist electronic behaviors were the subject of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics for F. Duncan Haldane, Princetons Sherman Fairchild University Professor of Physics.

Topological insulators are crystals that have an insulating interior and a conducting surface, like a brownie wrapped in tin foil. In conducting materials, electrons can hop from atom to atom, allowing electric current to flow. Insulators are materials in which the electrons are stuck and cannot move. Yet curiously, topological insulators allow the movement of electrons on their surface but not in their interior.

To explore superconductivity in topological materials, the researchers turned to a crystalline material called molybdenum ditelluride, which has topological properties and is also a superconductor once the temperature dips below a frigid 100 milliKelvin, which is -459 degrees Fahrenheit.

Most of the experiments done so far have involved trying to inject superconductivity into topological materials by putting the one material in close proximity to the other, said Stephan Kim, a graduate student in electrical engineering, who conducted many of the experiments. What is different about our measurement is we did not inject superconductivity and yet we were able to show the signatures of edge states.

The team first grew crystals in the laboratory and then cooled them down to a temperature where superconductivity occurs. They then applied a weak magnetic field while measuring the current flow through the crystal. They observed that a quantity called the critical current displays oscillations, which appear as a saw-tooth pattern, as the magnetic field is increased.

Both the height of the oscillations and the frequency of the oscillations fit with predictions of how these fluctuations arise from the quantum behavior of electrons confined to the edges of the materials.

When we finished the data analysis for the first sample, I looked at my computer screen and could not believe my eyes, the oscillations we observed were just so beautiful and yet so mysterious, said Wudi Wang, who as first author led the study and earned his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton in 2019. Its like a puzzle that started to reveal itself and is waiting to be solved. Later, as we collected more data from different samples, I was surprisedat how perfectly the data fit together.

Researchers have long known that superconductivity arises when electrons, which normally move about randomly, bind into twos to form Cooper pairs, which in a sense dance to the same beat. A rough analogy is a billion couples executing the same tightly scripted dance choreography, Ong said.

The script the electrons are following is called the superconductors wave function, which may be regarded roughly as a ribbon stretched along the length of the superconducting wire, Ong said. A slight twist of the wave function compels all Cooper pairs in a long wire to move with the same velocity as a superfluid in other words acting like a single collection rather than like individual particles that flows without producing heating.

If there are no twists along the ribbon, Ong said, the Cooper pairs are stationary and no current flows. If the researchers expose the superconductor to a weak magnetic field, this adds an additional contribution to the twisting that the researchers call the magnetic flux, which, for very small particles such as electrons, follows the rules of quantum mechanics.

The researchers anticipated that these two contributors to the number of twists, the superfluid velocity and the magnetic flux, work together to maintain the number of twists as an exact integer, a whole number such as 2, 3 or 4 rather than a 3.2 or a 3.7. They predicted that as the magnetic flux increases smoothly, the superfluid velocity would increase in a saw-tooth pattern as the superfluid velocity adjusts to cancel the extra .2 or add .3 to get an exact number of twists.

The team measured the superfluid current as they varied the magnetic flux and found that indeed the saw-tooth pattern was visible.

In molybdenum ditelluride and other so-called Weyl semimetals, this Cooper-pairing of electrons in the bulk appears to induce a similar pairing on the edges.

The researchers noted that the reason why the edge supercurrent remains independent of the bulk supercurrent is currently not well understood. Ong compared the electrons moving collectively, also called condensates, to puddles of liquid.

From classical expectations, one would expect two fluid puddles that are in direct contact to merge into one, Ong said. Yet the experiment shows that the edge condensates remain distinct from that in the bulk of the crystal.

The research team speculates that the mechanism that keeps the two condensates from mixing is the topological protection inherited from the protected edge states in molybdenum ditelluride. The group hopes to apply the same experimental technique to search for edge supercurrents in other unconventional superconductors.

There are probably scores of them out there, Ong said.

Reference: Evidence for an edge supercurrent in the Weyl superconductor MoTe2 by Wudi Wang, Stephan Kim, Minhao Liu, F. A. Cevallos, Robert. J. Cava and Nai Phuan Ong, 1 May 2020, Science.DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw9270

Funding: The research was supported by the U.S. Army Research Office (W911NF-16-1-0116). The dilution refrigerator experiments were supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DE- SC0017863). N.P.O. and R.J.C. acknowledge support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundations Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems Initiative through grants GBMF4539 (N.P.O.) and GBMF-4412 (R.J.C.). The growth and characterization of crystals were performed by F.A.C. and R.J.C., with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF MRSEC grant DMR 1420541).

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A Discovery That Long Eluded Physicists: Superconductivity to the Edge - SciTechDaily

The massive amount of processing power generated by computer manufacturers has not yet been able to quench our thirst for speed and computing capacity. In 1947, American computer engineer Howard Aiken said that just six electronic digital computers would satisfy the computing needs of the United States. Others have made similar errant predictions about the amount of computing power that would support our growing technological needs. Of course, Aiken didn't count on the large amounts of data generated by scientific research, the proliferation of personal computers or the emergence of the Internet, which have only fueled our need for more, more and more computing power.

Will we ever have the amount of computing power we need or want? If, as Moore's Law states, the number of transistors on a microprocessor continues to double every 18 months, the year 2020 or 2030 will find the circuits on a microprocessor measured on an atomic scale. And the logical next step will be to create quantum computers, which will harness the power of atoms and molecules to perform memory and processing tasks. Quantum computers have the potential to perform certain calculations significantly faster than any silicon-based computer.

Scientists have already built basic quantum computers that can perform certain calculations; but a practical quantum computer is still years away. In this article, you'll learn what a quantum computer is and just what it'll be used for in the next era of computing.

You don't have to go back too far to find the origins of quantum computing. While computers have been around for the majority of the 20th century, quantum computing was first theorized less than 30 years ago, by a physicist at the Argonne National Laboratory. Paul Benioff is credited with first applying quantum theory to computers in 1981. Benioff theorized about creating a quantum Turing machine. Most digital computers, like the one you are using to read this article, are based on the Turing Theory. Learn what this is in the next section.

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How Quantum Computers Work | HowStuffWorks

When you first stumble across the term quantum computer, you might pass it off as some far-flung science fiction concept rather than a serious current news item.

But with the phrase being thrown around with increasing frequency, its understandable to wonder exactly what quantum computers are, and just as understandable to be at a loss as to where to dive in. Heres the rundown on what quantum computers are, why theres so much buzz around them, and what they might mean for you.

All computing relies on bits, the smallest unit of information that is encoded as an on state or an off state, more commonly referred to as a 1 or a 0, in some physical medium or another.

Most of the time, a bit takes the physical form of an electrical signal traveling over the circuits in the computers motherboard. By stringing multiple bits together, we can represent more complex and useful things like text, music, and more.

The two key differences between quantum bits and classical bits (from the computers we use today) are the physical form the bits take and, correspondingly, the nature of data encoded in them. The electrical bits of a classical computer can only exist in one state at a time, either 1 or 0.

Quantum bits (or qubits) are made of subatomic particles, namely individual photons or electrons. Because these subatomic particles conform more to the rules of quantum mechanics than classical mechanics, they exhibit the bizarre properties of quantum particles. The most salient of these properties for computer scientists is superposition. This is the idea that a particle can exist in multiple states simultaneously, at least until that state is measured and collapses into a single state. By harnessing this superposition property, computer scientists can make qubits encode a 1 and a 0 at the same time.

The other quantum mechanical quirk that makes quantum computers tick is entanglement, a linking of two quantum particles or, in this case, two qubits. When the two particles are entangled, the change in state of one particle will alter the state of its partner in a predictable way, which comes in handy when it comes time to get a quantum computer to calculate the answer to the problem you feed it.

A quantum computers qubits start in their 1-and-0 hybrid state as the computer initially starts crunching through a problem. When the solution is found, the qubits in superposition collapse to the correct orientation of stable 1s and 0s for returning the solution.

Aside from the fact that they are far beyond the reach of all but the most elite research teams (and will likely stay that way for a while), most of us dont have much use for quantum computers. They dont offer any real advantage over classical computers for the kinds of tasks we do most of the time.

However, even the most formidable classical supercomputers have a hard time cracking certain problems due to their inherent computational complexity. This is because some calculations can only be achieved by brute force, guessing until the answer is found. They end up with so many possible solutions that it would take thousands of years for all the worlds supercomputers combined to find the correct one.

The superposition property exhibited by qubits can allow supercomputers to cut this guessing time down precipitously. Classical computings laborious trial-and-error computations can only ever make one guess at a time, while the dual 1-and-0 state of a quantum computers qubits lets it make multiple guesses at the same time.

So, what kind of problems require all this time-consuming guesswork calculation? One example is simulating atomic structures, especially when they interact chemically with those of other atoms. With a quantum computer powering the atomic modeling, researchers in material science could create new compounds for use in engineering and manufacturing. Quantum computers are well suited to simulating similarly intricate systems like economic market forces, astrophysical dynamics, or genetic mutation patterns in organisms, to name only a few.

Amidst all these generally inoffensive applications of this emerging technology, though, there are also some uses of quantum computers that raise serious concerns. By far the most frequently cited harm is the potential for quantum computers to break some of the strongest encryption algorithms currently in use.

In the hands of an aggressive foreign government adversary, quantum computers could compromise a broad swath of otherwise secure internet traffic, leaving sensitive communications susceptible to widespread surveillance. Work is currently being undertaken to mature encryption ciphers based on calculations that are still hard for even quantum computers to do, but they are not all ready for prime-time, or widely adopted at present.

A little over a decade ago, actual fabrication of quantum computers was barely in its incipient stages. Starting in the 2010s, though, development of functioning prototype quantum computers took off. A number of companies have assembled working quantum computers as of a few years ago, with IBM going so far as to allow researchers and hobbyists to run their own programs on it via the cloud.

Despite the strides that companies like IBM have undoubtedly made to build functioning prototypes, quantum computers are still in their infancy. Currently, the quantum computers that research teams have constructed so far require a lot of overhead for executing error correction. For every qubit that actually performs a calculation, there are several dozen whose job it is to compensate for the ones mistake. The aggregate of all these qubits make what is called a logical qubit.

Long story short, industry and academic titans have gotten quantum computers to work, but they do so very inefficiently.

Fierce competition between quantum computer researchers is still raging, between big and small players alike. Among those who have working quantum computers are the traditionally dominant tech companies one would expect: IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Google.

As exacting and costly of a venture as creating a quantum computer is, there are a surprising number of smaller companies and even startups that are rising to the challenge.

The comparatively lean D-Wave Systems has spurred many advances in the fieldand proved it was not out of contention by answering Googles momentous announcement with news of a huge deal with Los Alamos National Labs. Still, smaller competitors like Rigetti Computing are also in the running for establishing themselves as quantum computing innovators.

Depending on who you ask, youll get a different frontrunner for the most powerful quantum computer. Google certainly made its case recently with its achievement of quantum supremacy, a metric that itself Google more or less devised. Quantum supremacy is the point at which a quantum computer is first able to outperform a classical computer at some computation. Googles Sycamore prototype equipped with 54 qubits was able to break that barrier by zipping through a problem in just under three-and-a-half minutes that would take the mightiest classical supercomputer 10,000 years to churn through.

Not to be outdone, D-Wave boasts that the devices it will soon be supplying to Los Alamos weigh in at 5000 qubits apiece, although it should be noted that the quality of D-Waves qubits has been called into question before. IBM hasnt made the same kind of splash as Google and D-Wave in the last couple of years, but they shouldnt be counted out yet, either, especially considering their track record of slow and steady accomplishments.

Put simply, the race for the worlds most powerful quantum computer is as wide open as it ever was.

The short answer to this is not really, at least for the near-term future. Quantum computers require an immense volume of equipment, and finely tuned environments to operate. The leading architecture requires cooling to mere degrees above absolute zero, meaning they are nowhere near practical for ordinary consumers to ever own.

But as the explosion of cloud computing has proven, you dont need to own a specialized computer to harness its capabilities. As mentioned above, IBM is already offering daring technophiles the chance to run programs on a small subset of its Q System Ones qubits. In time, IBM and its competitors will likely sell compute time on more robust quantum computers for those interested in applying them to otherwise inscrutable problems.

But if you arent researching the kinds of exceptionally tricky problems that quantum computers aim to solve, you probably wont interact with them much. In fact, quantum computers are in some cases worse at the sort of tasks we use computers for every day, purely because quantum computers are so hyper-specialized. Unless you are an academic running the kind of modeling where quantum computing thrives, youll likely never get your hands on one, and never need to.

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What Is Quantum Computing? The Next Era of Computational ...

Quantum computers perform calculations based on the probability of an object's state before it is measured - instead of just 1s or 0s - which means they have the potential to process exponentially more data compared to classical computers.

Classical computers carry out logical operations using the definite position of a physical state. These are usually binary, meaning its operations are based on one of two positions. A single state - such as on or off, up or down, 1 or 0 - is called a bit.

In quantum computing, operations instead use the quantum state of an object to produce what's known as a qubit. These states are the undefined properties of an object before they've been detected, such as the spin of an electron or the polarisation of a photon.

Rather than having a clear position, unmeasured quantum states occur in a mixed 'superposition', not unlike a coin spinning through the air before it lands in your hand.

These superpositions can be entangled with those of other objects, meaning their final outcomes will be mathematically related even if we don't know yet what they are.

The complex mathematics behind these unsettled states of entangled 'spinning coins' can be plugged into special algorithms to make short work of problems that would take a classical computer a long time to work out... if they could ever calculate them at all.

Such algorithms would be useful in solving complex mathematical problems, producing hard-to-break security codes, or predicting multiple particle interactions in chemical reactions.

Building a functional quantum computer requires holding an object in a superposition state long enough to carry out various processes on them.

Unfortunately, once a superposition meets with materials that are part of a measured system, it loses its in-between state in what's known as decoherence and becomes a boring old classical bit.

Devices need to be able to shield quantum states from decoherence, while still making them easy to read.

Different processes are tackling this challenge from different angles, whether it's to use more robust quantum processes or to find better ways to check for errors.

For the time being, classical technology can manage any task thrown at a quantum computer. Quantum supremacy describes the ability of a quantum computer to outperform their classical counterparts.

Some companies, such as IBM and Google, claim we might be close, as they continue to cram more qubits together and build more accurate devices.

Not everybody is convinced that quantum computers are worth the effort. Some mathematicians believe there are obstacles that are practically impossible to overcome, putting quantum computing forever out of reach.

Time will tell who is right.

All topic-based articles are determined by fact checkers to be correct and relevant at the time of publishing. Text and images may be altered, removed, or added to as an editorial decision to keep information current.

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How Do Quantum Computers Work? - ScienceAlert

Machine-learning and quantum computing are two technologies that have incredible potential in their own right. Now researchers are bringing them together. The main goal is to achieve a so-called quantum advantage, where complex algorithms can be calculated significantly faster than with the best classical computer. This would be a game-changer in the field of AI.

Such a breakthrough could lead to new drug discoveries, advances in chemistry, as well as better data science, weather predictions and natural-language processing. We could be as little as three years away from achieving a quantum advantage in AI if the largest players in the quantum computing space meet their goals, says Ilyas Khan, chief executive of Cambridge Quantum Computing.

This comes after Google announced late last year that it had achieved quantum supremacy, claiming their quantum computer had cracked a problem that would take even the fastest conventional machine thousands of years to solve.

Developing quantum machine-learning algorithms could allow us to solve complex problems much more quickly. To realise the full potential of quantum computing for AI, we need to increase the number of qubits that make up these systems, says Dr Jay Gambetta, vice president of quantum computing at IBM Research.

Quantum devices exploit the strange properties of quantum physics and mechanics to speed up calculations. Classical computers store data in bits, as zeros or ones. Quantum computers use qubits, where data can exist in two different states simultaneously. This gives them more computational fire power. Were talking up to a million times faster than some classical computers.

And when you add a single qubit, you double the quantum computers processing power. To meet Moores Law [the number of transistors on a computer chip is doubled about every two years while the cost falls], you would need to add a single qubit every year, says Peter Chapman, chief executive of IonQ.

Our goal is to double the number of qubits every year. We expect quantum computers to be able to routinely solve problems that supercomputers cannot, within two years.

Already industrial behemoths, such as IBM, Honeywell, Google, Microsoft and Amazon, are active in the quantum computing sector. Their investments will have a major impact on acceleratingdevelopments.

We expect algorithm development to accelerate considerably. The quantum community has recognised economic opportunities in solving complex optimisation problems that permeate many aspects of the business world. These range from how do you assemble a Boeing 777 with millions of parts in the correct order? to challenges in resource distribution, explains Dr David Awschalom, professor of quantum information at the University of Chicago.

The quantum community has recognised economic opportunities in solving complex optimisation problems that permeate many aspects of the business world

Many of the computational tasks that underlie machine-learning, used currently for everything from image recognition to spam detection, have the correct form to allow a quantum speed up. Not only would this lead to faster calculations and more resource-efficient algorithms, it could also allow AI to tackle problems that are currently unfeasible because of their complexity and size.

Quantum computers arent a panacea for all humankinds informatic problems. They are best suited to very specific tasks, where there are a huge number of variables and permutations, such as calculating the best delivery route for rubbish trucks or the optimal path through traffic congestion. Mitsubishi in Japan and Volkswagen in Germany have deployed quantum computing with AI to explore solutions to these issues.

There will come a time when quantum AI could be used to help us with meaningful tasks from industrial scheduling to logistics. Financial optimisation for portfolio management could also be routinely handled by quantum computers.

This sounds like it might have limited use, but it turns out that many business problems can be expressed as an optimisation problem. This includes machine-learning problems, says Chapman.

Within a few short years we will enter the start of the quantum era. Its important for people to be excited about quantum computing; it allows government funding to increase and aids in recruitment. We need to continue to push the technology and also to support early adopters to explore how they can apply quantum computing to their businesses.

However, its still early days. The next decade is a more accurate time frame in terms of seeing quantum computing and AI coalesce and really make a difference. The need to scale to larger and more complex problems with real-world impact is one area of innovation, as is creating quantum computers that have greater precision and performance.

The limitation of quantum technology, particularly when it comes to AI, is summarised by the term decoherence. This is caused by vibrations, changes in temperature, noise and interfacing with the external environment. This causes computers to lose their quantum state and prevents them from completing computational tasks in a timely manner or at all, says Khan.

The industrys immediate priority has shifted from sheer processing power, measured by qubits, to performance, better measured by quantum volume. Rightly so the industry is channelling its energy into reducing errors to break down this major barrier and unlock the true power of machine-learning.

Over time it is the ease of access to these computers that will lead to impactful business applications and the development of successful quantum machine-learning. IBM has opened its doors to its quantum computers via the cloud since 2016 for anyone to test ideas. In the process it has fostered a vibrant community with more than 200,000 users from over 100 organisations.

The more developers and companies that get involved in first solving optimisation problems related to AI and then over time building quantum machine-learning and AI development, the sooner well see even more scalable and robust applications with business value, explains Murray Thom, vice president of software at D-Wave Systems.

Most importantly, we need a greater number of smart people identifying and developing applications. That way we will be able to overcome limitations much faster, and expand the tools and platform so they are easier to use. Bringing in more startups and forward-thinking enterprise organisations to step into quantum computing and identify potential applications for their fields is also crucial.

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When quantum computing and AI collide - Raconteur

1. Amazon, IBM and Microsoft race to bring global access to quantum computing  CNET
2. IBM Issues A Public Challenge To Program Its Quantum Computers  Forbes
3. Quantum Computer of the Future: A Novel 2D Build With Existing Technology  SciTechDaily
4. AI and Quantum Computing Can Enable Much Anticipated Advancements  Analytics Insight
5. IBM Quantum Celebrates Milestone with a Contest to Pump Up Momentum  HPCwire
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Amazon, IBM and Microsoft race to bring global access to quantum computing - CNET

Today, we have 18 quantum systems and counting available to our clients and community. Over 200,000 users, including more than 100 IBM Q Network client partners, have joined us to conduct fundamental research on quantum information science, develop the applications of quantum computing in various industries, and educate the future quantum workforce. Additionally, 175 billion quantum circuits have been executed using our hardware, resulting in more than 200 publications by researchers around the world.

In addition to developing quantum hardware, we have also been driving the development of powerful open source quantum software. Qiskit, written primarily in Python, has grown to be a popular quantum computing software development kit with several novel features, many of which were contributed by dedicated Qiskitters.

Thank you to everyone who has joined us on this exciting journey building the largest and most diverse global quantum computing community.

The IBM Quantum Challenge As we approach the fourth anniversary of the IBM Quantum Experience, we invite you to celebrate with us by completing a challenge with four exercises. Whether you are already a member of the community, or this challenge is your first quantum experiment, these four exercises will improve your understanding of quantum circuits. We hope you also have fun as you put your skills to test.

The IBM Quantum Challenge begins at 9:00 a.m. US Eastern on May 4, and ends 8:59:59 a.m. US Eastern on May 8. To take the challenge, visit https://quantum-computing.ibm.com/challenges.

In recognition of everyones participation, we are awarding digital badges and providing additional sponsorship to the Python Software Foundation.

Continued investment in quantum education Trying to explain quantum computing without resorting to incorrect analogies has always been a goal for our team. As a result, we have continuously invested in education, starting with opening access to quantum computers, and continuing to create tools that enable anyone to program them. Notably, we created the first interactive open source textbook in the field.

As developers program quantum computers, what they are really doing is building and running quantum circuits. To support your learning about quantum circuits:

Read the Qiskit textbook chapter where we define quantum circuits as we understand them today. Dive in to explore quantum computing principles and learn how to implement quantum algorithms on your own. Watch our newly launched livelectures called Circuit Sessions, or get started programming a quantum computer by watching Coding with Qiskit. Subscribe to the Qiskit YouTube channel to watch these two series and more. The future of quantum is in open source software and access to real quantum hardwarelets keep building together.

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Announcing the IBM Quantum Challenge - Quantaneo, the Quantum Computing Source

In the 1960s the U.S. government funded a series of experiments developing techniques to shuttle information from one computer to another. Devices in single labs sprouted connections, then neighboring labs linked up. Soon the network had blossomed between research institutions across the country, setting down the roots of what would become the internet and transforming forever how people use information. Now, 60 years later, the Department of Energy is aiming to do it again.

The Trump administration's 2021 budget request currently under consideration by Congress proposes slashing the overall funding for scientific research by nearly 10% but boosts spending on quantum information science by about 20%, to $237 million. Of that, the DOE has requested $25 million to accelerate the development of a quantum internet. Such a network would leverage the counterintuitive behavior of nature's particles to manipulate and share information in entirely new ways, with the potential to reinvent fields including cybersecurity and material science.

Whilethetraditional internet for general useisn't going anywhere, a quantum networkwouldoffer decisive advantages for certain applications: Researchers could use it to develop drugs and materials by simulating atomic behavior onnetworked quantum computers, for instance, and financial institutions and governments would benefit from next-level cybersecurity. Many countries are pursuing quantum research programs, and with the 2021 budget proposal, the Trumpadministration seeks to ramp up thateffort.

"That level of funding will enable us to begin to develop the groundwork for sophisticated, practical and high-impact quantum networks," says David Awschalom, a quantum engineer at the University of Chicago. "It's significant and extremely important."

A quantum internet will develop in fits and starts, much like the traditional internet did and continues to do. China has already realized an early application, quantum encryption, between certain cities, but fully quantum networks spanning entire countries will take decades, experts say. Building it willrequire re-engineering the quantum equivalent of routers, hard drives, and computers from the ground up foundational work already under way today.

Where the modern internet traffics in bits streaming between classical computers (a category that now includes smart phones, tablets, speakers and thermostats), a quantum internet would carry a fundamentally different unit of information known as the quantum bit, or qubit.

Bits all boil down to instances of nature's simplest eventsquestions with yes or no answers. Computer chips process cat videos by stopping some electric currents while letting others flow. Hard drives store documents by locking magnets in either the up or down position.

Qubits represent a different language altogether, one based on the behavior of atoms, electrons, and other particles, objects governed by the bizarre rules of quantum mechanics. These objects lead more fluid and uncertain lives than their strait-laced counterparts in classical computing. A hard drive magnet must always point up or down, for instance, but an electron's direction is unknowable until measured. More precisely, the electron behaves in such a way that describing its orientation requires a more complex concept known as superposition that goes beyond the straightforward labels of "up" or "down."

Quantum particles can also be yoked together in a relationship called entanglement, such as when two photons (light particles) shine from the same source. Pairs of entangled particles share an intimate bond akin to the relationship between the two faces of a coin when one face shows heads the other displays tails. Unlike a coin, however, entangled particles can travel far from each other and maintain their connection.

Quantum information science unites these and other phenomena, promising a novel, richer way to process information analogous to moving from 2-D to 3-D graphics, or learning to calculate with decimals instead of just whole numbers. Quantum devices fluent in nature's native tongue could, for instance, supercharge scientists' ability to design materials and drugs by emulating new atomic structures without having to test their properties in the lab. Entanglement, a delicate link destroyed by external tampering, could guarantee that connections between devices remain private.

But such miracles remain years to decades away. Both superposition and entanglement are fragile states most easily maintained at frigid temperatures in machines kept perfectly isolated from the chaos of the outside world. And as quantum computer scientists search for ways to extend their control over greater numbers of finicky particles, quantum internet researchers are developing the technologies required to link those collections of particles together.

The interior of a quantum computer prototype developed by IBM. While various groups race to build quantum computers, Department of Energy researchers seek ways to link them together.

IBM

Just as it did in the 1960s, the DOE is again sowing the seeds for a future network at its national labs. Beneath the suburbs of western Chicago lie 52 miles of optical fiber extending in two loops from Argonne National Laboratory. Early this year, Awschalom oversaw the system's first successful experiments. "We created entangled states of light," he says, "and tried to use that as a vehicle to test how entanglement works in the real world not in a lab going underneath the tollways of Illinois."

Daily temperature swings cause the wires to shrink by dozens of feet, for instance, requiring careful adjustment in the timing of the pulses to compensate. This summer the team plans to extend their network with another node, bringing the neighboring Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory into the quantum fold.

Similar experiments are under way on the East Coast, too, where researchers have sent entangled photons over fiber-optic cables connecting Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York with Stony Brook University, a distance of about 11 miles. Brookhaven scientists are also testing the wireless transmission of entangled photons over a similar distance through the air. While this technique requires fair weather, according to Kerstin Kleese van Dam, the director of Brookhaven's computational science initiative, it could someday complement networks of fiber-optic cables. "We just want to keep our options open," she says.

Such sending and receiving of entangled photons represent the equivalent of quantum routers, but next researchers need a quantum hard drive a way to save the information they're exchanging. "What we're on the cusp of doing," Kleese van Dam says, "is entangled memories over miles."

When photons carry information in from the network, quantum memory will store those qubits in the form of entangled atoms, much as current hard drives use flipped magnets to hold bits. Awschalom expects the Argonne and University of Chicago groups to have working quantum memories this summer, around the same time they expand their network to Fermilab, at which point it will span 100 miles.

But that's about as far as light can travel before growing too dim to read. Before they can grow their networks any larger, researchers will need to invent a quantum repeater a device that boosts an atrophied signal for another 100-mile journey. Classical internet repeaters just copy the information and send out a new pulse of light, but that process breaks entanglement (a feature that makes quantum communications secure from eavesdroppers). Instead, Awschalom says, researchers have come up with a scheme to amplify the quantum signal by shuffling it into other forms without ever reading it directly. "We have some prototype quantum repeaters currently running. They're not good enough," he says, "but we're learning a lot."

Department of Energy Under Secretary for Science Paul M. Dabbar (left) sends a pair of entangled photons along the quantum loop. Also shown are Argonne scientist David Awschalom (center) and Argonne Laboratory Director Paul Kearns.

Argonne National Laboratory

And if Congress approves the quantum information science line in the 2021 budget, researchers like Awschalom and Kleese van Dam will learn a lot more. Additional funding for their experiments could lay the foundations for someday extending their local links into a country-wide network. "There's a long-term vision to connect all the national labs, coast to coast," says Paul Dabbar, the DOE's Under Secretary for Science.

In some senses the U.S. trails other countries in quantum networking. China, for example, has completed a 1,200-mile backbone linking Beijing and Shanghai that banks and other companies are already using for nearly perfectly secure encryption. But the race for a fully featured quantum internet is more marathon than sprint, and China has passed only the first milestone. Kleese van Dam points out that without quantum repeaters, this network relies on a few dozen "trusted" nodes Achilles' heels that temporarily put the quantum magic on pause while the qubits are shoved through bit-based bottlenecks. She's holding out for truly secure end-to-end communication. "What we're planning to do goes way beyond what China is doing," she says.

More from Tech Drivers:With America at home, Facebook, Google make moves to win more of gaming marketThe 87-year-old doctor who invented the rubella vaccine now working to fight the coronavirus

Researchers ultimately envision a whole quantum ecosystem of computers, memories, and repeaters all speaking the same language of superposition and entanglement, with nary a bit in sight. "It's like a big stew where everything has to be kept quantum mechanical," Awschalom says. "You don't want to go to the classical world at all."

After immediate applications such as unbreakable encryptions, he speculates that such a network could also lead to seismic sensors capable of logging the vibration of the planet at the atomic level, but says that the biggest consequences will likely be the ones no one sees coming. He compares the current state of the field to when electrical engineers developed the first transistors and initially used them to improve hearing aids, completely unaware that they were setting off down a path that would someday bring social media and video conferencing.

As researchers at Brookhaven, Argonne, and many other institutions tinker with the quantum equivalent of transistors, but they can't help but wonder what the quantum analog of video chat will be. "It's clear there's a lot of promise. It's going to move quickly," Awschalom says. "But the most exciting part is that we don't know exactly where it's going to go."

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Trump betting millions to lay the groundwork for quantum internet in the US - CNBC

Global Quantum Computing Marketwas valued US$ 198.31 Mn in 2019 and is expected to reach US$ 890.5 Mn by 2027, at CAGR of 28.44 % during forecast.

The report study has analyzed revenue impact of covid-19 pandemic on the sales revenue of market leaders, market followers and disrupters in the report and same is reflected in our analysis.

REQUEST FOR FREE SAMPLE REPORT:https://www.maximizemarketresearch.com/request-sample/27533/

Quantum computing market growth is being driven by factors like increasing incidences of cybercrime, early adoption of quantum computing technology in automotive and defense industry, and growing investments by government entities in quantum computing market. On the other hand, presence of substitute technology and reluctance to accept new technology are factors limiting the growth of quantum computing market.

Quantum computing market in the energy & power industry is projected to witness a CAGR of 40% from 2017 to 2023. This growth is primarily attributed to the beneficial opportunities existing in the nuclear and renewable sector. Applications like energy exploration, seismic survey optimization, and reservoir optimization are estimated to lead this industry in quantum computing market.

North America was holding the largest market share of quantum computing market in 2016. North America is a key market as it is the home ground for some of the major corporations like D-Wave Systems Inc., 1QB Information Technologies, Inc. The increased research and development (R&D) activities in the sector of quantum computing are directed in this region as well as the heavy investments by government activities and technologically advanced players International Business Machines Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Google Inc., and Intel Corporation are factors driving the growth of quantum computing market in North America. The R&D at industry levels is extending the application areas of the quantum computing market in various industries like energy & power, defense, and chemicals, especially in US.

Owing to the economic interest and decline of Moores law of computational scaling, eighteen of the worlds biggest corporations and dozens of government organizations are working on quantum processor technologies and quantum software or associating with the quantum industry startups like D-Wave. Their determination reflects a wider transition, taking place at start-ups and academic research labs like move from pure science towards engineering.

Quantum computing market report evaluates the technology, companies/associations, R&D efforts, and potential solutions assisted by quantum computing. It also estimates the impact of quantum computing on other major technologies and solution areas with AI, chipsets, edge computing, blockchain, IoT, big data analytics, and smart cities. This report offers global and regional forecasts as well the viewpoint for quantum computing impact on hardware, software, applications, and services

DO INQUIRY BEFORE PURCHASING REPORT HERE:https://www.maximizemarketresearch.com/inquiry-before-buying/27533/

The objective of the report is to present a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, industry-validated market data and projections with a suitable set of assumptions and methodology. The report also helps in understanding Quantum Computing market dynamics, structure by identifying and analyzing the market segments and project the global market size. Further, report also focuses on competitive analysis of key players by product, price, financial position, product portfolio, growth strategies, and regional presence. The report also provides PEST analysis, PORTERs analysis, SWOT analysis to address questions of shareholders to prioritizing the efforts and investment in near future to emerging segment in Quantum Computing market.Scope of Global Quantum Computing Market:

Global Quantum Computing Market, by Technology:

Superconducting loops technology Trapped ion technology Topological qubits technologyGlobal Quantum Computing Market, by Application:

Simulation Optimization SamplingGlobal Quantum Computing Market, by Component:

Hardware Software ServicesGlobal Quantum Computing Market, by Industry:

Defense Banking & Finance Energy & Power Chemicals Healthcare & PharmaceuticalsGlobal Quantum Computing Market, by Region:

North America Asia Pacific Europe Latin America Middle East & AfricaKey Players Operating in Market Include:

D-Wave Systems Inc 1QB Information Technologies Inc. QxBranch LLC QC Ware Corp. and Research at Google-Google Inc. International Business Machines Corporation Lockheed Martin Corporation Intel Corporation Anyon Systems Inc. Cambridge Quantum Computing Limited Rigetti Computing Magiq Technologies Inc. Station Q Microsoft Corporation IonQ Quantum Computing Software Start-ups Qbit Alibaba Ariste-QB.net Atos Q-Ctrl Qu and Co Quantum Benchmark SAP Turing Zapata

MAJOR TOC OF THE REPORT

Chapter One: Quantum Computing Market Overview

Chapter Two: Manufacturers Profiles

Chapter Three: Global Quantum Computing Market Competition, by Players

Chapter Four: Global Quantum Computing Market Size by Regions

Chapter Five: North America Quantum Computing Revenue by Countries

Chapter Six: Europe Quantum Computing Revenue by Countries

Chapter Seven: Asia-Pacific Quantum Computing Revenue by Countries

Chapter Eight: South America Quantum Computing Revenue by Countries

Chapter Nine: Middle East and Africa Revenue Quantum Computing by Countries

Chapter Ten: Global Quantum Computing Market Segment by Type

Chapter Eleven: Global Quantum Computing Market Segment by Application

Chapter Twelve: Global Quantum Computing Market Size Forecast (2019-2026)

Browse Full Report with Facts and Figures of Quantum Computing Market Report at:https://www.maximizemarketresearch.com/market-report/global-quantum-computing-market/27533/

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Global Quantum Computing Market : Industry Analysis and Forecast (2020-2027) - MR Invasion

Different devices and advanced technologies have been developed and implemented to win the war against COVID-19. In this pandemic, advanced technology tools are the monitoring and controlling weapons of corona virus outbreaks, as humans cannot operate at a speed of AI powered machines. Here I have came up with some of the possible technological concepts and their role to fight against COVID-19, which could possibly help to control the outbreak.

Quantum Computers

To win the war against COVID-19 outbreak, quantum computing plays a vital role for providing services to better pandemic control. Supercomputers are used for quickly and carefully mapping the molecular structure of corona virus so that it will be easy for developing medicines and treatments. IBM supercomputer is being deployed by the researchers to find out the chemical compounds to fight against corona virus. This super computer generate results within 1-2 days rather than months which could have taken by standard computing system to produce the same result. Till date, the quantum computer has supported researchers to identify 77 molecule compounds.

Machine learning to find a treatment

By gathering sufficient quality data and implementing artificial intelligence concept, which could be a powerful tool used for predicting the diseases future trend and even searching for possible treatments. Different biotechnology companies are using machine learning concept to develop treatments based on antibodies from patients who have recovered from the COVID-19. These companies have used Artificial Intelligence (AI) concept to analyze more than millions of immune cells as they desire to search for those that are able to produce antibodies which help patients recover.

Facial recognition and Big Data

Different organisations have developed dashboards for accessing the public information to monitor the corona virus using Big Data. Most of the developed cities across the globe have installed infrared temperature detection and face recognition techniques.

Telecom companies of China are providing facility of mobile sent text messages to their State media agencies, informing about the person who have been infected. This message includes the details about the persons travel history. Some companies like Panasonic, Sense Time and FacePro have also developed certain kind of software which can easily identify the people without face masks.

Satellite technology

Satellite technology provides better service in social distancing. Advanced countries are using both macro and micro level satellites for providing information about the social distancing and stay at home information. Satellite imageries systems are used for providing the information about the different activities happening or not-happening across the major cities, crowded places, industrial sites, farming activity, tourist places, and on different high ways during the lockdowns or normal days.

Robots

Robots are the game changers in COVID-19 as they reduce the human-to-human interaction and the potential danger expected for the life of the medical staff members. Robots are being used to disinfect, deliver medicine, measure temperatures, food preparation and communicate among the isolated members. A Danish company in China is providing UVD Robots which can disinfect the patient cabins based on the statement. UVD Robot moves around patient rooms autonomously and emitting right amount of ultraviolet light covering all surface area in order to kill corona viruses and other bacteria. Some hospitals of US are also using robots to communicate among the doctors and patients through a screen and it was equipped with a stethoscope.

Health sensors and mobile apps

Mobile applications are being used for tracking and preventing the spread of corona virus disease. Utilising the proper surveillance network for public goodness, the Government of India has developed a mobile application Aarogya Setu to connect essential health services among people of India to fight against COVID-19.

Australia has developed a mobile APP already used in Singapore for contact tracing by detecting whether the people had spent more than 15 minutes with other peoples who may have been infected by COVID-19.

The Chinese Government in association with Alibaba and Tencent developed a color-coded health rating system which played a vital role in China for tracking millions of people daily. The mobile app was first deployed in Hangzhou in collaboration with Alibaba. It consists of three colors to people yellow, green and red based on their travel and medical histories.

(Dr Senapati is Dean Science, BPUT, and Mallick is Asst Professor in Computer Science and Engineering, Trident Academy of Technology, Bhubaneswar, Email:dr_senapati@yahoo.com, soubhagya.mallick@gmail.com)

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Defeating Covid-19 monster the digital way - Daily Pioneer

FPI Reports-Email records obtained from the U.S. Department of Defense show extensive communications between the Pentagons Director of the secretive Office of Net Assessment (ONA) , James Baker, and Washington Post reporter David Ignatius.

Lawyers for Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn alleged in a November 1, 2019 court filing that Baker is believed to be the person who illegally leaked to Ignatius the transcript of Flynns Dec. 29, 2016 telephone calls with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak.

The Washington Post published Ignatius account of the calls on Jan. 12, 2017, setting in motion a chain of events that lead to Flynns Feb. 13, 2017 firing as national security adviser and subsequent prosecution for making false statements to the FBI about the calls.

These records confirm that Mr. Baker was an anonymous source for Mr. Ignatius, said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. Mr. Baker should be directly questioned about any and all leaks to his friend at the Washington Post.

U.S. Attorney John Durham is reportedly investigating the leak of information targeting Flynn.

Citing the governments bad faith, vindictiveness and breach of the plea agreement, in January 2020 Flynns attorney, Sidney Powell, moved to withdraw Flynns 2017 guilty plea during the Mueller investigation. Flynn claims he felt forced to plead guilty when his son was threatened with prosecution and he exhausted his financial resources. Last week, prosecutors provided Flynns defense team with documentation of this threat, according to additional papers Flynns lawyers filed April 24, 2020, in support of the motion to withdraw.

Judicial Watch obtained the records in a November 2019 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed after the DOD failed to respond to a September 2019 request.

The records include an exchange on Feb. 16, 2016, with the subject line Ignatius, in which Baker tells Pentagon colleague Zachary Mears, then-deputy chief of staff to Obama Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, that he has a long history with David and talks with him regularly.

In an email exchange on October 1, 2018, in a discussion about artificial intelligence, Baker tells Ignatius: David, please, as always, our discussions are completely off the record. If any of my observations strike you as worthy of mixing or folding into your own thinking, that is as usual fine. Ignatius replies, Understood. Thanks for talking with me.

Ignatius and Bakers email exchanges per year are summarized below:

In 2015, Ignatius and Baker had a total of seven email conversations to set up meetings or calls, two simply to compliment one another and one exchange where Ignatius invited Baker to speak at the Aspen Strategy Group conference.

In 2016, Ignatius and Baker had a total of 10 email exchanges to set up meetings or calls and two to compliment each other.

In 2017, Ignatius and Baker had a total of 10 email exchanges to set up meetings, one exchange where Ignatius forwarded one of his articles, and one exchange where Ignatius asks Baker for his thoughts on the JCPOA (the Iran nuclear deal), because Baker wasnt available on the phone.

In 2018, Ignatius and Baker had a total of nine email exchanges to set up meetings, four where Ignatius forwarded articles and one where Ignatius asks Baker for tips on what to say at a quantum computing conference where he was speaking.

In a related case, in October 2018, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense seeking information about the September 2016 contract between the DOD and Stefan Halper, the Cambridge University professor identified as a secret FBI informant used by the Obama administration to spy on Trumps presidential campaign. Halper also reportedly had high-level ties to both U.S. and British intelligence.

Government records show that the DODs Office of Net Assessment paid Halper a total of $1,058,161 for four contracts that lasted from May 30, 2012, to March 29, 2018. More than $400,000 of the payments came between July 2016 and September 2017, after Halper reportedly offered Trump campaign volunteer George Papadopoulos work and a trip to London to entice him into disclosing information about alleged collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.

Flynns attorney told the court that Baker was Halpers handler in the ONA.

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Obama official heading secretive Pentagon office tied to Leaks on Flynn The Tribune Papers- Breaking News & Top Local Stories - Thetribunepapers

WASHINGTON In speeches during the 1960 presidential campaign, John Kennedy addressed Americans anxiety about national lassitude at the end of eight years under Dwight Eisenhower by mildly saying: I believe we can do better. Joe Biden, responding to national embarrassment about the least presidential president, can campaign on a modest theme: Is this really the best we can do?

This question answers itself, particularly concerning foreign policy. Fortunately for Biden, events and his opponent are making this central to the 2020 election.

It is axiomatic that Americans preference regarding foreign policy is to have as little of it as possible. Hence most of this cycles Democratic presidential aspirants avoided reminding people that the world is a dangerous place. However, in the Feb. 25 debate in Charleston, S.C., Biden called Chinas President Xi Jinping a thug: This is a guy who doesnt have a democratic-with-a-small-d bone in his body.

Economist John Maynard Keynes supposedly said, When the facts change, I change my mind. Biden, citing new facts, including aggression against Hong Kongs freedom and a million Uighurs in concentration camps, has jettisoned his 2016 talk of his enhanced cooperation with Xi. In 34 of Bidens 36 Senate years, he was on the Foreign Relations Committee, which he chaired for four years. Donald Trumps foreign policy judgments have ranged from the contemptible (siding with Vladimir Putin at Helsinki in 2018 against U.S. intelligence officials regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election) to the preposterous (There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea) to the weird (he and North Koreas Kim Jong Un fell in love after exchanging beautiful letters).

Trump now wants to make relations with China central to this campaign. His rhetorical skills probably honed where they evidently peaked, on grammar school playgrounds are emulated by his campaign in references to Beijing Biden. Biden can, however, turn China to his advantage by showing Trump what a policy of national strength would look like.

Biden served in the Senate for a decade with Sen. Henry Jackson, D-Wash., a liberal Cold Warrior who helped to make the Soviet Unions human-rights abuses costly to the regime. Today, Biden should speak forcefully against Chinas arrests of Martin Lee, 81, Jimmy Lai, 71, Margaret Ng, 72, and other leaders of Hong Kongs democracy movement.

Biden can practice what he preaches about bipartisanship by associating himself with Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cottons measured but insistent support for the investigation of the possible role of a Wuhan research laboratory in the coronavirus outbreak. And with former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haleys call to require U.S. universities to disclose Chinas funding of their professors and research. Cotton questions the visas for Chinese to pursue postgraduate studies here in advanced science and technology fields: If Chinese students want to study Shakespeare and the Federalist Papers, thats what they need to learn from America. They dont need to learn quantum computing and artificial intelligence from America.

In February, a senior adviser for the World Health Organizations director-general praised Chinas bold approach that changed the course of the epidemic. Indeed China did: Its first approach was to deny that there is human-to-human transmission. Biden should say that continued U.S. participation in this organization will be contingent upon its granting Taiwan membership. Biden should also promise to discuss Taiwans exemplary response to COVID-19 with Tsai Ing-wen in the Oval Office. She would be the first Taiwanese president welcomed in the United States since the 1979 normalization of relations with China.

By taking such steps, Biden can reconnect his party with its luminous post-1945 achievement. In that golden moment in the history of this nations engagement with the world, the talents of Dean Acheson, George Marshall, George Kennan, Averell Harriman, Robert Lovett, Charles Bohlen, John McCloy and others created the structures of free trade and collective military security that produced the related phenomena of global enrichment and Soviet collapse.

The winners of the past seven presidential elections (1992-2016) have averaged 330 electoral votes. If todays state-by-state polls are correct, and if the election were held today, Biden would win 333 electoral votes: 227 from Hillary Clintons states plus those from Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona and North Carolina.

More than any particular policy outcome, Americans want a sense that their nation can regain the spring in its step, and can adopt a robust realism regarding the Leninist party-state that is its principal adversary. The first step toward a jauntier, safer America is to make the election a referendum on the right question: Is this really the best we can do?

2020 Washington Post Writers Group

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Biden should campaign on the theme: 'Is this really the best we can do?' - Yakima Herald-Republic

HOBOKEN, N.J., April 30, 2020 In one of the strongest acknowledgments that finance has transformed from a low-tech field to one that relies on some of the most sophisticated technology in the world, the National Science Foundation has selected Stevens Institute of Technology to lead the first-ever industry-university cooperative research center, or IUCRC, devoted to financial technology and science.

The five-year award creates a cooperative research center that brings together partners to conduct research that is particularly relevant for industry and has a high potential for commercialization. Stevens was named lead institution for the center, which includes Georgetown University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and between eight and 25+ companies with the goal of finding innovative solutions for complex challenges facing the fintech industry.

Georgetown and RPI complement our strengths very nicely, said George Calhoun, director of the Hanlon Financial Systems Center at Stevens School of Business and a co-principal investigator on the project. Georgetown is good in traditional finance and the regulatory end of the business what is the Federal Reserve going to do, what is the Treasury going to do in ways that reflect their own location advantage. And RPI brings additional scientific and technological capabilities to the table.

Stevenslocationand existing relationships with financial firms position it well to lead the center. With its proximity to New York City, Stevens has worked closely with financial firms and banks to identify core challenges facing industry and has responded by addressing those needs, further strengthening these relationships while simultaneously shaping its research endeavors and curriculum to align with those needs. The result: the transformation of the School of Business to a tech-infused powerhouse.

The list of firms who provided letters of support as part of Stevens bid included UBS, Bank of America, Citibank and Royal Bank of Canada among the headliners.Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group; PSEG; OneMarketData; and Capco, a global management consultancy, also supported Stevens bid. The reason we were successful is that we showed we would have major industry participation, said Calhoun.

Among the initial areas of focus in the IUCRC will be cybersecurity; high-frequency automated markets; technology risk and regulation; commercialization; and applications of blockchain, quantum computing, natural language processing and A.I. to the finance industry.

That diversity is reflected by the broad expertise of the co-principal investigators, which includ Giuseppe Ateniese (computer science), Jeffrey Nickerson (information systems and networks) and Darinka Dentcheva (mathematics and optimization). Working with such a broad panel of experts in addition to thought leaders at Georgetown, RPI and industry will empower a multidisciplinary approach that should break traditional research silos, said Steve Yang, the principal investigator on the project.

I couldnt be more excited to have Stevens play such an important leadership role in an NSF IUCRC center, said Gregory Prastacos, dean of the Business School at Stevens. The IUCRC will not only help us bring our work to the companies that would benefit from these insights, it also gives us another channel to engage industry and better understand the unique challenges they face.

The NSF IUCRC announcement comes on the heels ofMaCuDE, a global initiative led by Stevens and AACSB, and funded by PwC, to guide more than 100 universities across the world on how to reboot the traditional MBA curriculum to keep pace with the demands of the digital era. Stevens also recently announced their partnership withCapco, a managment consultancy with a strong focus on financial services will leverage Stevens research strengths in quantum, A.I. and blockchain, among other areas, to improve the digital portfolio of their clients.

Stevens is now in the planning phase for the IUCRC project, which will run for one year to identify an agenda of research topics based on industry feedback. Each industry partner will contribute $50,000 per year to contribute toward these research efforts.

There are about 75 NSF-funded industry-university cooperative research centers across the United States.

About Stevens Institute of Technology

Stevens Institute of Technology is a premier, private research university situated in Hoboken, New Jersey. Since our founding in 1870, technological innovation has been the hallmark of Stevens education and research. Within the universitys three schools and one college, 7,300 undergraduate and graduate students collaborate closely with faculty in an interdisciplinary, student-centric, entrepreneurial environment. Academic and research programs spanning business, computing, engineering, the arts and other disciplines actively advance the frontiers of science and leverage technology to confront our most pressing global challenges. As Stevens celebrates its 150th anniversary, the university continues to be consistently ranked among the nations leaders in career services, post-graduation salaries of alumni, and return on tuition investment.

Source: Stevens Institute of Technology

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Stevens Institute of Technology Leads First NSF Center Devoted to Financial Technology and Science - HPCwire

Just say Knope! The cast of Parks and Recreation (8:30 p.m., NBC, TV-PG) return for a one-time charity special to raise funds for Feeding Americas COVID-19 Response Fund.

Set in the present day during our current pandemic, Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler) tries to rally her colleagues (Nick Offerman, Aubrey Plaza, Rashida Jones, Adam Scott, Retta, Rob Lowe, Chris Pratt, Aziz Ansari, and Jim OHeir) to see what they can do for the citizens of Pawnee. This Zoom-centric theme allows the cast to work from home while still appearing together.

The cast of Parks has certainly been busy. Poehler and Offerman appear together on NBCs craft-related series Making it.

Offerman also stars in Devs, a remarkable series about quantum computing and the nature of reality, streaming on Hulu.

Poehler has served as a producer and director on the Netflix series Russian Dolls, she has provided two voices for the animated Fox series Duncanville and produced the deranged Adult Swim series Three Busy Debras.

Rob Lowe does double duty for Fox, hosting Mental Samurai (9 p.m., r, Fox, TV-PG) and starring in their police procedural 9-1-1: Lone Star.

Rashida Jones co-stars in the Kenya Barris comedy #blackAF, now streaming on Netflix. Jones co-wrote a 2016 episode, Nosedive, for Black Mirror, about a future world dominated by a social media ratings app that creates a virtual caste system. It seems more prescient every day.

Greg Daniels, a writer/creator for Parks and Recreation has a new series, The Upload, debuting tomorrow on Amazon Prime.

A Parks and Recreation clip show (8 p.m.) will precede the special.

Tonight marks the season finale for Foxs Last Man Standing (8 p.m., Fox, TV-PG). At their best, three-camera sitcoms can work like brilliant little plays, a wonderful place to explore character and dialogue. Frasier remains the best example of a sitcom that wears its theatricality on its sleeve.

At their worst, such sitcoms can seem stagy and the dialogue forced. Its amazing that such old pros like Tim Allen and Nancy Travis can sound so stilted. But in Last Man they seem like two amnesiacs encountering each other, as if for the first time.

The gales of canned laughter dont help. Neither does the set design. Mike (Allen) seems to work in a mall and return to a home with all of the personal touches of Hyatt.

Mike seems most comfortable at the end of the show, when he gets to explain things with his little Vlog. Last Man wears its ideology on its sleeve. And such sermons lend themselves better to monologues. Perhaps thats why so many of the conversations on Last seem strained and unnatural. Everybodys talking past each other.

A repeat Last Man (8:30 p.m.) follows the finale.

TONIGHTS OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

NBCs Hallmark-like weepy Council of Dads (9 p.m., r and 10 p.m., NBC, TV-14) begins its regular run.

An FBI agent (Keanu Reeves) infiltrates a gang of bank-robbing surfers in the 1991 thriller Point Break (8 p.m., Freeform, TV-14).

Tragedy strikes at a bowling alley disaster on Station 19 (9 p.m., ABC, TV-14).

Fighting City Hall on Tommy (10 p.m., CBS, TV-PG).

Annalise suspects everybody on How to Get Away with Murder (10 p.m., ABC, TV-PG).

Ryn discovers a haven for wounded mermaids on Siren (10 p.m., Freeform, TV-14).

Better Things (10 p.m., FX, TV-MA) wraps up its fourth season.

CULT CHOICE

Al Pacino and John Cazale star as hapless bank robbers in the 1975 thriller Dog Day Afternoon (10:15 p.m., TCM), directed by Sidney Lumet.

SERIES NOTES

Secrets and lies on Young Sheldon (8 p.m., CBS, TV-PG) Jimmy Kimmel hosts Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (8 p.m., ABC, TV-PG) The Gala becomes a battleground on Katy Keene (8 p.m., CW, TV-14) On two helpings of Man With a Plan (CBS, TV-PG), unmoored (8 p.m.), Adam harbors suspicions (9 p.m.).

Tax problems on In the Dark (9 p.m., CW, TV-14) Blind dates on Broke (9:30 p.m., CBS, TV-PG).

LATE NIGHT

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (11 p.m., Comedy Central) practices social distancing Chris ODowd appears on Conan (11 p.m., TBS, TV-14) Paul Giamatti is booked on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (11:35 p.m., CBS) Jimmy Fallon welcomes Seth MacFarlane, Gigi Hadid and Thom Yorke on The Tonight Show (11:35 p.m., NBC) Mandy Moore appears on Jimmy Kimmel Live (11:35 p.m., ABC) Machine Gun Kelly and Travis Barker appear on The Late Late Show with James Corden (12:37 a.m., CBS).

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BUSY 'PARKS AND REC' CAST RECONVENE REMOTELY FOR CHARITY EVENT - The Republic

Quantum computing is increasingly becoming the focus of scientists in fields such as physics and chemistry, and industrialists in the pharmaceutical, airplane, and automobile industries. Globally, research labs at companies like Google and IBM are spending extensive resources on improving quantum computers, and with good reason.

Quantum computers use the fundamentals of quantum mechanics to process significantly greater amounts of information much faster than classical computers. It is expected that when error-corrected and fault-tolerant quantum computation is achieved, scientific and technological advancement will occur at an unprecedented scale.

But, building quantum computers for large-scale computation is proving to be a challenge in terms of their architecture. The basic units of a quantum computer are the "quantum bits" or "qubits." These are typically atoms, ions, photons, subatomic particles such as electrons, or even larger elements that simultaneously exist in multiple states, making it possible to obtain several potential outcomes rapidly for large volumes of data. The theoretical requirement for quantum computers is that these are arranged in two-dimensional (2D) arrays, where each qubit is both coupled with its nearest neighbor and connected to the necessary external control lines and devices.

When the number of qubits in an array is increased, it becomes difficult to reach qubits in the interior of the array from the edge. The need to solve this problem has so far resulted in complex three-dimensional (3D) wiring systems across multiple planes in which many wires intersect, making their construction a significant engineering challenge.

A group of scientists from Tokyo University of Science, Japan, RIKEN Centre for Emergent Matter Science, Japan, and University of Technology, Sydney, led by Prof Jaw-Shen Tsai, proposes a unique solution to this qubit accessibility problem by modifying the architecture of the qubit array. "Here, we solve this problem and present a modified superconducting micro-architecture that does not require any 3D external line technology and reverts to a completely planar design," they say. This study has been published in the New Journal of Physics.The scientists began with a qubit square lattice array and stretched out each column in the 2D plane. They then folded each successive column on top of each other, forming a dual one-dimensional array called a "bi-linear" array. This put all qubits on the edge and simplified the arrangement of the required wiring system. The system is also completely in 2D.

In this new architecture, some of the inter-qubit wiring--each qubit is also connected to all adjacent qubits in an array--does overlap, but because these are the only overlaps in the wiring, simple local 3D systems such as airbridges at the point of overlap are enough and the system overall remains in 2D. As you can imagine, this simplifies its construction considerably.

The scientists evaluated the feasibility of this new arrangement through numerical and experimental evaluation in which they tested how much of a signal was retained before and after it passed through an airbridge. Results of both evaluations showed that it is possible to build and run this system using existing technology and without any 3D arrangement.

The scientists' experiments also showed them that their architecture solves several problems that plague the 3D structures: they are difficult to construct, there is crosstalk or signal interference between waves transmitted across two wires, and the fragile quantum states of the qubits can degrade. The novel pseudo-2D design reduces the number of times wires cross each other, thereby reducing the crosstalk and consequently increasing the efficiency of the system.

At a time when large labs worldwide are attempting to find ways to build large-scale fault-tolerant quantum computers, the findings of this exciting new study indicate that such computers can be built using existing 2D integrated circuit technology. "The quantum computer is an information device expected to far exceed the capabilities of modern computers," Prof Tsai states. The research journey in this direction has only begun with this study, and Prof Tsai concludes by saying, "We are planning to construct a small-scale circuit to further examine and explore the possibility."

Research paper

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Wiring the quantum computer of the future - Space Daily

In late October 2019, Google CEO Sundar Pichai likened the latest result from the companys quantum computing hardware lab in Santa Barbara, California, to the Wright brothers first flight.

One of the labs prototype processors had achieved quantum supremacyevocative jargon for the moment a quantum computer harnesses quantum mechanics to do something seemingly impossible for a conventional computer. In a blog post, Pichai said the milestone affirmed his belief that quantum computers might one day tackle problems like climate change, and the CEO also name-checked John Martinis, who had established Googles quantum hardware group in 2014.

Heres what Pichai didnt mention: Soon after the team had first got its quantum supremacy experiment working a few months earlier, Martinis says, he had been reassigned from a leadership position to an advisory one. Martinis tells WIRED that the change led to disagreements with Hartmut Neven, the longtime leader of Googles quantum project.

Martinis resigned from Google early this month. Since my professional goal is for someone to build a quantum computer, I think my resignation is the best course of action for everyone, he adds.

A Google spokesman did not dispute this account, and says that the company is grateful for Martinis contributions and that Neven continues to head the companys quantum project. Parent company Alphabet has a second, smaller, quantum computing group at its X Labs research unit. Martinis retains his position as a professor at the UC Santa Barbara, which he held throughout his tenure at Google, and says he will continue to work on quantum computing.

Googles quantum computing project was founded by Neven, who pioneered Googles image search technology, in 2006, and initially focused on software. To start, the small group accessed quantum hardware from Canadian startup D-Wave Systems, including in collaboration with NASA.

Everything you ever wanted to know about qubits, superpositioning, and spooky action at a distance.

The project took on greater scale and ambition when Martinis joined in 2014 to establish Googles quantum hardware lab in Santa Barbara, bringing along several members of his university research group. His nearby lab at UC Santa Barbara had produced some of the most prominent work in the field over the past 20 years, helping to demonstrate the potential of using superconducting circuits to build qubits, the building blocks of quantum computers.

Qubits are analogous to the bits of a conventional computer, but in addition to representing 1s and 0s, they can use quantum mechanical effects to attain a third state, dubbed a superposition, something like a combination of both. Qubits in superposition can work through some very complex problems, such as modeling the interactions of atoms and molecules, much more efficiently than conventional computer hardware.

How useful that is depends on the number and reliability of qubits in your quantum computing processor. So far the best demonstrations have used only tens of qubits, a far cry from the hundreds or thousands of high quality qubits experts believe will be needed to do useful work in chemistry or other fields. Googles supremacy experiment used 53 qubits working together. They took minutes to crunch through a carefully chosen math problem the company calculated would take a supercomputer on the order of 10,000 years, but does not have a practical application.

Martinis leaves Google as the company and rivals that are working on quantum computing face crucial questions about the technologys path. Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft, as well as Google offer their prototype technology to companies such as Daimler and JP Morgan so they can run experiments. But those processors are not large enough to work on practical problems, and it is not clear how quickly they can be scaled up.

When WIRED visited Googles quantum hardware lab in Santa Barbara last fall, Martinis responded optimistically when asked if his hardware team could see a path to making the technology practical. I feel we know how to scale up to hundreds and maybe thousands of qubits, he said at the time. Google will now have to do it without him.

More Great WIRED Stories

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Google's Head of Quantum Computing Hardware Resigns - WIRED

Within the past month, researchers around the world are making landmark discoveries about quantum bits, or qubits.The biggest environmental factor that stands in the way ofquantum computers entering commercial spaces is that qubits have a low tolerance to temperature; previously, they could only operate at temperatures close to absolute zero.

This is because a qubit storing a quantum state will collapse if "observed," or isaffected by external factors. For example, a photon hitting a qubit will cause it to collapse and will offset a thermal vibration from a nearby particle.

This is why many scientists are working on creating quantum systems that can operate above these low temperatures. Such an effort will get them out of the laboratory and into the commercial field.In this article, we will look at recent scientific research that proves that"hot qubits," even up to room temperature, are now a reality.

A team of researchers from UNSW Sydney has worked to solve the problem of absolute-zero qubit requirements and may have a solution that works on regular silicon. The test device is a proof-of-concept quantum processor unit cell that can operate at temperatures up to 1.5 kelvin. While this may still sound extremely cold, it is still 15 times greater than those produced by others, including Google and IBM. The results of this research were published in Nature.

The researchers created quantum chips that can operate in tandem with conventional silicon chips. When these two chips are set beside each other in low temperatures, they can control the read and write operations of quantum calculations.

To prove the viability of the design, another team on the other side of the globe in the Netherlands used the same technology to create a hot qubit, which also functioned as expected. The design utilizes two qubits that are confined in a pair of quantum dotsall of which are embedded in silicon.

What also makes this research groundbreaking is that other laboratories can replicate this temperature featwith a few thousand dollars of equipment. This means that even small companies can accesstheir own quantum computer.

The fact that this technology can be built using silicon technology means that it can readily be integrated into existingelectronic designs, feeding data into such systems and interpreting the results.

On the same day that the Sydney researchers published their findings on "hot qubits," Intel also published its own research on hot qubits. Intel, one of the world's leading suppliers of processorand memory technology, teamed up with QuTech to produce a "hot qubit" that can operate at temperatures up to 1.1 kelvin. While not as high as the UNSW, the 1.1-kelvin mark is still an achievable temperature using low-cost equipment (when compared to absolute zero). The researchers for the project also published their findings in Nature.

The qubit designed by the team has a fidelity of 99.3%that is, ahigh-quality qubit with a large degree of quantum separation between states. However, the performance of the spin qubits is minimally affected when temperatures go to 1.25 kelvin.

The design, which works with standard silicon technology, demonstrates single-qubit control via the use of electron spin resonance and readout using the Pauli spin blockage method. The demonstrated device also shows individual coherent control of two qubits and turnability from 0.5 MHz to 18 MHz.

Because it can be integrated onto standard silicon technology, the qubit developed by Intel and QuTech can incorporate control circuitry and quantum processors onto a single device.

While the Sydney and Intel teams have created qubits that operate at temperatures higher than absolute zero, a team from Russia together with colleagues from Sweden, Hungary, and the USA, have developed a method for manufacturing room-temperature qubits.

According to the research paper in Nature Communications, qubits have been proven to operate at room temperatures when integrated into point defects in diamonds, achieved by substituting a carbon atom with a nitrogen atom. However, producing such diamonds can be an expensive manufacturing task. This is where the Russian lead team has stepped up.

The team determined thatsilicon carbide wasa suitable substitute for diamondwhen a laser was used to hit a defect in the crystal. When bombarded with photons, the defect luminescences and the resultant spectroscopy showsix distinctive peaks (PL1 to PL6).

It is these peaks that show SiC'sability to be used as a qubit and therefore what structure is needed. Thus, their method for creating room-temperature qubits would use a chemical vapor deposition of SiCa low-cost alternative to diamond.

The discovery of SiC's usein quantum qubits has already lead to SiC-basedhigh-accuracy magnetometers, biosensors, and quantum internet technologies.

A hot qubit that can operate on a piece of silicon alongside existingcomponents would revolutionize the computing industry.

While mainstream quantum computers are still a decade or two away, these advancements in qubit technology show how quantum technology will not be stuck in laboratories indefinitely and will eventually be open to the public. How will quantum technologies affect electronic engineers remains unknown since we do not know how far quantum integration will go.

Will they be integrated into microcontrollers? Will devices need to deploy quantum security? Only time will tell.

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Hot Qubits are HereAnd They're Propelling the Future of Quantum Computing - News - All About Circuits

Wiring the Quantum Computer of the Future: a Novel Simple Build with Existing Technology

The basic units of a quantum computer can be rearranged in 2D to solve typical design and operation challenges

Efficient quantum computing is expected to enable advancements that are impossible with classical computers. Scientists from Japan and Sydney have collaborated and proposed a novel two-dimensional design that can be constructed using existing integrated circuit technology. This design solves typical problems facing the current three-dimensional packaging for scaled-up quantum computers, bringing the future one step closer.

Quantum computing is increasingly becoming the focus of scientists in fields such as physics and chemistry,and industrialists in the pharmaceutical, airplane, and automobile industries. Globally, research labs at companies like Google and IBM are spending extensive resources on improving quantum computers, and with good reason. Quantum computers use the fundamentals of quantum mechanics to process significantly greater amounts of information much faster than classical computers. It is expected that when error-corrected and fault-tolerant quantum computation is achieved, scientific and technological advancement will occur at an unprecedented scale.

But, building quantum computers for large-scale computation is proving to be a challenge in terms of their architecture. The basic units of a quantum computer are the quantum bits or qubits. These are typically atoms, ions, photons, subatomic particles such as electrons,or even larger elements that simultaneously exist in multiple states, making it possible to obtain several potential outcomes rapidly for large volumes of data. The theoretical requirement for quantum computers is that these are arranged in two-dimensional (2D) arrays, where each qubit is both coupled with its nearest neighbor and connected to the necessary external control lines and devices. When the number of qubits in an array is increased, it becomes difficult to reach qubits in the interior of the array from the edge. The need to solve this problem has so far resulted in complex three-dimensional (3D) wiring systems across multiple planes in which many wires intersect,making their construction a significant engineering challenge.

A group of scientists from Tokyo University of Science, Japan, RIKEN Centre for Emergent Matter Science, Japan, and University of Technology, Sydney, led by Prof Jaw-Shen Tsai, proposes a unique solution to this qubit accessibility problem by modifying the architecture of the qubit array. Here, we solve this problem and present a modified superconducting micro-architecture that does not require any 3D external line technology and reverts to a completely planar design, they say. This study has been published in the New Journal of Physics.

The scientists began with a qubit square lattice array and stretched out each column in the 2D plane. They then folded each successive column on top of each other, forming a dual one-dimensional array called a bi-linear array. This put all qubits on the edge and simplified the arrangement of the required wiring system.The system is also completely in 2D. In this new architecture, some of the inter-qubit wiringeach qubit is also connected to all adjacent qubits in an arraydoes overlap, but because these are the only overlaps in the wiring, simple local 3D systems such as airbridges at the point of overlap are enough and the system overall remains in 2D. As you can imagine, this simplifies its construction considerably.

The scientists evaluated the feasibility of this new arrangement through numerical and experimental evaluation in which they tested how much of a signal was retained before and after it passed through an airbridge. Results of both evaluations showed that it is possible to build and run this system using existing technology and without any 3D arrangement.

The scientists experiments also showed them that their architecture solves several problems that plague the 3D structures: they are difficult to construct, there is crosstalk or signal interference between waves transmitted across two wires, and the fragile quantum states of the qubits can degrade. The novel pseudo-2D design reduces the number of times wires cross each other,thereby reducing the crosstalk and consequently increasing the efficiency of the system.

At a time when large labs worldwide are attempting to find ways to buildlarge-scale fault-tolerant quantum computers, the findingsof this exciting new study indicate that such computers can be built using existing 2D integrated circuit technology. The quantum computer is an information device expected to far exceed the capabilities of modern computers, Prof Tsai states.The research journey in this direction has only begun with this study, and Prof Tsai concludes by saying, We are planning to construct a small-scale circuit to further examine and explore the possibility.

###

ReferenceTitle of original paper: Pseudo-2D superconducting quantum computing circuit for the surface code: the proposal and preliminary tests

Journal:New Journal of Physics

DOI:10.1088/1367-2630/ab7d7d

Tokyo University of Science (TUS) is a well-known and respected university, and the largest science-specialized private research university in Japan, with four campuses in central Tokyo and its suburbs and in Hokkaido. Established in 1881, the university has continually contributed to Japans development in science through inculcating the love for science in researchers, technicians, and educators.

With a mission of Creating science and technology for the harmonious development of nature, human beings, and society, TUS has undertaken a wide range of research from basic to applied science. TUS has embraced a multidisciplinary approach to research and undertaken intensive study in some of todays most vital fields. TUS is a meritocracy where the best in science is recognized and nurtured. It is the only private university in Japan that has produced a Nobel Prize winner and the only private university in Asia to produce Nobel Prize winners within the natural sciences field.

Website:https://www.tus.ac.jp/en/mediarelations/

Dr Jaw-Shen Tsai is currently a Professor at the Tokyo University of Science, Japan. He began research in Physics in 1975 and continues to hold interest in areas such as superconductivity, the Josephson effect, quantum physics, coherence, qubits, and artificial atoms. He has 160+ research publications to his credit and serves as the lead author in this paper. He has also won several awards, including Japans Medal of Honor, the Purple Ribbon Award.

Professor Jaw-Shen Tsai

Department of Physics

Tokyo University of Science

Tsutomu Shimizu

Public Relations Divisions

Tokyo University of Science

Email: mediaoffice@admin.tus.ac.jp

Website: https://www.tus.ac.jp/en/mediarelations/

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Wiring the Quantum Computer of the Future: aNovel Simple Build with Existing Technology - Analytics Insight