Nb: State of the art performance (both for accelerators and quantum), challenges, and opportunities for material science
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
SEARCH · Engineering Papers
Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Measurements take a singular role in quantum theory. While they are often idealized as an instantaneous process, this is in conflict with all other physical processes in nature. In this Letter, we adopt a standpoint where the interaction with an environment is a crucial ingredient for the occurrence of a measurement. Within this framework, we derive lower bounds on the time needed for a measurement to occur. Our bound scales proportionally to the change in entropy of the measured system, and decreases as the number of of possible measurement outcomes or the interaction strength driving the measurement increases. We evaluate our bound in two examples where the environment is modelled by bosonic modes and the measurement apparatus is modelled by spins or bosons.
In this paper, we will describe some of the underlying principles of QGC, discuss its potential capability, and report on the progress of our hardware development to date.
A special class of valleytronic two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors possesses carrier pockets (i.e., valleys) along certain directions in the first Brillouin zone, which can be applied as a new degree of freedom for information storage and processing. Here we show that members of this family that are ferroelectric allow the location of these valleys to be switched by rotating the ferroelectric polarization. This makes possible the control of electronic state transmission probability through an energy barrier by ferroelectrically switching the polarization direction, thereby creating or eliminating valley matching in reciprocal space. We apply molecular beam epitaxy to grow lateral sandwich heterostructures with monolayer-thick ferroelectric SnTe separated by nanometer-wide paraelectric PbTe as the barriers. Using scanning tunneling microscopy, we show that the transmission probability of the 2D hole states at the valence band maximum of SnTe monolayer strongly relies on the relative orientation between the polarization directions of the two SnTe electrodes. The transmission can be switched from a suppressed state to a permitted state by rotating the ferroelectric polarization of one SnTe electrode by 90 degrees. Our work demonstrates the electric-field-control of valley locations and its potential for tunnel junction valleytronic devices.
A new paradigm for data science has emerged, with quantum data, quantum models, and quantum computational devices. This field, called quantum machine learning (QML), aims to achieve a speedup over traditional machine learning for data analysis. However, its success usually hinges on efficiently training the parameters in quantum neural networks, and the field of QML is still lacking theoretical scaling results for their trainability. Some trainability results have been proven for a closely related field called variational quantum algorithms (VQAs). While both fields involve training a parametrized quantum circuit, there are crucial differences that make the results for one setting not readily applicable to the other. In this work, we bridge the two frameworks and show that gradient scaling results for VQAs can also be applied to study the gradient scaling of QML models. Our results indicate that features deemed detrimental for VQA trainability can also lead to issues such as barren plateaus in QML. Consequently, our work has implications for several QML proposals in the literature. In addition, we provide theoretical and numerical evidence that QML models exhibit further trainability issues not present in VQAs, arising from the use of a training dataset. We refer to these as dataset-induced barren plateaus. These results are most relevant when dealing with classical data, as here the choice of embedding scheme (i.e., the map between classical data and quantum states) can greatly affect the gradient scaling.
Rapid progress in noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) computing technology has led to the development of novel resource-efficient hybrid quantum-classical algorithms, such as the variational quantum eigensolver (VQE), that can address open challenges in quantum chemistry, physics, and material science. Proof-of-principle quantum chemistry simulations for small molecules have been demonstrated on NISQ devices. While several approaches have been theoretically proposed for correlated materials, NISQ simulations of interacting periodic models on current quantum devices have not yet been demonstrated. Here, we develop a hybrid quantum-classical simulation framework for correlated electron systems based on the Gutzwiller variational embedding approach. We implement this framework on Rigetti quantum processing units (QPUs) and apply it to the periodic Anderson model, which describes a correlated heavy electron band hybridizing with noninteracting conduction electrons. Our simulation results quantitatively reproduce the known ground state quantum phase diagram including metallic, Kondo and Mott insulating phases. This is the first fully self-consistent hybrid quantum-classical simulation of an infinite correlated lattice model executed on QPUs, demonstrating that the Gutzwiller hybrid quantum-classical embedding framework is a powerful approach to simulate correlated materials on NISQ hardware. This benchmark study also puts forth a concrete pathway towards practical quantum advantage on NISQ devices.
Abstract Photon detection at microwave frequency is of great interest due to its application in quantum computation information science and technology. Herein are results from studying microwave response in a topological superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) realized in Dirac semimetal Cd 3 As 2 . The temperature dependence and microwave power dependence of the SQUID junction resistance are studied, from which we obtain an effective temperature at each microwave power level. It is observed the effective temperature increases with the microwave power. This observation of large microwave response may pave the way for single photon detection at the microwave frequency in topological quantum materials.
The goal of the project is to design, develop, and execute new computational methods on practical quantum computing platforms to simulate hard problems in chemical and materials sciences. We exploited the two leading quantum computing platforms of trapped atomic ion and superconducting qubits, established in laboratories at Duke University and the University of Maryland, to discover new simulation and computational methods for the study of quantum chemistry and materials.
Transient stability assessment (TSA) is a cornerstone for resilient operations of todays interconnected power grids. This paper is a confluence of quantum computing, data science and machine learning to potentially address the power system TSA issue. Here, we devise a quantum TSA (QTSA) method to enable scalable and efficient data-driven transient stability prediction for bulk power systems, which is the first attempt to tackle the TSA issue with quantum computing. Our contributions are three-fold: 1) A high expressibility, low-depth (HELD) quantum circuit is designed for accurate and noise-resilient TSA; 2) A quantum natural gradient descent algorithm is developed for efficient HELD circuit training; 3) A systematical analysis on QTSAs performance under various quantum factors is per-formed. QTSA underpins a foundation of quantum-enabled and data-driven power grid stability analytics. It renders the intractable TSA straightforward and effortless in the Hilbert space, and therefore provides stability information for power system operations. Extensive experiments on quantum simulators and real quantum computers verify the accuracy, noise-resilience, scalability and universality of QTSA.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
The Space Science and Technology Partnership Forum (S&T Forum), comprised of an interagency team from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the United States Space Force, presents findings and recommendations from a study on the state of quantum sensors for space applications, enabling component technologies, facilities, and developers across government, industry, and academia. The following five areas of quantum sensing technology (listed in alphabetical order) were identified as being of near-term interest to all three S&T Forum agencies: atomic clocks, atom interferometers, quantum magnetometers, Rydberg sensors, and single photon detectors. This paper focuses on two recommendations: 1) increased collaboration between the S&T Forum, industry, and academia on the development of enabling components for the five quantum sensing technology areas, and 2) challenges and future opportunities to take quantum sensors from the laboratory to space. Through this study, the S&T Forum found a diverse and broad community of quantum sensing developers in the United States that are leading efforts in research, testing, manufacturing, and qualification of quantum sensors and their enabling component technologies. There are common needs across quantum sensing technology areas. To address the common needs, the S&T Forum agencies are encouraged to utilize existing models and mechanisms to enable co-development of enabling component technologies and to explore new avenues for engagement with the quantum sensing community.
The Space Science and Technology Partnership Forum (S&T Forum), comprised of an interagency team from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the United States Space Force, presents findings and recommendations from a study on the state of quantum sensors for space applications, enabling component technologies, facilities, and developers across government, industry, and academia. The following five areas of quantum sensing technology (listed in alphabetical order) were identified as being of near-term interest to all three S&T Forum agencies: atomic clocks, atom interferometers, quantum magnetometers, Rydberg sensors, and single photon detectors. This paper focuses on two recommendations: 1) increased collaboration between the S&T Forum, industry, and academia on the development of enabling components for the five quantum sensing technology areas, and 2) challenges and future opportunities to take quantum sensors from the laboratory to space. Through this study, the S&T Forum found a diverse and broad community of quantum sensing developers in the United States that are leading efforts in research, testing, manufacturing, and qualification of quantum sensors and their enabling component technologies. There are common needs across quantum sensing technology areas. To address the common needs, the S&T Forum agencies are encouraged to utilize existing models and mechanisms to enable co-development of enabling component technologies and to explore new avenues for engagement with the quantum sensing community.
Inspired by recent advancements in simulating periodic systems on quantum computers, we develop an approach to further advance the simulation of these systems, named (SC) 2 -ADAPT-VQE. Our approach extends the scalable-circuits ADAPT-VQE framework, which builds an ansatz from a pool of coordinate-invariant operators defined for arbitrarily large, though not arbitrarily small, volumes. Our method uses a classically tractable “surrogate constructed” method to remove irrelevant operators from the pool, reducing the minimum size for which the scalable circuits are defined. Bringing together the scalable circuits and the surrogate constructed approaches forms the core of the (SC) 2 methodology. Our approach allows for a wider set of classical computations on small volumes, which can be used for a more robust extrapolation protocol. While developed in the context of lattice models, the surrogate construction portion is applicable to a wide variety of problems where information about the relative importance of operators in the pool is available. As an example, we use it to compute the properties of the Schwinger model—quantum electrodynamics for a single, massive fermion in 1 +1 dimensions—and show that our method can be used to accurately extrapolate to the continuum limit.
In ordered magnets, the elementary excitations are spin waves (magnons), which obey Bose–Einstein statistics. Similarly to Cooper pairs in superconductors, magnons can be paired into bound states under attractive interactions. The Zeeman coupling to a magnetic field is able to tune the particle density through a quantum critical point, beyond which a ‘hidden order’ is predicted to exist. Here, in this work, we report direct observation of the Bose–Einstein condensation of the two-magnon bound state in Na 2 BaNi(PO 4 ) 2 . Comprehensive thermodynamic measurements confirmed the two-dimensional Bose–Einstein condensation quantum critical point at the saturation field. Inelastic neutron scattering experiments were performed to establish the microscopic model. An exact solution revealed stable two-magnon bound states that were further confirmed by electron spin resonance and nuclear magnetic resonance experiments, demonstrating that the quantum critical point is due to the pair condensation, and the phase below the saturation field is likely the long-sought-after spin nematic phase.
Not Available
Delay lines that store quantum information are crucial for advancing quantum repeaters and hardware efficient quantum computers. Traditionally, they are realized as extended systems that support wave propagation but provide limited control over the propagating fields. Here, we introduce a parametrically addressed delay line for microwave photons that provides a high level of control over the stored pulses. By parametrically driving a three-wave mixing circuit element that is weakly hybridized with an ensemble of resonators, we engineer a spectral response that simulates that of a physical delay line, while providing fast control over the delay line’s properties. We demonstrate this novel degree of control by choosing which photon echo to emit, translating pulses in time, and even swapping two pulses, all with pulse energies on the order of a single photon. We also measure the noise added from our parametric interactions and find it is much less than one photon.
Increasing the fidelity of single-qubit gates requires a combination of faster pulses and increased qubit coherence. However, these requirements can be contradictory. Additionally, increasing the drive power can heat the qubit’s environment and degrade coherence. In this work, we circumvent this issue and achieve rapid gates by pumping a transmon’s native Kerr at approximately one third of the qubit’s resonant frequency. The subharmonic Rabi rate of the process is proportional to applied drive amplitude cubed, allowing for rapid gates. In addition, we demonstrate that filtering can be used to protect the qubit’s coherence while performing rapid gates. Single qubit gates as short as 37.4 ns are demonstrated with fidelity of 99.91%. We present theoretical calculations indicating that drive induced multi-photon decay will not limit qubit lifetime; calculated power absorption also indicates that this technique could reduce cryostat heating for fast gates, a vital requirement for large-scale quantum computers.
We use the entanglement negativity, a bipartite measure of entanglement in mixed quantum states, to study how multipartite entanglement constrains the real-space structure of the ground state wavefunctions of (2 + 1)-dimensional topological phases. We focus on the (Abelian) Laughlin and (non-Abelian) Moore-Read states at filling fraction ν = 1/m. We show that a combination of entanglement negativities, calculated with respect to specific cylinder and torus geometries, determines a necessary condition for when a topological state can be disentangled, i.e., factorized into a tensor product of states defined on cylinder subregions. This condition, which requires the ground state to lie in a definite topological sector, is sufficient for the Laughlin state. On the other hand, we find that a general Moore-Read ground state cannot be disentangled even when the disentangling condition holds.