Engineers from Purdue University have developed a device to address a complication which has stood in the path of developing quantum networks large enough to reliably support more than a handful of users.

The engineers' approach, described in Optica, could form part of the groundwork for establishing a quantum internet: a large number of interconnected quantum computers, quantum sensors and other quantum technologies exchanging data.

They developed a programmable switch which can be used to adjust how much data goesto each user in the network by selecting and redirecting wavelengths of light carrying the different data channels, making it possible to increase the number of users without adding to photon loss as the network grows. When photons are lost - which becomes more likely the further they have to travel through fibre-optic networks - their associated quantum information is lost.

We show a way to do wavelength routing with just one piece of equipment wavelength-selective switch to, in principle, build a network of 12 to 20 users, maybe even more, said Professor Andree Weiner, an electrical and computer engineer. Previous approaches have required physically interchanging dozens of fixed optical filters tuned to individual wavelengths, which made the ability to adjust connections between users not practically viable and photon loss more likely.

Rather than adding these fixed filters every time a new user joins the network which makes scaling an awkward process engineers can simply program the wavelength-selective switch to direct data-carrying wavelengths over to each new user. This would reduce operational and maintenance costs, in addition to making the quantum internet more efficient.

The switch could also be programmed to adjust bandwidth in response to a users needs; this is not possible with fixed optical filters. This is based on similar technology to that used for adjusting bandwidth for classical communication, a widespread practice today. Like classical light-based communications, the switch is also capable of using a flex grid to partition bandwidth to users at a variety of wavelengths and locations, rather than being restricted to a series of fixed wavelengths, each with a fixed bandwith.

Forming connections between users of a quantum internet and adjusting bandwidth means distributing entanglement: a quantum-mechanical phenomenon in which at least two particles are created with entangled states. This means that they have a fixed relationship to each other no matter the distance between them; change the state of one and the state of the others change instantaneously. Entanglement is one of the quantum phenomena at the core of quantum information and quantum computing.

When people talk about a quantum internet, its this idea of generating entanglement remotely between two different stations, such as between quantum computers, said PhD candidate Navin Lingaraju. Our method changes the rate at which entangled photons are shared between different users. These entangled photons might be used as a resource to entangle quantum computers or quantum sensors at the two different stations.

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Quantum internet one step closer to reality with innovative wavelength switch - E&T Magazine

John Martinis, the lead scientist who built Googles first computer to achieve quantum supremacy, recently left the tech giant to join Silicon Quantum Computing, a 2017-founded startup based in Sydney.

Meanwhile Terra Quantum, a Swiss-based quantum computing startup, has celebrated another big hire with high-profile physicist Valerii Vinokur from the Argonne National Laboratory in the US.

There is a trend for academics going to startups now, and it is a good sign when the seasoned professionals start joining.

Both moves are a sign that smaller startups are able to compete with the big players in the brewing war for talent in the quantum sector, as the industry begins to get out of the lab towards commercial applications.

Markus Pflitsch, cofounder Terra Quantum, says that big shot professors joining startups is a sign that smaller quantum companies are being taken increasingly seriously. He adds that the field is so new that new companies may well be just as successful as the likes of IBM, Google and Microsoft.

There is a trend for academics going to startups now, and it is a good sign when the seasoned professionals start joining, says Pflitsch.

Competition is fierce though.

European governments recent moves to pour funding into quantum projects (France recently pledged to spend 1.8bn in the sector and Germany 2bn) is partly motivated by a desire to avoid leading academics from the region, says Christophe Jurczak, founder of Quantonation.

The French government feels very strongly that the country is suffering from a brain drain in the field of AI, and they dont want that to happen with quantum while there is more time to prepare, says Jurczak, who was instrumental in helping formulate the French plan.

Quantum computing companies are raising ever-larger funding rounds and using the money for hiring.

Riverlane, a Cambridge-based startup which raised a 14.6m last month, is looking to double its team of 26 this year. Cambridge Quantum Computing, which raised a $45m early VC round in December, has gone from 37 employees in 2018 to close to 90 now and is hiring for 30+ more roles. Finnish superconducting quantum computer maker IQM, which raised a 39m Series A round in November, has more than doubled its headcount in the last year.

The shortage in the industry is no longer the money, it is the brainpower, says Pflitsch, who now has a staff of around 80 at Terra Quantum. The talent is so important, we cant do it without these guys. If you have those brains at Google or Terra Quantum it doesnt matter, it is a fair battle.

Big advances are still happening at relatively unknown teams at labs all around the world. In December a group based at the University of Science and Technology of China demonstrated quantum superiority the Holy Grail of the sector by getting a photon-based quantum system to do in 20 seconds what would take a supercomputer 600m years. The demonstration outdid Googles 2018 demonstration of quantum superiority by several orders of magnitude.

Small companies can compete in quantum if they have a breakthrough.

If a lab can do that it shows that small companies can compete in quantum if they have a breakthrough, says Daniel Carew, principal at IQ Capital.

French photonics-based quantum company Pasqal is thought to have achieved a record in the simulation of quantum systems with 196 qubits in the lab. If confirmed, this would give Europe a quantum advantage.

With so much still undeveloped, the quantum computing world still has an amateur enthusiast flavour to it with big developments able to come from unexpected places, much like the early days of the personal computer in the 1970s.

Its a bit like the homebrew computer club, says Steve Brierley, chief executive of Riverlane, referencing the early hobbyist computer club that ran in a garage in Californias Menlo Park between 1975 and 1986, and which became the training ground for tech entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

Theres a lot of tinkering. Its happening over the cloud rather than in someones shed, but there is that same excitement.

It is still not clear which kind of quantum computing will be the dominant technology. Many of the big bets are on superconducting quantum computers, which operate at temperatures close to absolute zero, but there is investment going into photon-based systems, where photons are bounced into a quantum state by a series of mirrors, systems using trapped ions and silicon-based systems which dont have to operate at quite the super-low temperatures of the superconducting systems.

Researchers from Microsoft and the University of Sydney recently announced they had developed a quantum computing system that uses the same kind of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) chips already used in classic computing.

If they have baked the wrong technology, some companies may disappear overnight.

It is still early days of knowing which style of quantum will prevail, says Pflitsch. If they have baked the wrong technology, he says, some companies may disappear overnight

Much of the big investment so far has gone into superconducting qubits, in part because the refrigeration technology needed for this is more established and available. But if there are big breakthroughs in one of the other areas which would make the qubits more reliable or scalable this could become the dominant technology.

I think atoms and ions will be dominant first, they have many advantages as for scalability (atoms) and fidelity (ions). In the longer term, solid-state approaches (superconducting qubits, spins, photons) should catch up, says Christophe Jurczak, founder of Quantonation, the quantum-focused VC fund.

It is also entirely possible that we could end up with multiple types of quantum computer co-existing, each with a particular niche it is best suited for.

The big dream of a general quantum computer may not be what happens, says IQ Capitals Carew. It may be more like the early days of microprocessors where you had a lot of different types each with a specific function.

This is part one of a series of four articles we are running this week on Europes quantum computing industry. Part two, on Frances quantum strategy, will be published tomorrow.

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Why now is the right time to invest in European quantum computing - Sifted

Google and D-Wave Systems say theyve achieved a new milestone in the world of quantum computing.

In a press release, D-Wave says its quantum device has far outpaced a classical computer in a direct competition to complete a difficult computational problem.

The device successfully modeled the behavior of a spinning two-dimensional quantum magnet, and was able to complete the simulation at breakneck speed.

In collaboration with scientists at Google, demonstrating a computational performance advantage, increasing with both simulation size and problem hardness, to over 3 million times that of corresponding classical methods.

Notably, this work was achieved on a practical application with real-world implications, simulating the topological phenomena behind the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Quantum devices leverage the unique properties of quantum physics to perform certain calculations at revolutionary speeds.

D-Wave says its study proves that quantum computers can more efficiently and effectively tackle tough simulations.

What we see is a huge benefit in absolute terms, with the scaling advantage in temperature and size that we would hope for.

Quantum computing threatens to break the cryptographic algorithms that keep the internet and crypto assets secure. Ripple CTO Davis Schwartz, says he believes developers have about eight years to develop quantum-proof methods to keep digital infrastructures secure.

Featured Image: Shutterstock/Yurchanka Siarhei

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Google Teams With D-Wave in Massive Quantum Computing Leap, Cracking Simulation Problem - The Daily Hodl

Though years from potential fruition, quantum computing and its control has emerged as an issue among technology ethicists. But if a YouTube video released last week voicing the concerns of six quantum experts is any indication, the level of discourse is at an early and amorphous stage, with only vague notions of solutions.

This is not to belittle the good work of Matt Swayne, an editor at Quantum Daily who co-produced the video with publisher Evan Kubes. To be fair, the video is intended for a general, not technical, audience, and Swayne and Kubes raise critical issues that individual technologists, their companies, their countries and governing bodies will need to come to grips with. Its just to say that quantum ethics, like the technology itself, is at an early stage, and that the thinking, talking and actions taken on quantum ethics will have to progress far and fast if it is to be effective.

The thought of what quantum may someday be able to do, that it could dust todays HPC and supercomputing, is staggering. Altering the human genome, designing super (and super-expensive) drugs, developing new military weapons, along with espionage and law enforcement techniques all of these and more have major implications not only for the technology but for the existing gaps between rich and poor people and countries, between normally intelligent and the abnormally intelligent technological elite, gaps that quantum could widen.

As Faye Wattleton, co-founder , EeroQ Quantum Hardware, said in the video, I think its in a moment for us to pause, and cause us to take a step back to say, Wait a minute, if we can do in a few minutes what it would take 10,000 years to do with our current technology, well, that really requires some careful consideration.

If we think about what it can do for good, of course, (many) industries farmer, molecular simulation, creating new materials thats wonderful, said Dr. Ilana Wisby, CEO, Oxford Quantum Circuits. But of course, it could also be used to create new materials for purposes that arent so wonderful. We start to see and understand why governments, for example, are interested from even a material science perspective. And, of course, the infamous one is Shors Algorithm and the understanding that quantum computing could one day, likely, break encryption What we have to understand and address now is: Is it worth the risk? Just because we can do something doesnt mean we should.

The point regarding the gap in quantum comprehension is not raised in the video, but there already is a major divide between those doing quantum R&D over against the vast majority of technologists, never mind the public at large, for whom quantum will remain an utter blank, a non-starter, beginning with the head splitting concept that a qubit can be a 0 and a 1 at the same time (though, we admit, the more often we hear it repeated the less it worries us). As Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman said, If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you dont understand quantum mechanics. (It may have been Feynman who also said, You dont understand quantum mechanics, you just go with it.)

Dr. Ilana Wisby, CEO, Oxford Quantum Circuits

The comprehension gap only adds to the complexities of quantum ethics when we consider that those who will apply the ethics in the form of legislation i.e., politicians wont understand the technology at all. Collision of the tech-political worlds was put on display last summer during Congressional hearings on Big Tech in which members of Congress asked elementary and transparently uninformed questions that the Big Tech company executives struggled mightily to answer without condescension and that was about social media, a technology every politician uses (one media wag said the hearings at times seemed more like an extended Facebook help session).

Theres a truism that when it comes to business, politicians first do too little, then too much. This could pose a problem for FAANG and other companies pursuing quantum that are accustomed to asking for forgiveness, not permission, from local, state and federal governments and regulators.

Perhaps companies in the quantum sector should look for guidance from Germanys approach to governance of autonomous vehicles. Led by the countrys transportation minister, an ethics commission was assembled and deliberated on the matter with religious, intellectual and other societal leaders, along with technologists and car makers. The commissions 2017 report recommended that all AVs let humans take control, that if an accident occurs in which the car is in control then the automaker is liable, that AVs cant be programmed demographically (such as deciding that an elderly person should die before a baby), and other matters. If these ethical constraints make it harder to produce AVs then so be it ethics before technology seemed to be the commissions overriding priority.**

Ilyas Khan, CEO, Cambridge Quantum Computing

In that vein, one the experts who participated in the video, Ilyas Khan, CEO, Cambridge Quantum Computing, urged the quantum community not repeat the ethical lapses of previous decades.

My generation was asleep of the wheel in the 90s, Khan said. The pursuit of various different returns overcame our sensibility. If you think 100 years ago, 150 years ago, when mass media first made its appearance in the form of newspapers that millions of people would read, we put controls in place. When railways started to emerge, we put controls in place. In the mid-90s, the combination of the internet revolution and what happened with mobile telephony, we gave up, there were no controls. Now, societies get very excited about things like (the financial crisis of) 2008, and 2009 and the so-called bankers that were at fault, but this is a far, far bigger issue that were facing today because of being asleep of the wheel in the 90s, and the 80s.

Considering quantums potential powers, and the natural concern of the bottom 99 percent who can only stand in uncomprehending awe before that power, an ethics-first approach may be the right way to guide quantum through its development if it is to be accepted, not feared, by society at large.

As one of the experts in the video, Nick Farina, founder, EeroQ Quantum Hardware, has said, The early stage of quantum computing is not a reason to delay ethical considerations, its actually a great opportunity to create ethical frameworks in advance of large scale impact.

** Source: Steve Conway, senior adviser, HPC market dynamics, at industry analyst firm Hyperion Research.

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The Quantum Comprehension Gap and the Emergence of Quantum Ethics - insideHPC