quantum science

From University of Wisconsin, July 21, 2020: The Institute for Hybrid Quantum Architectures and Networks has been named a National Science Foundation Quantum Leap Challenge Institute. HQAN’s partnerships include Fermilab. The five-year, $25 million institute helps establishes the Midwest region as a major hub of quantum science.

Fans of Fermilab know that our scientists are experts in the weird realm of quantum physics. In recent years, they’ve been harnessing the strange properties of the quantum world to develop game-changing technologies in quantum computing, quantum sensors and quantum communication. Learn more about the burgeoning area of quantum information science and how Fermilab is advancing this exciting field.

From the Chicago Quantum Exchange, July 7, 2020: The Chicago Quantum Exchange has added to its community seven new corporate partners in computing, technology and finance that are working to bring about and primed to take advantage of the coming quantum revolution. These new industry partners are Intel, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Quantum Design, Qubitekk, Rigetti Computing, and Zurich Instruments. The Chicago Quantum Exchange is anchored by the University of Chicago, Fermilab, Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and it includes the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Northwestern University.

From the Chicago Quantum Exchange, May 18, 2020: Farah Fahim is the deputy head of quantum science at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. For much of her career, she developed low-noise, high-speed reconfigurable pixel detectors for high-energy physics and photon science. She recently pivoted to control and readout electronics for quantum systems, and says, “The future is bright.”

From Physics World, April 3, 2020: A collaboration that includes Fermilab scientists is exploring how quantum computing could be used to analyze the vast amount of data produced by experiments on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The researchers have shown that a “quantum support vector machine” can help physicists make sense out of the huge amounts of information generated at CERN.

From The Chicago Maroon, March 22, 2020: The University of Chicago, working with scientists from Argonne National Laboratory, has developed a new fiber-optic quantum loop to expand quantum communication experiments. Along with the UChicago quantum loop, Argonne is working with Fermilab to plan and develop a similar two-way quantum link network.

Fermilab technology developed for particle accelerators offers a valuable opportunity to search for a hypothesized particle that would resemble a particle of light. These dark photons could help us understand the large part of our universe that we know is there but have yet to observe.

From EurekAlert!, March 6, 2020: Caltech and JPL have designed a practical, high-rate, high-fidelity quantum communication system over fiber and free space. The team is on track to deploy, commission and demonstrate both concepts, including a free-space, municipal quantum link between JPL and Caltech, in 2020-21. They will also establish a space-based quantum optical connection between the Caltech-JPL quantum network and quantum networks in the Midwest, including Fermilab’s FQNET and IEQNET, together with Argonne National Laboratory.

From HPC Wire, March 2, 2020: Fermilab scientists are collaborating with researchers at Argonne, where they’ll run simulations on high-performance computers. Their work will help determine whether instruments called superconducting radio-frequency cavities, also used in particle accelerators, can solve one of the biggest problems facing the successful development of a quantum computer: the decoherence of qubits.

One of the most difficult problems to overcome in developing a quantum computer is finding a way to maintain the lifespan of information held in quantum bits, called qubits. Researchers at Fermilab and Argonne National Laboratory are working to determine whether devices used in particle accelerators can help solve the problem. The team will run simulations on high-performance computers that will enable them to predict the lifespan of information held within these qubits using smaller versions of these devices, taking us one step closer to the age of quantum computing.