Monthly Archives: February 2021

Before I get to the serious stuff, a quick story about John Conway, a.k.a. the mathematical magician. I met him in 1993 in Princeton while working on The Death of Proof. When I poked my head into his office, Conway was sitting with his back to me staring at a computer. Hair tumbled down his back, his sagging pants exposed his ass-cleft. His office overflowed with books, journals, food wrappers and paper polyhedrons, many dangling from the ceiling. When I tentatively announced myself, he yelled without turning, Whats your birthday! Uh, June 23, I said. Year! Conway shouted. Year! 1953, I replied. After a split second he blurted out, Tuesday! He tapped his keyboard, stared at the screen and exulted, Yes! Finally facing me, Conway explained that he belongs to a group of people who calculate the day of the week of any date, past or present, as quickly as possible. He, Conway informed me with a manic grin, is one of the worlds fastest day-of-the-week calculators.

This encounter came back to me recently as I read a wonderful New York Times tribute to Conway, felled by COVID-19 last year at the age of 82. The Times focuses on the enduring influence of the Game of Life, a cellular automaton invented by Conway more than a half century ago. Scientific Americans legendary math columnist Martin Gardner introduced the Game of Life, sometimes just called Life, to the world in 1970 after receiving a letter about it from Conway. The Times riff on Life got me thinking anew about old riddles. Like, Does free will exist?

Some background. A cellular automaton is a grid of cells whose states depend on the states of neighboring cells, as determined by preset rules. The Game of Life is a two-dimensional cellular automaton with square cells that can be in one of two states, alive or dead (often represented by black or white). A given cells state depends on the state of its four immediate neighbors. If two or three of the neighbors are alive, the cell comes to life or stays alive. If zero, one or all four of the neighbors are alive, the cell dies or remains dead, presumably from loneliness or overcrowding. So simple! And yet Life, when the rules are applied over and over, ideally by a computer, yields endlessly varied patterns, including quasianimated clusters of cells known as longboats, gliders, spaceships and my favorite, Speed Demonoids.

Like the Mandelbrot set, the famous fractal icon, the Game of Life inspired the fields of chaos and complexity, which are so similar that I lump them together under a single term: chaoplexity. Chaoplexologists assume that just as Lifes odd digital fauna and flora stem from straightforward rules, so do many real-world things. With the help of computer simulations, chaoplexologists hoped to discover the rules, or algorithms, underpinning stuff that has long resisted conventional scientific analysis, from immune systems and brains to stock markets and whole civilizations. (The big data movement has recycled the hope, and hype, of chaoplexology.)

Of course, the Game of Life can be interpreted in different ways. It resembles a digital, animated Rorschach test upon which scholars project their biases. For example, philosopher Daniel Dennett, commenting on Conways invention in the Times, points out that Lifes higher-order patterns emerge from processes that are completely unmysterious and explicable.... No psionic fields, no morphic resonances, no lan vital, no dualism.

Dennetts comment annoyed me at first; Life just gives him an excuse to reiterate his defense of hard-core materialism. But Life, Dennett goes on to say, shows that deterministic rules can generate complex adaptively appropriate structures capable of action and control. Yes! I thought, my own bias coming into play. Dennett clearly means that deterministic processes can spawn phenomena that transcend determinism, like minds with free will.

Then another thought occurred to me, inspired by my ongoing effort to understand quantum mechanics. Conventional cellular automata, including Life, are strictly local, in the sense that what happens in one cell depends on what happens in its neighboring cells. But quantum mechanics suggests that nature seethes with nonlocal spooky actions. Remote, apparently disconnected things can be entangled, influencing each other in mysterious ways, as if via the filaments of ghostly, hyperdimensional cobwebs.

I wondered: Can cellular automata incorporate nonlocal entanglements? And if so, might these cellular automata provide even more support for free will than the Game of Life? Google gave me tentative answers. Yes, researchers have created many cellular automata that incorporate quantum effects, including nonlocality. There are even quantum versions of the Game of Life. But, predictably, experts disagree on whether nonlocal cellular automata bolster the case for free will.

One prominent explorer of quantum cellular automata, Nobel laureate Gerard t Hooft, flatly rules out the possibility of free will. In his 2015 monograph The Cellular Automaton Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, t Hooft argues that some annoying features of quantum mechanicsnotably its inability to specify precisely where an electron will be when we observe itcan be eliminated by reconfiguring the theory as a cellular automaton. t Hoofts model assumes the existence of hidden variables underlying apparently random quantum behavior. His model leads him to a position called superdeterminism, which eliminates (as far as I can tell; t Hoofts arguments arent easy for me to follow) any hope for free will. Our fates are fixed from the big bang on.

Another authority on cellular automata, Stephen Wolfram, creator of Mathematica and other popular mathematical programs, proposes that free will is possible. In his 2002 opus A New Kind of Science, Wolfram argues that cellular automata can solve many scientific and philosophical puzzles, including free will. He notes that many cellular automata, including the Game of Life, display the property of computational irreducibility. That is, you cannot predict in advance what the cellular automata are going to do, you can only watch and see what happens. This unpredictability is compatible with free will, or so Wolfram suggests.

John Conway, Lifes creator, also defended free will. In a 2009 paper, The Strong Free Will Theorem, Conway and Simon Kochen argue that quantum mechanics, plus relativity, provide grounds for belief in free will. At the heart of their argument is a thought experiment in which physicists measure the spin of particles. According to Conway and Kochen, the physicists are free to measure the particles in dozens of ways, which are not dictated by the preceding state of the universe. Similarly, the particles spin, as measured by the physicists, is not predetermined.

Their analysis leads Conway and Kochen to conclude that the physicists possess free willand so do the particles they are measuring. Our provocative ascription of free will to elementary particles is deliberate, Conway and Kochen write, since our theorem asserts that if experimenters have a certain freedom, then particles have exactly the same kind of freedom. That last part, which ascribes free will to particles, threw me at first; it sounded too woo. Then I recalled that prominent scientists are advocating panpsychism, the idea that consciousness pervades all matter, not just brains. If we grant electrons consciousness, why not give them free will, too?

To be honest, I have a problem with all these treatments of free will, pro and con. They examine free will within the narrow, reductionistic framework of physics and mathematics, and they equate free will with randomness and unpredictability. My choices, at least important ones, are not random, and they are all too predictable, at least for those who know me.

For example, here I am arguing for free will once again. I do so not because physical processes in my brain compel me to do so. I defend free will because the idea of free will matters to me, and I want it to matter to others. I am committed to free will for philosophical, ethical and even political reasons. I believe, for example, that deterministic views of human nature make us more likely to accept sexism, racism and militarism. No physics modelnot even the most complex, nonlocal cellular automaton--can capture my rational and, yes, emotional motives for believing in free will, but that doesnt mean these motives lack causal power.

Just as it cannot prove or disprove Gods existence, science will never decisively confirm or deny free will. In fact, t Hooft might be right. I might be just a mortal, 3-D, analog version of the Speed Demonoid, plodding from square to square, my thoughts and actions dictated by hidden, superdeterministic rules far beyond my ken. But I cant accept that grim worldview. Without free will, life lacks meaning, and hope. Especially in dark times, my faith in free will consoles me, and makes me feel less bullied by the deadly Game of Life.

Further Reading:

I obsess over free will and related riddles in my two most recent books: Pay Attention: Sex, Death, and Science, and Mind-Body Problems: Science, Subjectivity & Who We Really Are.

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Quantum Mechanics, Free Will and the Game of Life - Scientific American

Causality is one of those difficult scientific topics that can easily stray into the realm of philosophy. Sciences relationship with the concept started out simply enough: an event causes another event later in time. That had been the standard understanding of the scientific community up until quantum mechanics was introduced. Then, with the introduction of the famous spooky action at a distance that is a side effect of the concept of quantum entanglement, scientists began to question that simple interpretation of causality.

Now, researchers at the Universit Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and the University of Oxford have come up with a theory that further challenges that standard view of causality as a linear progress from cause to effect. In their new theoretical structure, cause and effect can sometimes take place in cycles, with the effect actually causing the cause.

The quantum realm itself as it is currently understood is inherently messy. There is no true understanding of things at that scale, which can be thought of better as a set of mathematical probabilities rather than actualities. These probabilities do not exactly lend themselves well to the idea of a definite cause and effect interaction between events either.

The researchers further muddied the waters using a tool known as a unitary transformation. Simply put, a unitary transformation is a fudge used to solve some of the math that is necessary to understand complex quantum systems. Using it makes solving the famous Schrodinger equation achievable using real computers.

To give a more complete explanation requires delving a bit into the space that quantum mechanics operates in. In quantum mechanics, time is simply another dimension that must be accounted for similarly to how the usual three dimensions of what we think of as linear space are accounted for. Physicists usually use another mathematical tool called a Hamiltonian to solve Schrodingers equation.

A Hamiltonian, though a mathematical concept, is often time dependent. However, it is also the part of the equation that is changed when a unitary transformation is introduced. As part of that action, it is possible to eliminate the time dependency of the Hamiltonian, to make it such that, instead of requiring time to go a certain direction (i.e. for action and reaction to take place linearly), the model turns more into a circle than a straight line, with action causing reaction and reaction causing action.

If this isnt all confusing enough, there are some extremely difficult to conceive of implications of this model (and to be clear, from a macro level, it is just a model). One important facet is that this finding has little to no relevance to every day cause and effect. The causes and effects that would be cyclical in this framework are not local in spacetime, according to the press release from ULB, so they are unlikely to have any impact on day to day life.

Even if it doesnt have any everyday impact now, this framework could hint at a combined theory of quantum mechanics and general relativity that has been the most sought after prize in physics for decades. If that synthesis is ever fully realized, there will be more implications for everyday life than just the existential questions of whether we are actually in control of our own actions or not.

Learn More:Eureka Alert: Quantum Causal LoopsNature Communications: Cyclic Quantum Causal ModelsFlorida News Times: Quantum Causal LoopUT: The three-body problem shows us why we cant accurately calculate the past

Lead Image:Artist depiction of quantum causal loopsCredit: ULB

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Quantum Theory Proposes That Cause and Effect Can Go In Loops - Universe Today

Nearly a century after dark matter was first proposed to explain the motion of galaxy clusters, physicists still have no idea what its made of.

Researchers around the world have built dozens of detectors in hopes of discovering dark matter. As a graduate student, I helped design and operate one of these detectors, aptly named HAYSTAC. But despite decades of experimental effort, scientists have yet to identify the dark matter particle.

Now, the search for dark matter has received an unlikely assist from technology used in quantum computing research. In a new paper published in the journal Nature, my colleagues on the HAYSTAC team and I describe how we used a bit of quantum trickery to double the rate at which our detector can search for dark matter. Our result adds a much-needed speed boost to the hunt for this mysterious particle.

There is compelling evidence from astrophysics and cosmology that an unknown substance called dark matter constitutes more than 80% of the matter in the universe. Theoretical physicists have proposed dozens of new fundamental particles that could explain dark matter. But to determine which if any of these theories is correct, researchers need to build different detectors to test each one.

One prominent theory proposes that dark matter is made of as-yet hypothetical particles called axions that collectively behave like an invisible wave oscillating at a very specific frequency through the cosmos. Axion detectors including HAYSTAC work something like radio receivers, but instead of converting radio waves to sound waves, they aim to convert axion waves into electromagnetic waves. Specifically, axion detectors measure two quantities called electromagnetic field quadratures. These quadratures are two distinct kinds of oscillation in the electromagnetic wave that would be produced if axions exist.

The main challenge in the search for axions is that nobody knows the frequency of the hypothetical axion wave. Imagine youre in an unfamiliar city searching for a particular radio station by working your way through the FM band one frequency at a time. Axion hunters do much the same thing: They tune their detectors over a wide range of frequencies in discrete steps. Each step can cover only a very small range of possible axion frequencies. This small range is the bandwidth of the detector.

Tuning a radio typically involves pausing for a few seconds at each step to see if youve found the station youre looking for. Thats harder if the signal is weak and theres a lot of static. An axion signal in even the most sensitive detectors would be extraordinarily faint compared with static from random electromagnetic fluctuations, which physicists call noise. The more noise there is, the longer the detector must sit at each tuning step to listen for an axion signal.

Unfortunately, researchers cant count on picking up the axion broadcast after a few dozen turns of the radio dial. An FM radio tunes from only 88 to 108 megahertz (one megahertz is one million hertz). The axion frequency, by contrast, may be anywhere between 300 hertz and 300 billion hertz. At the rate todays detectors are going, finding the axion or proving that it doesnt exist could take more than 10,000 years.

On the HAYSTAC team, we dont have that kind of patience. So in 2012 we set out to speed up the axion search by doing everything possible to reduce noise. But by 2017 we found ourselves running up against a fundamental minimum noise limit because of a law of quantum physics known as the uncertainty principle.

The uncertainty principle states that it is impossible to know the exact values of certain physical quantities simultaneously for instance, you cant know both the position and the momentum of a particle at the same time. Recall that axion detectors search for the axion by measuring two quadratures those specific kinds of electromagnetic field oscillations. The uncertainty principle prohibits precise knowledge of both quadratures by adding a minimum amount of noise to the quadrature oscillations.

In conventional axion detectors, the quantum noise from the uncertainty principle obscures both quadratures equally. This noise cant be eliminated, but with the right tools it can be controlled. Our team worked out a way to shuffle around the quantum noise in the HAYSTAC detector, reducing its effect on one quadrature while increasing its effect on the other. This noise manipulation technique is called quantum squeezing.

In an effort led by graduate students Kelly Backes and Dan Palken, the HAYSTAC team took on the challenge of implementing squeezing in our detector, using superconducting circuit technology borrowed from quantum computing research. General-purpose quantum computers remain a long way off, but our new paper shows that this squeezing technology can immediately speed up the search for dark matter.

Our team succeeded in squeezing the noise in the HAYSTAC detector. But how did we use this to speed up the axion search?

Quantum squeezing doesnt reduce the noise uniformly across the axion detector bandwidth. Instead, it has the largest effect at the edges. Imagine you tune your radio to 88.3 megahertz, but the station you want is actually at 88.1. With quantum squeezing, you would be able to hear your favorite song playing one station away.

In the world of radio broadcasting this would be a recipe for disaster, because different stations would interfere with one another. But with only one dark matter signal to look for, a wider bandwidth allows physicists to search faster by covering more frequencies at once. In our latest result we used squeezing to double the bandwidth of HAYSTAC, allowing us to search for axions twice as fast as we could before.

Quantum squeezing alone isnt enough to scan through every possible axion frequency in a reasonable time. But doubling the scan rate is a big step in the right direction, and we believe further improvements to our quantum squeezing system may enable us to scan 10 times faster.

Nobody knows whether axions exist or whether they will resolve the mystery of dark matter; but thanks to this unexpected application of quantum technology, were one step closer to answering these questions.

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The search for dark matter gets a speed boost from quantum technology - The Conversation US

Whatever happened, the Majorana drama is a setback for Microsofts ambitions to compete in quantum computing. Leading computing companies say the technology will define the future by enabling new breakthroughs in science and engineering.

Quantum computers are built from devices called qubits that encode 1s and 0s of data but can also use a quantum state called a superposition to perform math tricks not possible for the bits in a conventional computer. The main challenge to commercializing that idea is that quantum states are delicate and easily quashed by thermal or electromagnetic noise, making qubits error-prone.

Google, IBM, and Intel have all shown off prototype quantum processors with around 50 qubits, and companies including Goldman Sachs and Merck are testing the technology. But thousands or millions of qubits are likely required for useful work. Much of a quantum computers power would probably have to be dedicated to correcting its own glitches.

Microsoft has taken a different approach, claiming qubits based on Majorana particles will be more scalable, allowing it to leap ahead. But after more than a decade of work, it does not have a single qubit.

From the fuller data, theres no doubt that theres no Majorana.

Sergey Frolov, University of Pittsburgh

Majorana fermions are named after Italian physicist Ettore Majorana, who hypothesized in 1937 that particles should exist with the odd property of being their own antiparticles. Not long after, he boarded a ship and was never seen again. Physicists wouldnt report a good glimpse of one of his eponymous particles until the next millennium, in Kouwenhovens lab.

Microsoft got interested in Majoranas after company researchers in 2004 approached tech strategy chief Craig Mundie and said they had a way to solve one problem holding back quantum computersqubits flakiness.

The researchers seized on theoretical physics papers suggesting a way to build qubits that would make them more dependable. These so-called topological qubits would be built around unusual particles, of which Majorana particles are one example, that can pop into existence in clumps of electrons inside certain materials at very low temperatures.

Microsoft created a new team of physicists and mathematicians to flesh out the theory and practice of topological quantum computing, centered on an outpost in Santa Barbara, California, christened Station Q. They collaborated with and funded leading experimental physicists hunting for the particles needed to build this new form of qubit.

Kouwenhoven, in Delft, was one of the physicists who got Microsofts backing. His 2012 paper reporting signatures of Majorana particles inside nanowires started chatter about a future Nobel prize for proving the elusive particles existence. In 2016, Microsoft stepped up its investmentand the hype.

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

Kouwenhoven and another leading physicist, Charles Marcus, at the University of Copenhagen were hired as corporate Majorana hunters. The plan was to first detect the particles and then invent more complex devices that could control them and function as qubits. Todd Holmdahl, who previously led hardware for Microsofts lucrative Xbox games console, took over as leader of the topological quantum computing project. Early in 2018, he told Barrons he would have a topological qubit by the end of the year. The now-disputed paper appeared a month later.

While Microsoft sought Majoranas, competitors working on established qubit technologies reported steady progress. In 2019, Google announced it had reached a milestone called quantum supremacy, showing that a chip with 53 qubits could perform a statistical calculation in minutes that would take a supercomputer millennia. Soon after, Microsoft appeared to hedge its quantum bet, announcing it would offer access to quantum hardware from other companies via its cloud service Azure. The Wall Street Journal reported that Holmdahl left the project that year after missing an internal deadline.

Microsoft has been quieter about its expected pace of progress on quantum hardware since Holmdahl's departure. Competitors in quantum computing continue to tout hardware advances and urge software developers to access prototypes over the internet, but none appear close to creating a quantum computer ready for prime time.

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Microsofts Big Win in Quantum Computing Was an Error After All - WIRED

The promise of quantum computers is that certain computational tasks might be executed exponentially faster on a quantum processor than on a classical processor.

Quantum computing is a beautiful fusion of quantum physics with computer science. It incorporates some of the most stunning ideas of physics from the twentieth century into an entirely new way of thinking about computation. Quantum computers have the potential to resolve problems of a high complexity and magnitude across many different industries and application, including finance, transportation, chemicals, and cybersecurity. Solving the impossible in a few hours of computing time.

Quantum computing is often in the news: China teleported a qubit from earth to a satellite; Shors algorithm has put our current encryption methods at risk; quantum key distribution will make encryption safe again; Grovers algorithm will speed up data searches. But what does all this really mean? How does it all work?

Todays computers operate in a very straightforward fashion: they manipulate a limited set of data with an algorithm and give you an answer. Quantum computers are more complicated. After multiple units of data are input into qubits, the qubits are manipulated to interact with other qubits, allowing for several calculations to be done simultaneously. Thats where quantum computers are a lot faster than todays machines.

Quantum computers have four fundamental capabilities that differentiate them from todays classical computers:

All computations involve inputting data, manipulating it according to certain rules, and then outputting the final answer. For classical computations, the bit is the basic unit of data. For quantum computation, this unit is the quantum bit usually shortened to qubit.

The basic unit of quantum computing is a qubit. A classical bit is either 0 or 1. If its 0 and we measure it, we get 0. If its 1 and we measure 1, we get 1. In both cases the bit remains unchanged. The standard example is an electrical switch that can be either on or off. The situation is totally different for qubits. Qubits are volatile. A qubit can be in one of an infinite number of states a superposition of both 0 and 1 but when we measure it, as in the classical case, we just get one of two values, either 0 or 1. Qubits can also become entangled. In fact, the act of measurement changes the qubit. When we make a measurement of one of them, it affects the state of the other. Whats more, they interact with other qubits. In fact, these interactions are what make it possible to conduct multiple calculations at once.

Nobody really knows quite how or why entanglement works. It even baffled Einstein, who famously described it as spooky action at a distance. But its key to the power of quantum computers. In a conventional computer, doubling the number of bits doubles its processing power. But thanks to entanglement, adding extra qubits to a quantum machine produces an exponential increase in its number-crunching ability.

These three things superposition, measurement, and entanglement are the key quantum mechanical ideas. Controlling these interactions, however, is very complicated. The volatility of qubits can cause inputs to be lost or altered, which can throw off the accuracy of results. And creating a computer of meaningful scale would require hundreds of thousands of millions of qubits to be connected coherently. The few quantum computers that exist today can handle nowhere near that number. But the good news is were getting very, very close.

Quantum computing and classical computer are not two distinct disciplines. Quantum computing is the more fundamental form of computing anything that can be computed classically can be computed on a quantum computer. The qubit is the basic unit of computation, not the bit. Computation, in its essence, really means quantum computing. A qubit can be represented by the spin of an electron or the polarization of a photon.

In 2019 Google achieved a level of quantum supremacy when they reported the use of a processor with programmable superconducting qubits to create quantum states on 54 qubits, corresponding to a computational state-space of dimension 253(about 1016). This incredible achievement was slightly short of their mission goal for creating quantum states of 72 qubits. What is so special about this number? Classical computers can simulate quantum computers if the quantum computer doesnt have too many qubits, but as the number of qubits increases we reach the point where that is no longer possible.

There are 8 possible three-bit combinations: 000,001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, 111. The number 8 comes from 23. There are two choices for the first bit, two for the second and two for the third, and we might multiple these three 2s together. If instead of bits we switch to qubits, each of these 8 three-bit strings is associated with a basis vector, so the vector space is 8-dimensional. If we have 72 qubits, the number of basis elements is 2. This is about 4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. It is a large number and is considered to be the point at which classical computers cannot simulate quantum computers. Once quantum computers have more than 72 or so qubits we truly enter the age of quantum supremacy when quantum computers can do computations that are beyond the ability of any classical computer.

To provide a little more perspective, lets consider a machine with 300 qubits. This doesnt seem an unreasonable number of the not too distant future. But 2300 is an enormous number. Its more than the number of elementary particles in the known universe. A computation using 300 qubits would be working with 2300 basis elements.

Some calculations required for the effective simulation of real-life scenarios are simply beyond the capability of classical computers whats known as intractable problems. Quantum computers, with their huge computational power, are ideally suited to solving these problems. Indeed, some problems, like factoring, are hard on a classical computer, but are easy on a quantum computer. This creates a world of opportunities, across almost every aspect of modern life.

Healthcare: classical computers are limited in terms of size and complexity of molecules they can simulate and compare (an essential process of early drug development). Quantum computers will allow much larger molecules to be simulated. At the same time, researchers will be able to model and simulate interactions between drugs and all 20,000+ proteins encoded in the human genome, leading to greater advancements in pharmacology.

Finance: one potential application is algorithmic trading using complex algorithms to automatically trigger share dealings based on a wide variety of market variables. The advantages, especially for high-volume transactions, are significant. Another application is fraud detection. Like diagnostics in healthcare, fraud detection is reliant upon pattern recognition. Quantum computers could deliver a significant improvement in machine learning capabilities; dramatically reducing the time taken to train a neural network and improving the detection rate.

Logistics: Improved data analysis and modelling will enable a wide range of industries to optimize workflows associated with transport, logistics and supply-chain management. The calculation and recalculation of optimal routes could impact on applications as diverse as traffic management, fleet operations, air traffic control, freight and distribution.

It is, of course, impossible to predict the long-term impact of quantum computing with any accuracy. Quantum computing is now in its infancy, and the comparison to the first computers seems apt. The machines that have been constructed so far tend to be large and not very powerful, and they often involve superconductors that need cooled to extremely low temperatures. To minimize the interaction of quantum computers with the environment, they are always protected from light and heat. They are shieled against electromagnetic radiation, and they are cooled. One thing that can happen in cold places is that certain materials become superconductors they lose all electrical resistance and superconductors have quantum properties that can be exploited.

Many countries are experimenting with small quantum networks using optic fiber. There is the potential of connecting these via satellite and being able to form a worldwide quantum network. This work is of great interest to financial institutions. One early impressive result involves a Chinese satellite that is devoted to quantum experiments. Its named Micius after a Chinese philosopher who did work in optics. A team in China connected to a team in Austria the first time that intercontinental quantum key distribution (QKD) had been achieved. Once the connection was secured, the teams sent pictures to one another. The Chinese team sent the Austrians a picture of Micius, and the Austrians sent a picture of Schrodinger to the Chinese.

To actually make practical quantum computers you need to solve a number of problems, the most serious being decoherence the problem of your qubit interacting with something from the environment that is not part of the computation. You need to set a qubit to an initial state and keep it in that state until you need to use it. Their quantum state is extremely fragile. The slightest vibration or change in temperature disturbances known as noise in quantum-speak can cause them to tumble out of superposition before their job has been properly done. Thats why researchers are doing the best to protect qubits from the outside world in supercooled fridges and vacuum chambers.

Alan Turing is one of the fathers of the theory of computation. In his landmark paper of 1936 he carefully thought about computation. He considered what humans did as they performed computations and broke it down to its most elemental level. He showed that a simple theoretical machine, which we now call a Turing machine, could carry out any algorithm. But remember, Turing was analyzing computation based on what humans do. With quantum computation the focus changes from how humans compute to how the universe computes. Therefore, we should think of quantum computation as not a new type of computation but as the discovery of the true nature of computation.

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Kangaroo Court: Quantum Computing Thinking on the Future - JD Supra

Europe has always been excellent in academic research, but over the past few decades commercializing research projects has been slow compared to international competition. This is starting to change with quantum technologies. As one of the largest efforts in Europe and worldwide, Germany announced 2 Billion funding into quantum programs in June 2020, from which 120 Million are invested in this current round of research grants.

Today, IQM announced a Quantum project consortium that includes Europe's leading startups (ParityQC, IQM), industry leaders (Infineon Technologies), research centers (Forschungszentrum Jlich),supercomputing centers (Leibniz Supercomputing Centre), and academia (Freie Universitt Berlin) has been awarded 12.4 Million from the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) (Announcement in German).

The scope of the project is to accelerate commercialization through an innovative co-design concept. This project focuses on application-specific quantum processors, which have the potential to create a fastlane to quantum advantage. The digital-analog concept used to operate the processors will further lay the foundation for commercially viable quantum computers. This project will run for four years and aims to develop a 54-qubit quantum processor.

The project is intended to support the European FET Flagship project EU OpenSuperQ, announced in 2018 which is aimed at designing, building, and operating a quantum information processing system of up to 100 qubits. Deploying digital-analog quantum computing, this consortium adds a new angle to the OpenSuperQ project and widens its scope. With efforts from Munich, Berlin and Jlich, as well as Parity QC from Austria, the project builds bridges and seamlessly integrates into the European quantum landscape.

"The grant from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germanyis a huge recognition of our unique co-design approach for quantum computers. Last year when we established our office in Munich, this was one of our key objectives. The concept allows us to become a system integrator for full-stack quantum computers by bringing together all the relevant players. As Europe's leading startup in quantum technologies, this gives us confidence to further invest in Germany and other European countries" said Dr. Jan Goetz, CEO of IQM Quantum Computers.

As European technology leader, Germany is taking several steps to lead the quantum technology race. An important role of such leadership is to bring together the European startups, industry, research and academic partners. This project will give the quantum landscape in Germany an accelerated push and will create a vibrant quantum ecosystem in the region for the future.

Additional Quotes:

"DAQC is an important project for Germany and Europe. It enables us to take a leading role in the area of quantum technologies. It also allows us to bring quantum computing into one of the prime academic supercomputing centres to more effectively work on the important integration of high-performance computing and quantum computing. We are looking forward to a successful collaboration," said Prof. DrMartinSchulz, Member of the Board of Directors, Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ).

"The path towards scalable and fully programmable quantum computing will be the parallelizability of gates and building with reduced complexity in order to ensure manageable qubit control. Our ParityQC architecture is the blueprint for a fully parallelizable quantum computer, which comes with the associated ParityOS operating system. With the team of extraordinary members of the DAQC consortium this will allow us to tackle the most pressing and complex industry-relevant optimization problems." saidMagdalena Hauser & Wolfgang Lechner, CEOs & Co-founder ParityQC

"We are looking forward to exploring and realizing a tight connection between hardware and applications, and having DAQC quantum computers as a compatible alternative within the OpenSuperQ laboratory. Collaborations like this across different states, and including both public and private partners, have the right momentum to move quantum computing in Germany forward." saidProf. Frank Wilhelm-Mauch, Director, Institute for Quantum Computing Analytics, Forschungszentrum Jlich

"At Infineon, we are looking forward to collaborating with top-class scientists and leading start-ups in the field of quantum computing in Europe. We must act now if we in Germany and Europe do not want to become solely dependent on American or Asian know-how in this future technology area. We are very glad to be part of this highly innovative project and happy to contribute with our expertise in scaling and manufacturing processes." saidDr.Sebastian Luber, Senior Director Technology & Innovation, Infineon Technologies AG

"This is a hugely exciting project. It is a chance of Europe and Germany to catch up in the development of superconducting quantum computers. I am looking forward to adventures on understanding how such machines can be certified in their precise functioning." said Prof.Jens Eisert, Professor of Quantum Physics, Freie Universitt Berlin

About IQM Quantum Computers:

IQM is the European leader in superconducting quantum computers, headquartered in Espoo, Finland. Since its inception in 2018, IQM has grown to 80+ employees and has also established a subsidiary in Munich, Germany, to lead the co-design approach. IQM delivers on-premises quantum computers for research laboratories and supercomputing centers and provides complete access to its hardware. For industrial customers, IQM delivers quantum advantage through a unique application-specific co-design approach. IQM has raised 71 Million from VCs firms and also public grants and is also building Finland's first quantum computer.

For more information, visit http://www.meetiqm.com.

Registered offices:

IQM Finland OyKeilaranta 1902150 EspooFINLANDwww.meetiqm.com

IQM GERMANY GmbHNymphenburgerstr. 8680636 MnchenGermany

IQM: Facts and Figures

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New EU Consortium shaping the future of Quantum Computing USA - PRNewswire

Dublin, Feb. 11, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Quantum Communications in Space" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The modern world more and more relies on information exchange using data transfer technologies.

Private and secure communications are fundamental for the Internet, national defence and e-commerce, thus justifying the need for a secure network with the global protection of data. Information exchange through existing data transfer channels is becoming prone to hacker attacks causing problems on an international scale, such as interference with democratic elections, etc.

In reality the scale of the "hacking" problem is continual, in 2019 British companies were reportedly hit by about 5,000 "ransomware" attacks that paid out more than $200 million to cyber criminals [1]. During the first half of 2020, $144.2 million has already been lost in 11 of the biggest ransomware attacks [2]. Communications privacy is therefore of great concern at present.

The reasons for the growing privacy concerns are [3]: the planned increase of secure information (requiring encryption) data traffic rates from the current 10 to future 100 Gbit/s; annual increases in data traffic of 20-25% and the application of fibre optic cables not only for mainstream network lines by also for the "final mile" to the end-user. These developments are accompanied by [3]: growing software vulnerabilities; more powerful computational resources available to hackers at lower costs; possible quantum computer applications for encryption cracking and the poor administration of computer networks.

Conventional public key cryptography relies on the computational intractability of certain mathematical functions.

Applied conventional encryption algorithms (DH, RSA, ECDSA TLS/SSL, HTTPS, IPsec, X.509) are good in that there is currently no way to find the key (with a sufficient length) for any acceptable time. Nevertheless, in principle it is possible, and there are no guarantees against the discovery in the future of a fast factorization algorithm for classical computers or from the implementation of already known algorithms on a quantum computer, which will make conventional encryption "hacking" possible. Another "hacking" strategy involves original data substitution. A final vulnerability comes from encryption keys being potentially stolen. Hence, the demand exists for a truly reliable and convenient encryption system.

Quantum communications are expected to solve the problem of secure communications first on international and national scales and then down to the personal level.

Quantum communication is a field of applied quantum physics closely related to quantum information processing and quantum teleportation [4]. It's most interesting application is protecting information channels against eavesdropping by means of quantum cryptography [4].

Quantum communications are considered to be secure because any tinkering with them is detectable. Thus, quantum communications are only trustful and safe in the knowledge that any eavesdropping would leave its mark.

By quantum communications two parties can communicate secretly by sharing a quantum encryption key encoded in the polarization of a string of photons.

This quantum key distribution (QKD) idea was proposed in the mid-1980s [5]. QKD theoretically offers a radical new way of an information secure solution to the key exchange problem, ensured by the laws of quantum physics. In particular, QKD allows two distant users, who do not share a long secret key initially, to generate a common, random string of secret bits, called a secret key.

Using the one-time pad encryption, this key has been proven to be secure [6] to encrypt/decrypt a message, which can then be transmitted over a standard communication channel. The information is encoded in the superposition states of physical carriers at a single-quantum level, where photons, the fastest traveling qubits, are usually used. Any eavesdropper on the quantum channel attempting to gain information of the key will inevitably introduce disturbance to the system that can be detected by the communicating users.

Key Topics Covered:

1. INTRODUCTION

2. Quantum Experiments at a Space Scale (QUESS)2.1. European root of the Chinese project 2.2. Chinese Counterpart2.3. The QUESS Mission set-up 2.3.1. Spacecraft 2.3.2. Ground stations 2.3.3. Project budget 2.4. International cooperation2.5. Results2.6. Tiangong-2 Space Lab QKD

3. Future plans

4. Comparison to alternatives4.1. Small Photon-Entangling Quantum System4.2. Hyperentangled Photon Pairs 4.3. QEYSSat 4.4. Reflector satellites 4.5. GEO satellite communications 4.6. Airborne4.7. Ground4.7.1. Moscow quantum communications line4.7.2. Telephone & optical line communications

5. CONCLUSIONS

REFERENCES

Companies Mentioned

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2020 Quantum Communications in Space Research Report: Quantum Communications are Expected to Solve the Problem of Secure communications First on...