Daily Archives: February 22, 2021

In 2012, the quantum physicist John Preskill wrote, We hope to hasten the day when well controlled quantum systems can perform tasks surpassing what can be done in the classical world. Less than a decade later, two quantum computing systems have met that mark: Googles Sycamore, and the University of Science and Technology of Chinas Jizhng. Both solved narrowly designed problems that are, so far as we know, impossible for classical computers to solve quickly. How quickly? How impossible? To solve a problem that took Jizhng 200 seconds, even the fastest supercomputers are estimated to take at least two billion years.

Describing what then may have seemed a far-off goal, Preskill gave it a name: quantum supremacy. In a blog post at the time, he explained Im not completely happy with this term, and would be glad if readers could suggest something better.

Were not happy with it either, and we believe that the physics community should be more careful with its language, for both social and scientific reasons. Even in the abstruse realms of matter and energy, language matters because physics is done by people.

The word supremacyhaving more power, authority or status than anyone elseis closely linked to white supremacy. This isnt supposition; its fact. The Corpus of Contemporary American English finds white supremacy is 15 times more frequent than the next most commonly used two-word phrase, judicial supremacy. Though English is the global lingua franca of science, it is notable that the USTC team avoided quantum supremacy because in Chinese, the character meaning supremacy also has uncomfortable, negative connotations. The problem is not confined merely to English.

White supremacist movements have grown around the globe in recent years, especially in the United States, partly as a racist backlash to the Black Lives Matter movement. As Preskill has recently acknowledged, the word unavoidably evokes a repugnant political stance.

Quantum supremacy has also become a buzzword in popular media (for example, here and here). Its suggestion of domination may have contributed to unjustified hype, such as the idea that quantum computers will soon make classical computers obsolete. Tamer alternatives such as quantum advantage, quantum computational supremacy and even quantum ascendancy have been proposed, but none have managed to supplant Preskills original term. More jargony proposals like Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum computing (NISQ) and tongue-in-cheek suggestions like quantum non-uselessness have similarly failed to displace supremacy.

Here, we propose an alternative we believe succinctly captures the scientific implications with less hype andcruciallyno association with racism: quantum primacy.

Whats in a name? Its not just that quantum supremacy by any other name would smell sweeter. By making the case for quantum primacy we hope to illustrate some of the social and scientific issues at hand. In President Joe Bidens letter to his science adviser, the biologist Eric Lander, he asks How can we ensure that Americans of all backgrounds are drawn into both the creation and the rewards of science and technology? One small change can be in the language we use. GitHub, for example, abandoned the odious master/slave terminology after pressure from activists.

Were physics, computer science and engineering more diverse, perhaps we would not still be having this discussion, which one of us wrote about four years ago. But in the U.S., when only 2 percent of bachelors degrees in physics are awarded to Black students, when Latinos comprise less than 7 percent of engineers, and women account for a mere 12 percent of full professors in physics, this is a conversation that needs to happen. As things stand, quantum supremacy can come across as adding insult to injury.

The nature of quantum computing, and its broad interest to the public outside of industry laboratories and academia means that the debate around quantum supremacy was inevitably going to be included in the broader culture war.

In 2019, a short correspondence to Nature argued that the quantum computing community should adopt different terminology to avoid overtones of violence, neocolonialism and racism. Within days, the dispute was picked up by the conservative editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, which attacked quantum wokeness and suggested that changing the term would be a slippery slope all the way down to cancelling Diana Ross The Supremes.

The linguist Steven Pinker weighed in to argue that the prissy banning of words by academics should be resisted. It dumbs down understanding of language: word meanings are conventions, not spells with magical powers, and all words have multiple senses, which are distinguished in context. Also, it makes academia a laughingstock, tars the innocent, and does nothing to combat actual racism & sexism.

It is true that supremacy is not a magic word, that its meaning comes from convention, not conjurers. But the context of quantum supremacy, which Pinker neglects, is that of a historically white, male-dominated discipline. Acknowledging this by seeking better language is a basic effort to be polite, not prissy.

Perhaps the most compelling argument raised in favor of quantum supremacy is that it could function to reclaim the word. Were quantum supremacy 15 times more common than white supremacy, the shoe would be on the other foot. Arguments for reclamation, however, must account for who is doing the reclaiming. If the charge to take back quantum supremacy were led by Black scientists and other underrepresented minorities in physics, that would be one thing. No survey exists, but anecdotal evidence suggests this is decidedly not the case.

To replace supremacy, we need to have a thoughtful conversation. Not any alternative will do, and there is genuinely tricky science at stake. Consider the implications of quantum advantage. An advantage might be a stepladder that makes it easier to reach a high shelf, or a small head start in a race. Some quantum algorithms are like this. Grovers search algorithm is only quadratically faster than its classical counterpart, so a quantum computer running Grovers algorithm might solve a problem that took classical computers 100 minutes in the square root of that time10 minutes. Not bad! Thats definitely an advantage, especially as runtimes get longer, but it doesnt compare to some quantum speedups.

Perhaps the most famous quantum speedup comes from Shor's algorithm, which can find the factors of numbers (e.g. 5 and 3 are factors of 15) almost exponentially faster than the best classical algorithms. While classical computers are fine with small numbers, every digit takes a toll. For example, a classical computer might factor a 100-digit number in seconds, but a 1000-digit number would take billions of years. A quantum computer running Shor's algorithm could do it in an hour.

When quantum computers can effectively do things that are impossible for classical computers, they have something much more than an advantage. We believe primacy captures much of this meaning. Primacy means preeminent position or the condition of being first. Additionally, it shares a Latin root (primus, or first) with mathematical terms such as prime and primality.

While quantum computers may be first to solve a specific problem, that does not imply they will dominate; we hope quantum primacy helps avoid the insinuation that classical computers will be obsolete. This is especially important because quantum primacy is a moving target. Classical computers and classical algorithms can and do improve, so quantum computers will have to get bigger and better to stay ahead.

These kinds of linguistic hotfixes do not reach even a bare minimum for diversifying science; the most important work involves hiring and retention and actual material changes to the scientific community to make it less white and male. But if opposition to improving the language of science is any indication about broader obstacles to diversifying it, this is a conversation we must have.

Physicists may prefer vacuums for calculation, but science does not occur in one. It is situated in the broader social and political landscape, one which both shapes and is shaped by the decisions of researchers.

This is an opinion and analysis article.

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Physicists Need to Be More Careful with How They Name Things - Scientific American

I still believed in God (I am now an atheist) when I heard the following question at a seminar, first posed by Einstein, and was stunned by its elegance and depth: If there is a God who created the entire universe and ALL of its laws of physics, does God follow Gods own laws? Or can God supersede his own laws, such as travelling faster than the speed of light and thus being able to be in two different places at the same time? Could the answer help us prove whether or not God exists or is this where scientific empiricism and religious faith intersect, with NO true answer? David Frost, 67, Los Angeles.

I was in lockdown when I received this question and was instantly intrigued. Its no wonder about the timing tragic events, such as pandemics, often cause us to question the existence of God: if there is a merciful God, why is a catastrophe like this happening? So the idea that God might be bound by the laws of physics which also govern chemistry and biology and thus the limits of medical science was an interesting one to explore.

If God wasnt able to break the laws of physics, she arguably wouldnt be as powerful as youd expect a supreme being to be. But if she could, why havent we seen any evidence of the laws of physics ever being broken in the universe?

This article is part of Lifes Big QuestionsThe Conversations new series, co-published with BBC Future, seeks to answer our readers nagging questions about life, love, death and the universe. We work with professional researchers who have dedicated their lives to uncovering new perspectives on the questions that shape our lives.

To tackle the question, lets break it down a bit. First, can God travel faster than light? Lets just take the question at face value. Light travels at an approximate speed of 3 x 105 kilometres every second, or 186,000mph. We learn at school that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light not even the USS Enterprise in Star Trek when its dilithium crystals are set to max.

But is it true? A few years ago, a group of physicists posited that particles called tachyons travelled above light speed. Fortunately, their existence as real particles is deemed highly unlikely. If they they did exist, they would have an imaginary mass and the fabric of space and time would become distorted leading to violations of causality (and possibly a headache for God).

It seems, so far, that no object has been observed that can travel faster than the speed of light. This in itself does not say anything at all about God. It merely reinforces the knowledge that light travels very fast indeed.

Things get a bit more interesting when you consider how far light has travelled since the beginning. Assuming a traditional big bang cosmology and a light speed of 3 x 105 km/s, then we can calculate that light has travelled roughly 1024 km in the 13.8 billion years of the universes existence. Or rather, the observable universes existence.

The universe is expanding at a rate of approximately 70km/s per Mpc (1 Mpc = 1 Megaparsec ~ 30 million km), so current estimates suggest that the distance to the edge of the universe is 46 billion light years. As time goes on, the volume of space increases, and light has to travel for longer to reach us.

There is a lot more universe out there than we can view, but the most distant object that we have seen is a galaxy, GN-z11, observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. This is approximately 1023 km or 13.4 billion light years away, meaning that it has taken 13.4 billion years for light from the galaxy to reach us. But when the light set off, the galaxy was only about 3 billion light years away from our galaxy, the Milky Way.

We cannot observe or see across the entirety of the universe that has grown since the big bang because insufficient time has passed for light from the first fractions of a second to reach us. Some argue that we therefore cannot be sure whether the laws of physics could be broken in other cosmic regions perhaps they are just local, accidental laws. And that leads us on to something even bigger than the universe.

Many cosmologists believe that the universe may be part of a more extended cosmos, a multiverse, where many different universes co-exist but dont interact. The idea of the multiverse is backed by the theory of inflation the idea that the universe expanded hugely before it was 10-32 seconds old. Inflation is an important theory because it can explain why the universe has the shape and structure that we see around us.

But if inflation could happen once, why not many times? We know from experiments that quantum fluctuations can give rise to pairs of particles suddenly coming into existance, only to disappear moments later. And if such fluctuations can produce particles, why not entire atoms or universes? Its been suggested that, during the period of chaotic inflation, not everything was happening at the same rate quantum fluctuations in the expansion could have produced bubbles that blew up to become universes in their own right.

But how does God fit into the multiverse? One headache for cosmologists has been the fact that our universe seems fine-tuned for life to exist. The fundamental particles created in the big bang had the correct properties to enable the formation of hydrogen and deuterium substances which produced the first stars.

The physical laws governing nuclear reactions in these stars then produced the stuff that lifes made of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. So how come all the physical laws and parameters in the universe happen to have the values that allowed stars, planets and ultimately life to develop?

Some argue its just a lucky coincidence. Others say we shouldnt be surprised to see biofriendly physical laws they after all produced us, so what else would we see? Some theists, however, argue it points to the existence of a God creating favourable conditions.

But God isnt a valid scientific explanation. The theory of the multiverse, instead, solves the mystery because it allows different universes to have different physical laws. So its not surprising that we should happen to see ourselves in one of the few universes that could support life. Of course, you cant disprove the idea that a God may have created the multiverse.

This is all very hypothetical, and one of the biggest criticisms of theories of the multiverse is that because there seem to have been no interactions between our universe and other universes, then the notion of the multiverse cannot be directly tested.

Now lets consider whether God can be in more than one place at the same time. Much of the science and technology we use in space science is based on the counter-intuitive theory of the tiny world of atoms and particles known as quantum mechanics.

The theory enables something called quantum entanglement: spookily connected particles. If two particles are entangled, you automatically manipulate its partner when you manipulate it, even if they are very far apart and without the two interacting. There are better descriptions of entanglement than the one I give here but this is simple enough that I can follow it.

Imagine a particle that decays into two sub-particles, A and B. The properties of the sub-particles must add up to the properties of the original particle this is the principle of conservation. For example, all particles have a quantum property called spin roughly, they move as if they were tiny compass needles. If the original particle has a spin of zero, one of the two sub-particles must have a positive spin and the other a negative spin, which means that each of A and B has a 50% chance of having a positive or a negative spin. (According to quantum mechanics, particles are by definition in a mix of different states until you actually measure them.)

The properties of A and B are not independent of each other they are entangled even if located in separate laboratories on separate planets. So if you measure the spin of A and you find it to be positive. Imagine a friend measured the spin of B at exactly the same time that you measured A. In order for the principle of conservation to work, she must find the spin of B to be negative.

But and this is where things become murky like sub-particle A, B had a 50:50 chance of being positive, so its spin state became negative at the time that the spin state of A was measured as positive. In other words, information about spin state was transferred between the two sub-particles instantly. Such transfer of quantum information apparently happens faster than the speed of light. Given that Einstein himself described quantum entanglement as spooky action at a distance, I think all of us can be forgiven for finding this a rather bizarre effect.

So there is something faster than the speed of light after all: quantum information. This doesnt prove or disprove God, but it can help us think of God in physical terms maybe as a shower of entangled particles, transferring quantum information back and forth, and so occupying many places at the same time? Even many universes at the same time?

I have this image of God keeping galaxy-sized plates spinning while juggling planet-sized balls tossing bits of information from one teetering universe to another, to keep everything in motion. Fortunately, God can multitask keeping the fabric of space and time in operation. All that is required is a little faith.

Has this essay come close to answering the questions posed? I suspect not: if you believe in God (as I do), then the idea of God being bound by the laws of physics is nonsense, because God can do everything, even travel faster than light. If you dont believe in God, then the question is equally nonsensical, because there isnt a God and nothing can travel faster than light. Perhaps the question is really one for agnostics, who dont know whether there is a God.

This is indeed where science and religion differ. Science requires proof, religious belief requires faith. Scientists dont try to prove or disprove Gods existence because they know there isnt an experiment that can ever detect God. And if you believe in God, it doesnt matter what scientists discover about the universe any cosmos can be thought of as being consistent with God.

Our views of God, physics or anything else ultimately depends on perspective. But lets end with a quotation from a truly authoritative source. No, it isnt the bible. Nor is it a cosmology textbook. Its from Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett:

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

To get all of lifes big answers, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value evidence-based news by subscribing to our newsletter. You can send us your big questions by email at bigquestions@theconversation.com and well try to get a researcher or expert on the case.

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Can the laws of physics disprove God? - The Conversation UK

In the very smallest measured units of space and time in the Universe, not a lot is going on. In a new search for quantum fluctuations of space-time on Planck scales, physicists have found that everything is smooth.

This means that - for now at least - we still can't find a way to resolve general relativity with quantum mechanics.

It's one of the most vexing problems in our understanding of the Universe.

General relativity is the theory of gravitation that describes gravitational interactions in the large-scale physical Universe. It can be used to make predictions about the Universe; general relativity predicted gravitational waves, for instance, and some behaviours of black holes.

Space-time under relativity follows what we call the principle of locality - that is, objects are only directly influenced by their immediate surroundings in space and time.

In the quantum realm - atomic and subatomic scales - general relativity breaks down, and quantum mechanics takes over. Nothing in the quantum realm happens at a specific place or time until it is measured, and parts of a quantum system separated by space or time can still interact with each other, a phenomenon known as nonlocality.

Somehow, in spite of their differences, general relativity and quantum mechanics exist and interact. But so far, resolving the differences between the two has proven extremely difficult.

This is where the Holometer at Fermilab comes into play - a project headed by astronomer and physicist Craig Hogan from the University of Chicago. This is an instrument designed to detect quantum fluctuations of space-time at the smallest possible units - a Planck length, 10-33 centimetres, and Planck time, how long it takes light to travel a Planck length.

It consists of two identical 40-metre (131-foot) interferometers that intersect at a beam splitter. A laser is fired at the splitter and sent down two arms to two mirrors, to be reflected back to the beam splitter to recombine. Any Planck-scale fluctuations will mean the beam that returns is different from the beam that was emitted.

A few years ago, the Holometer made a null detection of back-and-forth quantum jitters in space-time. This suggested that space-time itself as we can currently measure it is not quantised; that is, could be broken down into discrete, indivisible units, or quanta.

Because the interferometer arms were straight, it could not detect other kinds of fluctuating motion, such as if the fluctuations were rotational. And this could matter a great deal.

"In general relativity, rotating matter drags space-time along with it. In the presence of a rotating mass, the local nonrotating frame, as measured by a gyroscope, rotates relative to the distant Universe, as measured by distant stars," Hogan wrote on the Fermilab website.

"It could well be that quantum space-time has a Planck-scale uncertainty of the local frame, which would lead to random rotational fluctuations or twists that we would not have detected in our first experiment, and much too small to detect in any normal gyroscope."

So, the team redesigned the instrument. They added additional mirrors so that they would be able to detect any rotational quantum motion. The result was an incredibly sensitive gyroscope that can detect Planck-scale rotational twists that change direction a million times per second.

In five observing runs between April 2017 and August 2019, the team collected 1,098 hours of dual interferometer time series data. In all that time, there was not a single jiggle. As far as we know, space-time is still a continuum.

But that doesn't mean the Holometer, as has been suggested by some scientists, is a waste of time. There's no other instrument like it in the world. The results it returns - null or not - will shape future efforts to probe the intersection of relativity and quantum mechanics at Planck scales.

"We may never understand how quantum space-time works without some measurement to guide theory,"Hogan said. "The Holometer program is exploratory. Our experiment started with only rough theories to guide its design, and we still do not have a unique way to interpret our null results, since there is no rigorous theory of what we are looking for.

"Are the jitters just a bit smaller than we thought they might be, or do they have a symmetry that creates a pattern in space that we haven't measured? New technology will enable future experiments better than ours and possibly give us some clues to how space and time emerge from a deeper quantum system."

The research has been published on arXiv.

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A New Measurement of Quantum Space-Time Has Found Nothing Going On - ScienceAlert

Planet Earth Report provides descriptive links to headline news by leading science journalists about the extraordinary discoveries, technology, people, and events changing our knowledge of Planet Earth and the future of the human species.

And So It Begins Quantum Physicists Create a New Universe With Its Own Rules, reports The Daily Galaxy Albert Einstein was fond of saying that Imagination is everything. It is the preview of lifes coming attractions. What if our world, our universe, following Einsteins insight, is the result of a quantum-physics experiment performed by some ancient hyper-advanced alien civilization. A civilization that, as astrophysicist Paul Davies speculates, may exist beyond matter.

The quantum century Manipulating quantum devices has been like getting an intoxicating new superpower for society, reports ArsTechnica.

America has sent five rovers to Marswhen will humans follow?With its impeccable landing on Thursday, NASAs Perseverance became the fifth rover to reach Marsso when can we finally expect the long-held goal of a crewed expedition to materialize? asks Phys.org.

Scientists Really, Really Want a Piece of Mars A new NASA rover has jump-started an intense effort to finally bring home a pristine sample from the red planet, reports Marina Koren for The Atlantic.

The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity In recent history, a few individuals have made decisions that could, in theory, have unleashed killer aliens or set Earths atmosphere on fire. What can they tell us about attitudes to the existential risks we face today? reports BBC Future.

The eccentric scientist behind the gold standard COVID-19 test Bombastic biochemist Kary Mullis invented PCR, a tool that redefined genetic science, while driving in 1983. That was only the beginning, reports National Geographic. Biochemist Kary Mullis says he was driving from the Bay Area to his cabin in Mendocino in 1983 when suddenly, like a bolt of lightning out of the California sky, he came up with a way to pinpoint a particular stretch of DNA and synthesize an enormous amount of copies.

Scientists Achieve Real-Time Communication With Lucid Dreamers in Breakthrough International scientists have unlocked a new and exciting avenue to explore the world of dreams, reports Becky Ferreira for Motherboard/Vice.

Is It Safe to Delay a Second COVID Vaccine Dose? Some evidence indicates that short waits are safe, but there is a chance that partial immunization could help risky new coronavirus variants to develop, reports Marla Broadfoot for Scientific American.

Until Recently, People Accepted the Fact of Aliens in the Solar System For centuries, right up until the 1960s, the notion life on Marsand elsewherewasnt considered especially remarkable, reports astrophysicist Caleb Scharf for Scientific American.

Life from Earth could temporarily survive on Mars, reports Frontiers Study shows sending microbes to Earths stratosphere, to test their endurance to Martian conditions, can reveal their potential use and threats to space travel

Deepest land-dwelling microbes found at bottom of 5km hole in China There are microbes near the bottom of the third deepest hole in the world. The cells, recovered from rocks almost 5 kilometers below the surface in China, are the deepest so far found anywhere on land and they may push beyond the known heat tolerances of life on Earth. It is widely accepted that life exists at depth. Until now, the deepest known microbes on land were tiny nematode worms found 3.6 kilometers below the surface in a South African gold mine.

Million-Year-Old Mammoth Teeth Contain Oldest DNA Ever Found, reports Jeanne Timmons for GizmodoAn international team of scientists has sequenced DNA from mammoth teeth that is at least a million years old, if not older. This research, published today in Nature, not only provides exciting new insight into mammoth evolutionary history, it reveals an entirely unknown lineage of ancient mammoth.

Six Brilliant Tesla Inventions That Never Got BuiltThese futuristic visions have yet to come to fruition, either because of technological limitations or market viabilityor both, reports Christopher Klein for History.

Martin Luther Rewired Your BrainHow mass literacy, spurred by Protestantism, reconfigured our neural pathways, reports Nautilus.

The Galaxy Report newsletter brings you twice-weekly news of space and science that has the capacity to provide clues to the mystery of our existence and add a much needed cosmic perspective in our current Anthropocene Epoch.

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Planet Earth Report The Quantum Century to Events That Could Have Ended Humanity - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel

Launch yourself from a great enough height and it won't take long to see which would win in a battle between gravity and the forces that bind solid ground.

Gravity's relative weakness, at least compared to the strength of electromagnetism and the nuclear forces, appears to limits its power to phenomena on the vast scales of planets and galaxies.

For this reason, together with the challenge of marrying general relativity with quantum physics, physicists tend to hand-wave gravity's role in the formation of particles by fudging it with a rather arbitrary correction factor.

Two physicists from the Institute of Gravitation and Cosmology at the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) are now rethinking gravity's place among the building blocks of nature, searching for solutions to equations that would give this small force a bigger role in explaining how fundamental particles could emerge.

At first glance, it seems like an unnecessary search. For a typical elementary particle, like an electron, its electromagnetic pull is 10^40 times stronger than its gravitational might.

Including gravity's effects when describing an electron's movements around an atom's nucleus would be like taking a mosquito's impact into account when discussing a car crash.

Researchers Ahmed Alharthy and Vladimir V. Kassandrov think the mosquito might be more important than we give it credit for, at least on the mind-blowingly small level of the Planck scale.

"Gravity can potentially play an important role in the microworld, and this assumption is confirmed by certain data," says Kassandrov.

Established solutions to fundamental field theory equations in curving spacetime appear to leave room for a small but non-zero influence of gravity when we zoom in close. As distances shrink, gravity's tug eventually becomes comparable with that of attracted charges.

There are also models describing solitary waves forming in quantum fields in which the tiny effect of gravity could well help reinforce the wave.

The duo went back to semi-classical models of electromagnetic field equations, swapping out the hand-waved correction typically used and applying rules that allow them to tweak some quantities while ensuring others remain fixed.

By slotting in quantities defining the charge and mass of known elementary particles, the team went on the hunt for solutions that added up.

For the most part, there were no clear situations where gravity seemed necessary, at least for known particles.

But there were scenarios as distances shrank to around 10^-33 metres for charged objects with a mass of 10^-5 grams where solutions appeared.

The theorists aren't sure if their answers describe anything we might find in the Universe, though they do set some limits on a spectrum that corresponds with hypothetical semi-quantum particles called maximons.

Pushing the mathematics further, as electric charge vanishes into nothingness on the smallest of scales, and masses grow to a stellar-magnitude, it's clear that gravity becomes a key factor in the emergence of some objects from the quantum landscape.

That might sound like a flight of fancy, but such neutral matter-waves are the very things that make up hypothetical objects known as boson stars.

For now, gravity will continue to be reduced to a begrudging side-note in particle physics, its tiny force a mathematical complexity providing no appreciable benefit in its solving.

One day, we just might need to give the weakest of the four fundamental forces its due on the Universe's smallest scales.

"In the future, we would like to shed light on this problem that is intriguing for physicists but extremely complex from the point of view of mathematics," says Kassandrov.

This research was published in Universe.

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Gravity May Play a Tiny But Important Role in The Microworld of Particle Physics - ScienceAlert

Over the last couple of years, its become abundantly clear both to artist collectives and artists on an individual level that deft use of technology has become integral to the success of almost every creative endeavor. Innovative technology demands an innovative approach, and on Wednesday, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced the 2021 recipients of the Knight Arts + Tech Fellowship, which comes with unrestricted grants of $50,000. One of the grant recipients is Black Quantum Futurism, an interdisciplinary arts collective based in Philadelphia thats been working for years to disrupt linear notions of time via a number of different mediums.

Led by Camae Ayewa, a musician, and Rasheedah Phillips, a housing attorney, Black Quantum Futurism is a prolific incubator of a multitude of different projects exploring notions of space-time, quantum physics, and Black/African cultural traditions of consciousness. Over the last few years alone, the collective has collaborated with the London Contemporary Orchestra, constructed an Oral Futures Booth in Marseilles and installed an interactive Community Futures Lab at the Chicago Architecture Biennial. This summer, Ayewa and Phillips will delve further into their research on quantum physics via a residency at the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

Speaking about the Knight Arts + Tech Fellowship on Wednesday, Ayewa told Observer that the collective would continue to explore the same themes it always has: Were definitely going to continue being advocates for housing justice, and pushing the boundaries of experimentation and protest. In the near future, the collective will also launch installations at the Village of Arts and Humanities in Philadelphia, another Oral Futures booth and a show at the REDCAT gallery in California, but already, Black Quantum Futurisms work fits very neatly in with pandemic-era conversations people have been having about feeling like time is being warped beyond all recognition.

Our second book, Space-Time Collapse: From the Congo to the Carolinas, really speaks about this concept of time feeling like its collapsed on us, and all the oppressive ways that time shows up in our everyday realities, Ayewa said. For example, my partner Rasheedah is a housing attorney, and the court system is so tied to time. How you present your case in court; most peoples lives are not this linear, or in this kind of situation where you have a 15 minute window to get to court. Not too many people live in the downtown area, so you have to catch two buses to get there, and just being late to court can result in your losing your children.

Black Quantum Futurism has had a mutual aid fund in place since 2011, and the collective has always focused on their community in Philadelphia when determining how to use grant money. For those who may be just beginning to wake up to the importance of contributing to ones community, Ayewa suggested moving forward with openness. Always see your community members as people that you can learn from, she said. Weve somehow turned the concept of our neighbors into people that we fear, or we want to become more isolated. Really look through the history of the places that you live in, and dont just think of community as something that begins at the moment you arrive.

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With a $50,000 Grant, Black Quantum Futurism Will Continue to Disrupt Space and Time - GalleristNY

IBM Quantum development roadmap.

In late 2020, IBM released its first long-term quantum roadmap, showing how IBM's quantum architecture, hardware and qubit count would change over the next few years. IBM plans on evolving its present-day small-scale, noisy quantum computers to a near-term intermediate 1121-qubit machine named Condor. Once perfected, Condor will become the future building block of a larger fault-tolerant quantum computer with millions of qubits.

Qubits represent the fundamental unit of information in quantum computers. Unlike classical computing bits, which can only represent either a one or a zero, qubits can also be a one or a zero or a superposition of both values. Superposition is a fundamental feature of quantum mechanics that plays an essential role in quantum computing.

Last week, IBM released a new and more descriptive technology roadmap. It overlays an expanded timeline of future applications, new Qiskit software and developer capabilities on top of the earlier 2020 hardware roadmap.

According to Jay Gambetta, IBM Fellow and Vice President Quantum Computing, IBM recognized more future plans were needed in its roadmap. "Ultimately software is really tied to the hardware. What I wanted to do this year was to put some context around where we see the software going, and then bring it together with more of an application focus for the user." Gambetta went on to say he believes quantum computing will eventually be able to solve "big problems" in the areas of natural sciences, optimization, finance and machine learning.

Quantum solutions to problems in these four areas will ultimately touch and influence almost every facet of our lives. The first working 2-qubit quantum computer was announced in 1998. Since then, quantum scientists have dreamed of building a universal fault-tolerant quantum computer with millions of qubits. However, for many years, some scientists didn't believe it could be done.

New IBM 2021 development roadmap

IBM's hardware and qubit counts remain unchanged from its first 2020 roadmap. However, for 2021 and beyond, IBM will focus its efforts on developing software that allows circuits to run faster and makes it easier for developers and industry specialists to use quantum. Moreover, these software improvements will happen in a future environment where integrated classical computers and quantum computers will provide a seamless quantum solution. After a careful review, it is clear that IBM is building a complete software ecosystem around users of its quantum cloud. Gambetta believes that for technology to be adopted, IBM needs to make it as frictionless as possible. Moreover, he believes developers shouldn't have to learn new languages. Gambetta says quantum programming must be integrated into developers' existing code and easily called with a cloud quantum API or service for new quantum technology to be successful.

Software tailored to developers

IBM Quantum user stack

In 2016, IBM provided the world's first cloud access to a superconducting quantum processor with five qubits. Almost immediately after launching the system, papers were published based on research performed on the system. Since then, quantum researchers have made significant contributions to the evolution of quantum computing.

Today, IBM has over 20 quantum computers available on the cloud, with over half offering free access. Usage on IBM's quantum cloud is staggering.Over 1.3 billion quantum circuits are run daily, and democratized cloud access for researchers has resulted in over 300 technical papers. From the time IBM's first quantum computer became available on the cloud until now, there have been over 700 billion quantum cloud executions.

According to the roadmap, IBM is creating a user-friendly software approach for developers which will facilitate access to future quantum services. The company will be customizing access to its quantum hardware based on specific interests, needs and existing coding environment of developers. Robert Sutor, Vice President of IBM Quantum Ecosystem Development, said, "We have laid out a software approach heavily oriented towards developers. We feel strongly that a healthy user base will also be a guiding force that will help shape the future technical direction of quantum devices."

Qiskit is IBM's open-source quantum programming framework that allows researchers and developers to program quantum computers and classical simulators. IBM's primary goal is to increase its hardware capacity while making its quantum programs simple to use for the largest number and greatest variety of developers possible. Each type of developer has its own separate and distinct needs.

The following developer descriptions were derived from an earlier IBM paper and edited for clarity. IBM plans on creating a "frictionless" software ecosystem for each type of developer, offering access in a form familiar to them. IBM also intends on providing developers access to data associated with that work level, such as coherence times, qubit frequencies, crosstalk and error rates for calibrated quantum gates and operations.

Future IBM software developments

Qiskit Runtime

Circuits provide instructions for quantum computers. In the early stages of quantum computing, it made sense for IBM to focus optimization efforts on improving circuit capacity and circuit quality. Leveraging these previous circuit improvements, IBM will be releasing a feature called Qiskit Runtime for kernel developers sometime in 2021.Runtime will provide faster circuits and allow programs to be stored and shared with other developers.

For example, running a chemistry algorithm today is a complicated process. Before executing any circuits, you must pick the plot points, choose the error mitigation and classical quantum optimization algorithms, then recast the problem to fit the quantum machine. Lastly, you need to consider how many shots are needed. Continuing this full loop allows the developer to do calculations on their classical computer using data from the quantum computer.

IBM plans to simplify the process by putting these steps together and then executing them close to the quantum processor. Lithium Hydride is a relatively small molecule that IBM uses as an example to illustrate runtime speedup. Current simulation of the molecule can require up to 100 days. Runtime will shorten the simulation to a day or two.

2021 Mid-Circuit Measurement and Reset

Measuring a qubit causes its superposition to collapse, revealing its state to be a one or a zero. That is why current measurements occur at the end of a quantum circuit. However, IBM has already introduced a new feature called mid-circuit measurement and reset (MCMR). MCMR allows measurement of a qubit at any point in the circuit and triggers other actions. Regardless of its measured state, the qubit is reset to 1 so that it becomes a known state, which allows it to be reused, making more efficient use of resources.MCMR can also be performed multiple times in a circuit.

2022 Dynamic Circuits

IBM has prototyped "smart circuits" called Dynamic Circuits that will be available in 2022.Dynamic circuits are circuits in which future states depend on outcomes of measurements that happen during the circuit.Dynamic circuits will allow branching actions such as the use of real-time classical processing to take place based on conditions within an existing circuit. Dynamic circuits can be useful for demonstrations of dynamic error correction, classical logic, developer assertions, and zero state preparations.IBM expects Dynamic circuits to be widely used and contribute to creating a wider pool of circuits available to developers.

Phase estimation of a given unitary

As shown in the above circuit diagrams, dynamic circuits using MCMR can also be used for a fundamental quantum algorithm called quantum phase estimation (QPE). Many algorithms use QPE because it has the potential to provide logarithmic speedup. Phase estimationis also an important part of period finding to factor numbers inShor's Algorithm (one of the most famous algorithms in quantum computing).Unfortunately, running quantum phase estimation requires many resources and many shots to obtain an accurate answer.

The above IBM illustration compares two methods of phase estimation: post-processing vs. real-time using dynamic circuits. The basic question for this scenario is which solution needs the least number of resources to obtain the answer with the specified accuracy? IBM researchers recently ran a version of the quantum phase estimation algorithm (iterative quantum phase estimation) with dynamic circuits. The researchers proved dynamic circuits took fewer resources than other methods. Once this feature becomes available, IBM believes dynamic circuits will become an essential software tool for kernel developers. Moreover, its use should produce many papers that advance its future use.

2023-2026

Hardware

According to the roadmap, a significant hardware milestone will occur in 2023. That's when IBM plans to introduce its 1121-qubit Condor quantum processor. The Condor will be preceded in 2021 by a 127-qubit Eagle processor and in 2022 by a 433-qubit Osprey processor. Even though 1121 qubits may sound like a monster by today's standards, we will need a machine that is thousands of times larger to fulfill quantum computing's true potential. Even so, the Condor should be able to do some useful work, perhaps even achieve quantum advantage for limited applications. This machine should allow IBM to make significant progress with error correction. The Condor will also help researchers develop and optimize a large qubit architecture to prepare for the million-qubit machine. Beyond 2026, IBM envisions having advanced control electronics and software that seamlessly integrate classical HPC and a fault-tolerant quantum computers with millions of qubits.

Software

IBM will begin releasing circuit libraries to provide kernel developers with tools to investigate algorithms that use large qubit hardware. According to the roadmap, advanced versions of dynamic circuits will be segmented, then reconstructed into larger circuits tailored to specific needs. Later, frequently run circuits can be used to create groups of pre-built quantum runtimes. These runtimes can be customized for specific industries, then called by APIs using common development frameworks. By this time, IBM believes its 2021's "frictionless" strategy will have attracted enough kernel and algorithm developers to produce a large body of usable research and algorithms. Both model developers and enterprise developers will benefit from this research, enabling them to explore quantum computing models without needing academic training in quantum physics.

Analyst notes:

Disclosure:Moor Insights & Strategy, like all research and analyst firms, provides or has provided paid research, analysis, advising, or consulting to many high-tech companies in the industry, includingIBM. The author holds no investment positions with any of the companies mentioned in this column.

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IBM Adds Future Developer And Software Details To Its Quantum Roadmap - Forbes

February 17, 2021• Physics 14, 25

A newly proposed superconducting circuit architecture employs a synthetic magnetic field to create a qubit that is intrinsically protected from noise.

Today, noise poses one of the biggest challenges for quantum computation efforts. Be it in the form of dissipated heat, electromagnetic radiation, or something else, noise can disrupt fragile quantum superpositions and lead to errors. The jury is still out on which approach will be most successful in protecting quantum information against noise, but the hope clearly lies in quantum error correction (QEC) protocols. Now, Martin Rymarz of RWTH Aachen University in Germany and colleagues have proposed a novel superconducting circuit implementation that realizes a QEC strategy in which robustness against noise is an intrinsic feature of the hardware [1]. This strategy, known as the Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) code, was proposed in 2001 [2]. However, implementing it with superconducting circuits has so far been impossible because it requires a large magnetic field. The newly proposed architecture circumvents this obstacle by employing a synthetic magnetic field, pushing the GKP protocol closer to a possible realization.

The noise processes that threaten quantum computing are assumed to be local, meaning that they act on specific parts of circuits, such as individual physical qubits. In the scaling-up approach to QEC, quantum information is encoded into multiple physical qubits that form each logical qubit used for the actual computation tasks. So even if one physical qubit is disrupted by noise, the information carried by the logical qubit will not be corrupted. In the exotic-state approach to QEC, each computational unit is a single oscillator, and the logical bits are represented by two special states of the oscillator, called nontrivial states, that are robust against local noise. The exotic-state technique employs continuous-variable systems, such as electromagnetic modes, which are initialized in states that are either robust by themselves (passive QEC) or can be stabilized via operations that do not affect the logical qubit (active QEC).

The GKP strategy is one example of the exotic-state approach [2]. In the GKP code, the exotic states are called grid states, which are superpositions of an oscillators position eigenstates [2]. The robustness to noise in an active GKP protocol stems from the fact that small shifts in the momentum and position of the oscillator can be identified and corrected before they can corrupt the logical information. An experimental demonstration of grid states was recently realized in a superconducting circuit architecture with an active QEC protocol [3]. A GKP code with passive QEC, however, has not yet been demonstrated. Compared to active QEC, which requires complicated operations for error recovery, a passive QEC approach promises to be more efficient and could be advantageous for scaling up to larger computing architectures, as it requires fewer physical units.

A prototypical implementation of a passive GKP code involves an electron confined to two dimensions in a large magnetic field. Realizing such a passive GKP-code design with superconducting circuit architectures is not straightforward. The design would require a magnetic field to interact with microwave photons, which are the oscillations of the electromagnetic field in the superconducting circuit. But photons are neutral particles and do not interact with magnetic fields in the same way that charged particles, such as electrons, do. Strategies for creating artificial magnetic fields that can interact with photons have been discussed and demonstrated in some superconducting systems [46]. The role of magnetic fields, whether real or artificial, in these systems is to break time-reversal symmetry, creating nonreciprocal circuits with multiple ports. The nonreciprocity means that the circuits process photons in a different way depending on which port they are injected into. This asymmetry can be exploited to build nonreciprocal devices that transmit microwave signals in one direction while blocking them in the reverse direction [6].

Rymarz and colleagues have proposed a way of utilizing synthetic magnetic fields, allowing for a superconducting qubit realization of the GKP code. They propose a system in which two superconducting anharmonic oscillators, called fluxonium circuits, are coupled via a gyrator, a device that can invert the current-voltage characteristics of a circuit element (Fig. 1). The asymmetric response of the gyrator implies a breaking of time-reversal symmetry like that produced by a magnetic field. The team shows that the ground states of the system correspond to the GKP code wordsthe grid states that are used to encode the logical information. The huge advantage here is that the logical qubit is constructed from the ground states of the systemin which the system will reside if no external energy is supplied. Leaving the ground state would corrupt the logical qubit, but it comes with an energy penalty, so the protection is naturally built in.

The researchers show that the proposed superconducting circuit simulates the model of an electron confined to a two-dimensional plane and subjected to a magnetic field. As such, the circuits energies resemble those of a quantum oscillator with discrete energy levels. For a given magnetic flux, the lowest-energy states can be used to encode the GKP code words.

A qualitative analysis of the circuit predicts a robustness against common noise sources, such as charge and flux noise, making it a promising passive-QEC candidate. Clearly, the characteristics of the circuit needed to implement the new scheme require improvements of existing technology. For example, the fluxonium circuit should have a very large inductance, which isnt currently attainable but will hopefully be possible in next generation designs. The proposed implementation of the hardware-encoded grid states represents a novel utilization of synthetic magnetism and a new application for gyrators based on the anomalous quantum Hall effect [7, 8]. It remains to be seen, however, whether these gyrators can successfully be married with two fluxonium circuits on-chip. Another question is whether an actively driven nonreciprocal on-chip device [5] could be a better alternative than a gyrator based on the anomalous quantum Hall effect.

This hardware-encoded GKP code implementation complements other ongoing efforts in designing intrinsically error-protected, superconducting circuit qubits, such as the realization of the 0 qubit [9] and the proposal of the doubly nonlinear qubit, or dualmon [10]. All designs come with challenging demands on the parameters of the employed materials and of the circuit elements. Encouragingly, the implementation proposed by Rymarz and colleagues comes within feasible reach of near-future technology. Realizing GKP code words using superconducting circuits is especially promising, as it makes it relatively straightforward to implement a subset of logic gates called Clifford gates, which are required for fault-tolerant computation [2, 3]. The realization of an intrinsically robust computation unit is only the first step on the complex path towards fault-tolerant quantum computation. But every new design pushes the field of superconducting circuits towards new horizons.

Anja Metelmann is an Emmy Noether research group leader in the Department of Theoretical Physics at the Free University Berlin in Germany. In 2012, she received her Ph.D. in physics from the Technical University Berlin in Germany. She spent her postdoctoral time in the Physics Department of McGill University in Montreal, and in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University.Her research interests lie in the fundamental aspects and applications of superconducting circuits and mechanical systems in the quantum regime. Part of her current research focuses on nonreciprocity as a resource for quantum information processing.

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Physics - A Superconducting Qubit that Protects Itself - Physics