Quantum http://feed.informer.com/digests/EYA8NJRRWR/feeder Quantum Respective post owners and feed distributors Tue, 26 Jun 2018 00:20:24 +0000 Feed Informer http://feed.informer.com/ Microsoft Progresses with their Topological Qubit Research https://quantumcomputingreport.com/microsoft-progresses-with-their-topological-qubit-research/ Quantum Computing Report urn:uuid:28169b1d-4ed6-6e74-0358-ac379716fbad Fri, 11 Jul 2025 22:30:53 +0000 <p>Schematic Picture of a Tetron Showing the Hybrid Nanowires, Backbone, Quantum Dots, &amp; Junctions (left)and a Simplified Diagram of it (right) Microsoft has just released a technical paper showing progress they have made with their topological qubit research since the APS meeting last March. Specifically, they have performed single-shot interferometric measurements of the fermion parity [...]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com/microsoft-progresses-with-their-topological-qubit-research/">Microsoft Progresses with their Topological Qubit Research</a> appeared first on <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com">Quantum Computing Report</a>.</p> Uncategorized dougfinke SandboxAQ Has Raised an Additional $95 Million at a Company Valuation of Over $5.6 Billion https://quantumcomputingreport.com/sandboxaq-has-raised-an-additional-95-million-at-a-company-valuation-of-over-5-6-billion/ Quantum Computing Report urn:uuid:a0ffb35a-e40d-ca76-9229-4ffcb5091ebf Fri, 11 Jul 2025 20:32:01 +0000 <p>As a secondary offering to the funding that SandboxAQ announced in April from Google, NVIDIA, Ray Dalio, and others, the company has raised an additional $95 Million from investors including Rizvi Traverse, Forge Global, and the Ava Family Office. The company has received total funding of almost $1 billion and has a current valuation of that [...]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com/sandboxaq-has-raised-an-additional-95-million-at-a-company-valuation-of-over-5-6-billion/">SandboxAQ Has Raised an Additional $95 Million at a Company Valuation of Over $5.6 Billion</a> appeared first on <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com">Quantum Computing Report</a>.</p> Uncategorized dougfinke Patero Integrates Post-Quantum Cryptography into Syllego’s DUST Platform for U.S. Smart City Cybersecurity Compliance https://quantumcomputingreport.com/patero-integrates-post-quantum-cryptography-into-syllegos-dust-platform-for-u-s-smart-city-cybersecurity-compliance/ Quantum Computing Report urn:uuid:304005a4-000e-3103-4a4d-bd5c151422c8 Fri, 11 Jul 2025 19:54:07 +0000 <p>Patero, a post-quantum cryptography company, has integrated its post-quantum encryption technology into Syllego’s Distributed Universal Sensing Technology (DUST) platform. Syllego focuses on intelligent infrastructure solutions for smart cities. This collaboration aims to bolster cybersecurity for U.S. cities, aligning with federal mandates including Executive Order 14144 and National Security Memoranda 10 and 22. The DUST platform [...]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com/patero-integrates-post-quantum-cryptography-into-syllegos-dust-platform-for-u-s-smart-city-cybersecurity-compliance/">Patero Integrates Post-Quantum Cryptography into Syllego&#8217;s DUST Platform for U.S. Smart City Cybersecurity Compliance</a> appeared first on <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com">Quantum Computing Report</a>.</p> Uncategorized Mohamed Abdel-Kareem Who’s News: Management Updates at Q-CTRL, QuSecure, Diraq, SemiQon, and Photonic Inc. https://quantumcomputingreport.com/whos-news-management-updates-at-q-ctrl-qusecure-diraq-semiqon-and-photonic-inc/ Quantum Computing Report urn:uuid:8dd70877-425b-89bf-85ef-0b38e9b2a6c5 Fri, 11 Jul 2025 12:32:43 +0000 <p>Q-CTRL announced that Damien Metcalf has stepped into the role of Vice President of Marketing and Design. Metcalf, who previously served as Head of Design for seven years, will now lead the company's global brand and product engagement, further shaping its digital products and sensing hardware. His appointment builds on his extensive experience in building [...]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com/whos-news-management-updates-at-q-ctrl-qusecure-diraq-semiqon-and-photonic-inc/">Who’s News: Management Updates at Q-CTRL, QuSecure, Diraq, SemiQon, and Photonic Inc.</a> appeared first on <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com">Quantum Computing Report</a>.</p> Uncategorized Mohamed Abdel-Kareem Canadian quantum talent helps drive global research to certify quantum communications https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/news/canadian-quantum-talent-helps-drive-global-research-certify Institute for Quantum Computing urn:uuid:1c89568c-c7a6-2e28-229a-5b2b538e3172 Fri, 11 Jul 2025 12:00:00 +0000 <img loading="lazy" src="https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/uploads/images/qkd-certification-listing-news-july-2025jpg.jpg?itok=FTeKbSYV" width="100" height="56" alt="One man standing my a whiteboard talking to four men sitting and paying attention to the man standing" typeof="Image" class="image-style-thumbnail" /><p>Fri, 11 Jul 2025 12:00:00 +0000</p> <p class="highlight">A new study from researchers at IQC marks an important step towards certifying QKD <span class="BCX0 NormalTextRun SCXW84494230">devices, c</span><span class="BCX0 NormalTextRun SCXW84494230">rucial </span><span class="BCX0 NormalTextRun SCXW84494230">to </span><span class="BCX0 NormalTextRun SCXW84494230">enabling</span><span class="BCX0 NormalTextRun SCXW84494230"> </span><span class="BCX0 NormalTextRun SCXW84494230">secure quantum communication technology.</span></p> Tags: Quantum communication, Research Naomi Grosman TRIUMF, Perimeter Institute, and D-Wave Collaborate on Quantum-AI for Particle Physics Simulation https://quantumcomputingreport.com/triumf-perimeter-institute-and-d-wave-collaborate-on-quantum-ai-for-particle-physics-simulation/ Quantum Computing Report urn:uuid:6db5761f-5aef-cfb9-281b-84790e24feda Fri, 11 Jul 2025 11:48:27 +0000 <p>Scientists led by TRIUMF and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, in collaboration with D-Wave Quantum Inc., have published research in npj Quantum Information. This research combines quantum annealing technology with generative AI to address particle physics simulation bottlenecks for CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) upgrades. The team developed a quantum-AI hybrid approach aimed at [...]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com/triumf-perimeter-institute-and-d-wave-collaborate-on-quantum-ai-for-particle-physics-simulation/">TRIUMF, Perimeter Institute, and D-Wave Collaborate on Quantum-AI for Particle Physics Simulation</a> appeared first on <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com">Quantum Computing Report</a>.</p> Uncategorized Mohamed Abdel-Kareem QuiX Quantum Secures €15M ($17.5M USD) Series A Funding for Universal Photonic Quantum Computer Development https://quantumcomputingreport.com/quix-quantum-secures-e15m-17-5m-usd-series-a-funding-for-universal-photonic-quantum-computer-development/ Quantum Computing Report urn:uuid:59b08531-f0c9-1242-1997-829d7d23fb34 Thu, 10 Jul 2025 20:24:40 +0000 <p>QuiX Quantum, a Dutch company in photonic quantum computing, has secured €15 million ($17.5 million USD) in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Invest-NL and EIC Fund, with participation from PhotonVentures, Oost NL, and FORWARD.one. This funding follows a previous award from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator program. The capital is intended [...]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com/quix-quantum-secures-e15m-17-5m-usd-series-a-funding-for-universal-photonic-quantum-computer-development/">QuiX Quantum Secures €15M ($17.5M USD) Series A Funding for Universal Photonic Quantum Computer Development</a> appeared first on <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com">Quantum Computing Report</a>.</p> Uncategorized Mohamed Abdel-Kareem Quandela and Mila Collaborate to Advance Quantum Machine Learning Research https://quantumcomputingreport.com/quandela-and-mila-collaborate-to-advance-quantum-machine-learning-research/ Quantum Computing Report urn:uuid:9753b4ef-179a-3f39-2ed8-55615d4d175a Thu, 10 Jul 2025 12:30:57 +0000 <p>Quandela, a photonic quantum computing company, and Mila, the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute, have announced a partnership. This collaboration is set to explore the potential of hybrid technologies that combine machine learning and quantum computing, with a strategic focus on the development and evaluation of Quantum Machine Learning (QML) models. The collaboration between Quandela and [...]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com/quandela-and-mila-collaborate-to-advance-quantum-machine-learning-research/">Quandela and Mila Collaborate to Advance Quantum Machine Learning Research</a> appeared first on <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com">Quantum Computing Report</a>.</p> Uncategorized Mohamed Abdel-Kareem UbiQD and First Solar Establish Long-Term Quantum Dot Supply Agreement for Photovoltaic Panels https://quantumcomputingreport.com/ubiqd-and-first-solar-establish-long-term-quantum-dot-supply-agreement-for-photovoltaic-panels/ Quantum Computing Report urn:uuid:a6d89b37-04e7-337f-b3a2-429ba72aed6c Thu, 10 Jul 2025 12:21:37 +0000 <p>UbiQD, a company specializing in quantum dot (QD) nanotechnology, has entered into an exclusive, multi-year agreement to supply its proprietary fluorescent QD technology to First Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ: FSLR). This agreement facilitates the incorporation of QD technology into First Solar's thin film bifacial photovoltaic (PV) solar panels. This marks a high-volume QD supply agreement outside [...]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com/ubiqd-and-first-solar-establish-long-term-quantum-dot-supply-agreement-for-photovoltaic-panels/">UbiQD and First Solar Establish Long-Term Quantum Dot Supply Agreement for Photovoltaic Panels</a> appeared first on <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com">Quantum Computing Report</a>.</p> Uncategorized Mohamed Abdel-Kareem KISTI Secures Funding to Establish South Korea’s National Quantum Computing Center of Excellence with IonQ as Primary Partner https://quantumcomputingreport.com/kisti-secures-funding-to-establish-south-koreas-national-quantum-computing-center-of-excellence-with-ionq-as-primary-partner/ Quantum Computing Report urn:uuid:809ffd24-14bf-c785-d208-339ee6a04fa1 Thu, 10 Jul 2025 12:08:43 +0000 <p>The Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) has secured a multi-million dollar government award through the "Quantum Computing Service and Utilization System Construction Project." This initiative is set to establish South Korea's first National Quantum Computing Center of Excellence. KISTI has identified IonQ (NYSE: IONQ) as the primary quantum technology provider for this [...]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com/kisti-secures-funding-to-establish-south-koreas-national-quantum-computing-center-of-excellence-with-ionq-as-primary-partner/">KISTI Secures Funding to Establish South Korea&#8217;s National Quantum Computing Center of Excellence with IonQ as Primary Partner</a> appeared first on <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com">Quantum Computing Report</a>.</p> Uncategorized Mohamed Abdel-Kareem EU Backs SUPREME Consortium for Industrialization of Superconducting Quantum Chip Fabrication https://quantumcomputingreport.com/eu-backs-supreme-consortium-for-industrialization-of-superconducting-quantum-chip-fabrication/ Quantum Computing Report urn:uuid:a77ffd8d-cc1f-42f8-552b-67a019e6c1bd Thu, 10 Jul 2025 11:47:46 +0000 <p>The European Union (EU) has selected the SUPREME consortium to advance the industrial production of superconducting quantum chips. Coordinated by VTT (Finland), the consortium comprises 23 partners from 8 Member States. The central objective of SUPREME is to develop stable fabrication processes for European superconducting quantum chips, with a focus on improving repeatability and yield. [...]</p> <p>The post <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com/eu-backs-supreme-consortium-for-industrialization-of-superconducting-quantum-chip-fabrication/">EU Backs SUPREME Consortium for Industrialization of Superconducting Quantum Chip Fabrication</a> appeared first on <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com">Quantum Computing Report</a>.</p> Uncategorized Mohamed Abdel-Kareem Scientists just simulated the “impossible” — fault-tolerant quantum code cracked at last https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/07/250702214157.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:af3e6f47-5c80-7c9c-c703-b1681b4b1ca1 Thu, 03 Jul 2025 01:41:57 +0000 A multinational team has cracked a long-standing barrier to reliable quantum computing by inventing an algorithm that lets ordinary computers faithfully mimic a fault-tolerant quantum circuit built on the notoriously tricky GKP bosonic code, promising a crucial test-bed for future quantum hardware. The high-tech wizardry of integrated photonics https://news.mit.edu/2025/sabrina-corsetti-explores-high-tech-wizardry-integrated-photonics-0702 MIT News - Quantum computing urn:uuid:763f66f7-8d0d-a4c5-35bb-fb659731dae4 Wed, 02 Jul 2025 04:00:00 +0000 PhD candidate Sabrina Corsetti builds photonic devices that manipulate light to enable previously unimaginable applications, like pocket-sized 3D printers. <p>Inspired by the “Harry Potter” stories and the Disney Channel show “Wizards of Waverly Place,” 7-year-old Sabrina Corsetti emphatically declared to her parents one afternoon that she was, in fact, a wizard.</p><p>“My dad turned to me and said that, if I really wanted to be a wizard, then I should become a physicist. Physicists are the real wizards of the world,” she recalls.</p><p>That conversation stuck with Corsetti throughout her childhood, all the way up to her decision to double-major in physics and math in college, which set her on a path to MIT, where she is now a graduate student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.</p><p>While her work may not involve incantations or magic wands, Corsetti’s research centers on an area that often produces astonishing results: integrated photonics. A relatively young field, integrated photonics involves building computer chips that route light instead of electricity, enabling compact and scalable solutions for applications ranging from communications to sensing.</p><p>Corsetti and her collaborators in the Photonics and Electronics Research Group, led by Professor Jelena Notaros, develop chip-sized devices which enable innovative applications that push the boundaries of what is possible in optics.</p><p>For instance, Corsetti and the team developed a&nbsp;<a href="https://news.mit.edu/2024/researchers-demonstrate-first-chip-based-3d-printer-0606" target="_blank">chip-based 3D printer</a>, small enough to sit in the palm of one’s hand, that emits a reconfigurable beam of light into resin to create solid shapes. Such a device could someday enable a user to rapidly fabricate customized, low-cost objects on the go.</p><p>She also contributed to creating a&nbsp;<a href="https://news.mit.edu/2024/mit-engineers-create-chip-based-tractor-beam-biological-particles-1003" target="_blank">miniature “tractor beam”</a> that uses a beam of light to capture and manipulate biological particles using a chip. This could help biologists study DNA or investigate the mechanisms of disease without contaminating tissue samples.</p><p>More recently, Corsetti has been working on a project in collaboration with MIT Lincoln Laboratory, focused on trapped-ion quantum computing, which involves the manipulation of ions to store and process quantum information.</p><p>“Our team has a strong focus on designing devices and systems that interact with the environment. The opportunity to join a new research group, led by a supportive and engaged advisor, that works on projects with a lot of real-world impacts, is primarily what drew me to MIT,” Corsetti says.</p><p><strong>Embracing challenges</strong></p><p>Years before she set foot in a research lab, Corsetti was a science- and math-focused kid growing up with her parents and younger brother in the suburbs of Chicago, where her family operates a structural steelwork company.</p><p>Throughout her childhood, her teachers fostered her love of learning, from her early years in the Frankfort 157-C school district through her time at the Lincoln-Way East High School.</p><p>She enjoyed working on science experiments outside the classroom and relished the chance to tackle complex conundrums during independent study projects curated by her teachers (like calculating the math behind the Brachistochrone Curve, or the shortest path between two points, which was famously solved by Isaac Newton).</p><p>Corsetti decided to double-major in physics and math at the University of Michigan after graduating from high school a year early.</p><p>“When I went to the University of Michigan, I couldn’t wait to get started. I enrolled in the toughest math and physics track right off the bat,” she recalls.</p><p>But Corsetti soon found that she had bitten off a bit more than she could chew. A lot of her tough undergraduate courses assumed students had prior knowledge from AP physics and math classes, which Corsetti hadn’t taken because she graduated early.</p><p>She met with professors, attended office hours, and tried to pick up the lessons she had missed, but felt so discouraged she contemplated switching majors. Before she made the switch, Corsetti decided to try working in a physics lab to see if she liked a day in the life of a researcher.</p><p>After joining Professor Wolfgang Lorenzon’s lab at Michigan, Corsetti spent hours working with grad students and postdocs on a hands-on project to build cells that would hold liquid hydrogen for a particle physics experiment.</p><p>As they collaborated for hours at a time to roll material into tubes, she peppered the older students with questions about their experiences in the field.</p><p>“Being in the lab made me fall in love with physics. I really enjoyed that environment, working with my hands, and working with people as part of a bigger team,” she says.</p><p>Her affinity for hands-on lab work was amplified a few years later when she met Professor Tom Schwarz, her research advisor for the rest of her time at Michigan.</p><p>Following a chance conversation with Schwarz, she applied to a research abroad program at CERN in Switzerland, where she was mentored by Siyuan Sun. There, she had the opportunity to join thousands of physicists and engineers on the ATLAS project, writing code and optimizing circuits for new particle-detector technologies.</p><p>“That was one of the most transformative experiences of my life. After I came back to Michigan, I was ready to spend my career focusing on research,” she says.</p><p><strong>Hooked on photonics</strong></p><p>Corsetti began applying to graduate schools but decided to shift focus from the more theoretical particle physics to electrical engineering, with an interest in conducting hands-on chip-design and testing research.</p><p>She applied to MIT with a focus on standard electronic-chip design, so it came as a surprise when Notaros reached out to her to schedule a Zoom call. At the time, Corsetti was completely unfamiliar with integrated photonics. However, after one conversation with the new professor, she was hooked.</p><p>“Jelena has an infectious enthusiasm for integrated photonics,” she recalls. “After those initial conversations, I took a leap of faith.”</p><p>Corsetti joined Notaros’ team as it was just getting started. Closely mentored by a senior student, Milica Notaros, she and her cohort grew immersed in integrated photonics.</p><p>Over the years, she’s particularly enjoyed the collaborative and close-knit nature of the lab and how the work involves so many different aspects of the experimental process, from design to simulation to analysis to hardware testing.</p><p>“An exciting challenge that we’re always running up against is new chip-fabrication requirements. There is a lot of back-and-forth between new application areas that demand new fabrication technologies, followed by improved fabrication technologies motivating additional application areas. That cycle is constantly pushing the field forward,” she says.</p><p>Corsetti plans to stay at the cutting edge of the field after graduation as an integrated-photonics researcher in industry or at a national lab. She would like to focus on trapped-ion quantum computing, which scientists are rapidly scaling up toward commercially viable systems, or other high-performance computing applications.</p><p>“You really need accelerated computing for any modern research area. It would be exciting and rewarding to contribute to high-performance computing that can enable a lot of other interesting research areas,” she says.</p><p><strong>Paying it forward</strong></p><p>In addition to making an impact with research, Corsetti is focused on making a personal impact in the lives of others. Through her involvement in MIT Graduate Hillel, she joined the Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters of Boston, where she volunteers for the friend-to-friend program.</p><p>Participating in the program, which pairs adults who have disabilities with friends in the community for fun activities like watching movies or painting has been an especially uplifting and gratifying experience for Corsetti.</p><p>She’s also enjoyed the opportunity to support, mentor, and bond with her fellow MIT EECS students, drawing on the advice she’s received throughout her own academic journey.</p><p>“Don’t trust feelings of imposter syndrome,” she advises others. “Keep moving forward, ask for feedback and help, and be confident that you will reach a point where you can make meaningful contributions to a team.”</p><p>Outside the lab, she enjoys playing classical music on the clarinet (her favorite piece is Leonard Bernstein’s famous overture to “Candide”), reading, and caring for a family of fish in her aquarium.</p> Students Graduate, postdoctoral Profile Electronics Photonics Quantum computing Electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) School of Engineering MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Lincoln Laboratory Adam Zewe | MIT News “My dad turned to me and said that, if I really wanted to be a wizard, then I should become a physicist. Physicists are the real wizards of the world,” graduate student Sabrina Corsetti recalls. Credit: Jodi Hilton Quantum computers just beat classical ones — Exponentially and unconditionally https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/06/250629033459.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:9a30a6ff-4bbc-2828-f154-56b161bda7ce Mon, 30 Jun 2025 06:30:44 +0000 A research team has achieved the holy grail of quantum computing: an exponential speedup that’s unconditional. By using clever error correction and IBM’s powerful 127-qubit processors, they tackled a variation of Simon’s problem, showing quantum machines are now breaking free from classical limitations, for real. BusyBeaver(6) is really quite large https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8972 Shtetl-Optimized urn:uuid:91f7fa31-d98f-d35a-8f69-354fff77e3a8 Sat, 28 Jun 2025 16:21:57 +0000 For overdetermined reasons, I&#8217;ve lately found the world an increasingly terrifying and depressing place. It&#8217;s gotten harder and harder to concentrate on research, or even popular science writing. Every so often, though, something breaks through that wakes my inner child, reminds me of why I fell in love with research thirty years ago, and helps [&#8230;] <p>For overdetermined reasons, I&#8217;ve lately found the world an increasingly terrifying and depressing place. It&#8217;s gotten harder and harder to concentrate on research, or even popular science writing. Every so often, though, something breaks through that wakes my inner child, reminds me of why I fell in love with research thirty years ago, and helps me forget about the triumphantly strutting factions working to destroy everything I value.</p> <p>Back in 2022, I <a href="https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6673">reported an exciting advance</a> in <a href="https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/bb.pdf">BusyBeaverology</a>: namely, whereas we previously knew merely that BB(6) &gt; 10<sup>36,534</sup>, Pavel Kropitz managed to show that</p> <p>BB(6) &gt; <sup>15</sup>10.</p> <p>For those tuning in from home, here BB(6) is the 6<sup>th</sup> Busy Beaver number, i.e. the maximum number of steps that a 6-state Turing machine with a {0,1} alphabet can take before halting, when run on an initially all-0 input tape. Also, the left-superscript means <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetration">tetration</a></i>, or iterated exponentiation: for example, <sup>15</sup>10 means 10 to the 10 to the 10 and so on 15 times.</p> <p>By comparison, last year the international &#8220;BBchallenge&#8221; team <a href="https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8088">determined that BB(5) is &#8220;merely&#8221; 47,176,870</a> (see also <em>Quanta</em> magazine&#8217;s <a href="https://www.quantamagazine.org/amateur-mathematicians-find-fifth-busy-beaver-turing-machine-20240702/">superb feature article</a> on that milestone). So, between 5 and 6 is where the Busy Beaver function makes its leap, from the millions to beyond the bounds of observable reality.</p> <p>But if you thought that was the end of the BB(6) story, think again! Eleven days ago, Tristan Sterin, who organized the BBchallenge the team, emailed to tell me that a team member with the handle &#8220;mxdys&#8221; <a href="https://wiki.bbchallenge.org/wiki/1RB1LC_1LA1RE_0RD0LA_1RZ1LB_1LD0RF_0RD1RB">improved the BB(6) bound yet further</a>, to</p> <p>BB(6) &gt; <sup>10,000,000</sup>10</p> <p>(i.e., 10 to the 10 to the 10 and so on 10 million times), with a <a href="https://github.com/ccz181078/busycoq/blob/BB6/verify/SOBCv4.v">correctness proof in Coq</a>. Then, three days ago, Tristan wrote <em>again</em> to say that mxdys has <a href="https://bbchallenge.org/1RB1RA_1RC---_1LD0RF_1RA0LE_0LD1RC_1RA0RE">improved the bound <em>again</em></a>, to</p> <p>$$ BB(6) \gt ^{^{{^9}2}2}2 $$</p> <p>I.e., BB(6) is at least 2 tetrated to the 2 tetrated to the 2 tetrated to the 9. So in particular, BB(6) is at least 2 pentated to the 5, where <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentation">pentation</a></em> is iterated tetration, i.e. the operation that is to tetration as tetration is to exponentiation, exponentiation is to multiplication, and multiplication is to addition.</p> <p>Last week, when we &#8220;merely&#8221; knew that BB(6) &gt; <sup>10,000,000</sup>10, I talked to a journalist who asked me to give an intuitive sense of how big such a number is. So I said, imagine you had <sup>10,000,000</sup>10 grains of sand. Then you could &#8230; well, uh &#8230; you could fill about <sup>10,000,000</sup>10 copies of the observable universe with that sand. I hope that helps people visualize it!</p> <p>The journalist also asked: have these new discoveries about BB(6) caused me to rethink any broader beliefs about the Busy Beaver function? And I mean, yes and no: it was <em>always</em> completely within the realm of possibility that BB(6) would already be, not some puny little thing like 10<sup>36,534</sup>, but way out in iteration land. Now that we know for sure that it is, though, maybe I ought to conjecture that the value of BB(n) becomes independent of the ZFC axioms of set theory already when n is 7 or 8 or 9, rather than when it&#8217;s 20 or 30 or whatever. (Currently, we <a href="https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=7388">know</a> <a href="https://github.com/CatsAreFluffy/metamath-turing-machines">that</a> BB(n) becomes independent of ZFC only when n=643.)</p> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/> <p><strong><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-red-color">Unrelated Update:</mark></strong> I&#8217;m just now returning to the US from <a href="https://acm-stoc.org/stoc2025/STOCprogram.html">STOC&#8217;2025</a> in Prague, where I saw lots of old friends and learned many interesting new things, again helping to distract me from the state of the world! Many I&#8217;ll write about some of those things in a future post. For now, though, anyone who&#8217;s interested in my STOC plenary lecture, entitled &#8220;The Status of Quantum Speedups,&#8221; can <a href="https://www.scottaaronson.com/talks/status.ppt">check out the PowerPoint slides here</a>.</p> Announcements Nerd Interest Scott Quantum breakthrough: ‘Magic states’ now easier, faster, and way less noisy https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/06/250621233816.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:476f56bc-1e36-526a-0d1b-cfca7f1dd1a0 Thu, 26 Jun 2025 14:47:08 +0000 Quantum computing just got a significant boost thanks to researchers at the University of Osaka, who developed a much more efficient way to create "magic states" a key component for fault-tolerant quantum computers. By pioneering a low-level, or "level-zero," distillation method, they dramatically reduced the number of qubits and computational resources needed, overcoming one of the biggest obstacles: quantum noise. This innovation could accelerate the arrival of powerful quantum machines capable of revolutionizing industries from finance to biotech. Quantum computers just got an upgrade – and it’s 10× more efficient https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/06/250625011632.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:0946ff8c-d851-48a0-92bf-9093039db62f Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:58:18 +0000 Chalmers engineers built a pulse-driven qubit amplifier that’s ten times more efficient, stays cool, and safeguards quantum states—key for bigger, better quantum machines. Raymond Laflamme (1960-2025) https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8949 Shtetl-Optimized urn:uuid:0592984b-c4e9-cc2d-c9c4-71c219ede564 Tue, 24 Jun 2025 05:04:49 +0000 Even with everything happening in the Middle East right now, even with (relatedly) everything happening in my own family (my wife and son sheltering in Tel Aviv as Iranian missiles rained down), even with all the rather ill-timed travel I&#8217;ve found myself doing as these events unfolded (Ecuador and the Galapagos and now STOC&#8217;2025 in [&#8230;] <div class="wp-block-image"> <figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img decoding="async" src="https://www.scottaaronson.com/ray.jpg" alt=""/></figure></div> <p>Even with everything happening in the Middle East right now, even with (relatedly) everything happening in my own family (my wife and son sheltering in Tel Aviv as Iranian missiles rained down), even with all the rather ill-timed travel I&#8217;ve found myself doing as these events unfolded (Ecuador and the Galapagos and now <a href="https://acm-stoc.org/stoc2025/">STOC&#8217;2025</a> in Prague) &#8230; there&#8217;s been <em>another</em> thing, a huge one, weighing on my soul.</p> <p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Laflamme">Ray Laflamme</a> played a major role in launching the whole field of quantum computing and information, and also a major role in launching my own career. The world has lost him too soon. <em>I&#8217;ve</em> lost him too soon.</p> <p>After growing up in Quebec&#8212;I still hear his French-Canadian accent, constantly on the verge of laughter, as I&#8217;m writing this&#8212;Ray went into physics and became a PhD student of Stephen Hawking. No, not a different Stephen Hawking. If you&#8217;ve read or watched anything by or about Hawking, including <em>A Brief History of Time</em>, you might remember the story where Hawking believed for a while that time would reverse itself as the universe contracted in a Big Crunch, with omelettes unscrambling themselves, old people turning into children, etc. etc., but then two graduate students persuaded him that that was totally wrong, and entropy would continue to increase like normal. Anyway, Ray was one of those students (Don Page was the other). I&#8217;d always meant to ask Ray to explain what argument changed Hawking&#8217;s mind, since the idea of entropy decreasing during contraction just seemed <em>obviously</em> wrong to me! Only today, while writing this post, did I find a <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9301017">1993 paper</a> by Hawking, Laflamme, and Lyons that explains the matter perfectly clearly, including three fallacious intuitions that Hawking had previously held. (Even though, as they comment, &#8220;the anatomy of error is not ruled by logic.&#8221;)</p> <p>Anyway, in the mid-1990s, starting at Los Alamos National Lab and continuing at the University of Waterloo, Ray became a pioneer of the then-new field of quantum computing and information. In 1997, he was a coauthor of one of the <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9702058">seminal original papers</a> that proved the possibility of fault-tolerant quantum computation with a constant error rate, what we now call the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_theorem">Threshold Theorem</a> (Aharonov and Ben-Or had such a result independently). He made lots of other key early contributions to the theory of quantum error-correcting codes and fault-tolerance.</p> <p>When it comes to Ray&#8217;s scientific achievements <em>after</em> his cosmology work with Hawking and <em>after</em> quantum fault-tolerance&#8212;well, there are <a href="https://arxiv.org/search/quant-ph?searchtype=author&amp;query=Laflamme,+R">many</a>, but let me talk about two. Perhaps the biggest is the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KLM_protocol">KLM (Knill-Laflamme-Milburn) Theorem</a>. It would be fair to say that KLM started the entire field of optical or photonic quantum computation, as it&#8217;s existed in the 21<sup>st</sup> century. In one sentence, what KLM showed is that it&#8217;s possible to build a universal quantum computer using only</p> <ol class="wp-block-list"> <li>identical single-photon states,</li> <li>a network of &#8220;linear-optical elements&#8221; (that is, beamsplitters and phaseshifters) that the photons travel through, and</li> <li>feedforward measurements&#8212;that is, measurements of an optical mode that tell you how many photons are there, in such a way that you can <em>condition</em> (using a classical computer) which optical elements to apply next on the outcome of the measurement. </li> </ol> <p>All of a sudden, there was a viable path to building a quantum computer out of photons, where you <em>wouldn&#8217;t</em> need to get pairs of photons to interact with each other, which had previously been the central sticking point. The key insight was that feedforward measurements, combined with the statistical properties of identical bosons (what the photons are), are enough to <em>simulate</em> the effect of two-photon interactions.</p> <p>Have you heard of <a href="https://www.psiquantum.com/">PsiQuantum</a>, the startup in Palo Alto with a $6 billion valuation and hundreds of employees that&#8217;s right now trying to build an optical quantum computer with a million qubits? Or <a href="https://www.xanadu.ai/">Xanadu</a>, its competitor in Toronto? These, in some sense, are companies that grew out of a theorem: specifically the KLM Theorem.</p> <p>For me, though, the significance of KLM goes beyond the practical. In 2011, I used the KLM Theorem, together with the fact (known since the 1950s) that photonic amplitudes are the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_(mathematics)">permanents</a> of matrices, to give a <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1109.1674">new proof</a> of Leslie Valiant&#8217;s celebrated 1979 theorem that calculating the permanent is a #P-complete problem. Thus, as I pointed out in a talk two years ago at Ray&#8217;s COVID-delayed 60<sup>th</sup> birthday conference, entitled <a href="https://www.scottaaronson.com/talks/laflamme.pptx">Ray Laflamme, Complexity Theorist (?!)</a>, KLM had said something new about computational complexity, without any intention of doing so. More generally, KLM was crucial backdrop to my and Alex Arkhipov&#8217;s later work on <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1011.3245">BosonSampling</a>, where we gave strong evidence that <em>some</em> classical computational hardness&#8212;albeit probably not universal quantum computation&#8212;remains in linear optics, even if one gets rid of KLM&#8217;s feedforward measurements.</p> <p>(Incidentally, I gave my talk at Ray&#8217;s birthday conference by Zoom, as I had a conflicting engagement. I&#8217;m now sad about that: had I known that that would&#8217;ve been my last chance to see Ray, I would&#8217;ve cancelled any other plans.)</p> <p>The second achievement of Ray&#8217;s that I wanted to mention was his 1998 creation, again with his frequent collaborator Manny Knill, of the <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9802037">One Clean Qubit or &#8220;DQC1&#8221;</a> model of quantum computation. In this model, you get to apply an arbitrary sequence of 2-qubit unitary gates, followed by measurements at the end, just like in standard quantum computing&#8212;but the catch is that the initial state consists of just a single qubit in the state |0⟩, and all other qubits in the maximally mixed state. If all qubits started in the maximally mixed state, then nothing would ever happen, because the maximally mixed state is left invariant by all unitary transformations. So it would stand to reason that, if all but one of the qubits start out maximally mixed, then <em>almost</em> nothing happens. The big surprise is that this is wrong. Instead you get a model that, while probably not universal for quantum computation, can do a variety of things in polynomial time that we don&#8217;t know how to do classically, including estimating the traces of exponentially large unitary matrices and the <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/0707.2831">Jones polynomials of trace closures of braids</a> (indeed, both of these problems turn out to be DQC1-complete). The discovery of DQC1 was one of the first indications that there&#8217;s substructure within BQP. Since then, the DQC1 model has turned up again and again in seemingly unrelated investigations in quantum complexity theory&#8212;way more than you&#8217;d have any right to expect <em>a priori</em>.</p> <p>Beyond his direct contributions to quantum information, Ray will be remembered as one of the great institution-builders of our field. He directed the <a href="https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/">Institute for Quantum Computing</a> (IQC) at the University of Waterloo in Canada, from its founding in 2002 until he finally stepped down in 2017. This includes the years 2005-2007, when I was a postdoc at IQC&#8212;two of the most pivotal years of my life, when I first drove a car and went out on dates (neither of which I do any longer, for different reasons&#8230;), when I started this blog, when I worked on quantum money and learnability of quantum states and much more, and when I taught the course that turned into my book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Computing-since-Democritus-Aaronson/dp/0521199565"><em>Quantum Computing Since Democritus</em></a>. I fondly remember Ray, as my &#8220;boss,&#8221; showing me every possible kindness. He even personally attended the Quantum Computing Since Democritus lectures, which is why he appears as a character in the book.</p> <p>As if that wasn&#8217;t enough, Ray <em>also</em> directed the quantum information program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). If you ever wondered why Canada, as a nation, has punched so far above its weight in quantum computing and information for the past quarter-century&#8212;Ray Laflamme is part of the answer.</p> <p>At the same time, if you imagine the stereotypical blankfaced university administrator, who thinks and talks only in generalities and platitudes (&#8220;how can we establish public-private partnerships to build a 21<sup>st</sup>-century quantum workforce?&#8221;) &#8230; well, Ray was whatever is the diametric opposite of that. Despite all his responsibilities, Ray never stopped being a mensch, a friend, an intellectually curious scientist, a truth-teller, and a jokester. Whenever he and I talked, probably at least a third of the conversation was raucous laughter.</p> <p>I knew that Ray had spent many years battling cancer. I naïvely thought he was winning, or had won. But as so often with cancer, it looks like the victory was only temporary. I miss him already. He was a ray of light in the world&#8212;a ray that sparkles, illuminates, and as we now know, even has the latent power of universal quantum computation.</p> Quantum Scott Trump and Iran, by popular request https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8950 Shtetl-Optimized urn:uuid:17d2e6d5-8124-e9cd-a1d6-c01cb9bd9c82 Sun, 22 Jun 2025 12:59:32 +0000 I posted this on my Facebook, but several friends asked me to share more widely, so here goes: I voted against Trump three times, and donated thousands to his opponents. I’d still vote against him today, seeing him as a once-in-a-lifetime threat to American democracy and even to the Enlightenment itself. But last night I [&#8230;] <p>I posted this on my Facebook, but several friends asked me to share more widely, so here goes:</p> <p>I voted against Trump three times, and donated thousands to his opponents. I’d still vote against him today, seeing him as a once-in-a-lifetime threat to American democracy and even to the Enlightenment itself.</p> <p>But last night I was also grateful to him for overruling the isolationists and even open antisemites in his orbit, striking a blow against the most evil regime on the planet, and making it harder for that regime to build nuclear weapons. I acknowledge that his opponents, who I voted for, would’ve probably settled for a deal that would’ve resulted in Iran eventually getting nuclear weapons, and at any rate getting a flow of money to redirect to Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.</p> <p>May last night&#8217;s events lead to the downfall of the murderous ayatollah regime altogether, and to the liberation of the Iranian people from 46 years of oppression. To my many, many Iranian friends: I hope all your loved ones stay safe, and I hope your great people soon sees better days. I say this as someone whose wife and 8-year-old son are right now in Tel Aviv, sheltering every night from Iranian missiles.</p> <p>Fundamentally, I believe not only that evil exists in the world, but that it’s important to calibrate evil on a logarithmic scale. Trump (as I&#8217;ve written on this blog for a decade) terrifies me, infuriates me, and embarrasses me, and through his evisceration of American science and universities, has made my life noticeably worse. On the other hand, he won’t hang me from a crane for apostasy, nor will he send a ballistic missile to kill my wife and son and then praise God for delivering them into his hands.</p> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/> <p><strong><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-red-color">Update:</mark></strong> I received the following comment on this post, which filled me with hope, and demonstrated more moral courage than perhaps every other anonymous comment in this blog&#8217;s 20-year history combined. To this commenter and their friends and family, I wish safety and eventually, liberation from tyranny.</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p>I will keep my name private for clear reasons. Thank you for your concern for Iranians’ safety and for wishing the mullah regime’s swift collapse. I have fled Tehran and I’m physically safe but mentally, I’m devastated by the war and the internet blackout (the pretext is that Israeli drones are using our internet). Speaking of what the mullahs have done, especially outrageous was the attack on the Weizmann Institute. I hope your wife and son remain safe from the missiles of the regime whose thugs have chased me and my friends in the streets and imprisoned my friends for simple dissent. All’s well that ends well, and I hope this all ends well.</p> </blockquote> Announcements Mahmoud The Fate of Humanity Scott IQC and Waterloo mourn the loss of Raymond Laflamme https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/news/legacy-quantum-research-excellence Institute for Quantum Computing urn:uuid:1d9c1003-ec9f-b594-aa28-3554b4cfa708 Fri, 20 Jun 2025 12:00:00 +0000 <img loading="lazy" src="https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/uploads/images/ray_laflamme.jpg?itok=mp3GoQHV" width="100" height="70" alt="Raymond Laflamme" typeof="Image" class="image-style-thumbnail" /><p>Fri, 20 Jun 2025 12:00:00 +0000</p> <p class="highlight">Raymond Laflamme, a trailblazer in quantum information processing and pioneer of IQC, died on June 19 after a lengthy battle with cancer. </p> Tags: IQC community updates and highlights Takudzwa Chipo Valerie Mudzongo G7 leaders and Canada’s Prime Minister’s Office affirm strategic commitment to quantum technologies https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/news/g7-leaders-and-canadas-prime-ministers-office-affirm Institute for Quantum Computing urn:uuid:6c232089-a4cd-b622-a643-17702b3e8bba Thu, 19 Jun 2025 12:00:00 +0000 <img loading="lazy" src="https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/uploads/images/news-item-hero-images-21-1.png?itok=Vd76m3Hb" width="100" height="52" alt="Prime Minister Mark Carney address at the G7 2025 conference" typeof="Image" class="image-style-thumbnail" /><p>Thu, 19 Jun 2025 12:00:00 +0000</p> <p class="highlight"><span class="BCX0 NormalTextRun SCXW226631741">IQC welcomes th</span><span class="BCX0 NormalTextRun SCXW226631741">e</span><span class="BCX0 NormalTextRun SCXW226631741"> G7 leaders' </span>Kananaskis Common Vision for the Future of Quantum Technologies </p> Tags: Research, Awards, grants and funding Naomi Grosman Sharper than lightning: Oxford’s one-in-6.7-million quantum breakthrough https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/06/250610074301.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:15761f44-ef4e-50bf-86cf-28c8b10005a5 Tue, 10 Jun 2025 11:43:01 +0000 Physicists at the University of Oxford have set a new global benchmark for the accuracy of controlling a single quantum bit, achieving the lowest-ever error rate for a quantum logic operation--just 0.000015%, or one error in 6.7 million operations. This record-breaking result represents nearly an order of magnitude improvement over the previous benchmark, set by the same research group a decade ago. How to deliver on the powerful promise of quantum computers https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/news/how-deliver-powerful-promise-quantum-computers Institute for Quantum Computing urn:uuid:107b74ba-b87f-9554-49d8-33e3eba0da9a Fri, 23 May 2025 12:00:00 +0000 <img loading="lazy" src="https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/uploads/images/powerful-promise-news-may-2025-listing.jpg?itok=Ry4q1xez" width="100" height="61" alt="IQC affilite researcher sits in front of whiteboard while looking at a computer" typeof="Image" class="image-style-thumbnail" /><p>Fri, 23 May 2025 12:00:00 +0000</p> <p class="highlight">New tool created by IQC's Michele Mosca and Vlad Gheorghiu estimates real-world costs of quantum computing so businesses can become quantum ready</p> Tags: Quantum computing Naomi Grosman Cracking the Top Fifty! https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8861 Shtetl-Optimized urn:uuid:528020b0-7fb2-d8e1-e002-f084eaad6931 Thu, 08 May 2025 21:26:34 +0000 I&#8217;ve now been blogging for nearly twenty years&#8212;through five presidential administrations, my own moves from Waterloo to MIT to UT Austin, my work on algebrization and BosonSampling and BQP vs. PH and quantum money and shadow tomography, the publication of Quantum Computing Since Democritus, my courtship and marriage and the birth of my two kids, [&#8230;] <p>I&#8217;ve now been blogging for nearly twenty years&#8212;through five presidential administrations, my own moves from Waterloo to MIT to UT Austin, my work on <a href="https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/alg.pdf">algebrization</a> and <a href="https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/optics.pdf">BosonSampling</a> and <a href="https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/bqpph.pdf">BQP vs. PH</a> and <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1203.4740">quantum money</a> and <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.01053">shadow tomography</a>, the publication of <em><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Computing-since-Democritus-Aaronson/dp/0521199565">Quantum Computing Since Democritus</a></em>, my courtship and marriage and the birth of my two kids, a global pandemic, the rise of super-powerful AI and the terrifying downfall of the liberal world order.</p> <p>Yet all that time, through more than a thousand blog posts on quantum computing, complexity theory, philosophy, the state of the world, and everything else, I chased a form of recognition for my blogging that remained elusive.</p> <p>Until now.</p> <p>This week I received the following email:</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p>I emailed regarding your blog Shtetl-Optimized Blog which was selected by FeedSpot as one of the Top 50 Quantum Computing Blogs on the web.</p> <p><a href="https://bloggers.feedspot.com/quantum_computing_blogs">https://bloggers.feedspot.com/quantum_computing_blogs</a></p> <p>We recommend adding your website link and other social media handles to get more visibility in our list, get better ranking and get discovered by brands for collaboration.</p> <p>We&#8217;ve also created a badge for you to highlight this recognition. You can proudly display it on your website or share it with your followers on social media.</p> <p>We&#8217;d be thankful if you can help us spread the word by briefly mentioning Top 50 Quantum Computing Blogs in any of your upcoming posts.</p> <p>Please let me know if you can do the needful.</p> </blockquote> <p>You read that correctly: <em>Shtetl-Optimized</em> is now officially one of the top 50 quantum computing blogs on the web. You can click the link to find the other 49.</p> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/> <p>Maybe it&#8217;s not unrelated to this new notoriety that, over the past few months, I&#8217;ve gotten a <em>massively</em> higher-than-usual volume of emailed solutions to the P vs. NP problem, as well as the other <a href="https://www.claymath.org/millennium-problems/">Clay Millennium Problems</a> (sometimes all seven problems at once), as well as quantum gravity and life, the universe, and everything. I now get at least six or seven confident such emails <em>per day</em>.</p> <p>While I don&#8217;t spend much time on this flood of scientific breakthroughs (how could I?), I&#8217;d like to note one detail that&#8217;s new. Many of the emails now include transcripts where <em>ChatGPT fills in the details of the emailer&#8217;s theories for them</em>&#8212;unironically, as though that ought to clinch the case. Who said generative AI wasn&#8217;t poised to change the world? Indeed, I&#8217;ll probably need to start relying on LLMs myself to keep up with the flood of fan mail, hate mail, crank mail, and advice-seeking mail.</p> <p>Anyway, thanks for reading everyone! I look forward to another twenty years of <em>Shtetl-Optimized</em>, if my own health and the health of the world cooperate.</p> Humor Procrastination Self-Referential Scott 'Universe's awkward handshake' -- simplifying information processing using photons a quantum breakthrough https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/05/250508113124.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:b1bb6b71-1ee0-dd00-98f0-930d88ae4c44 Thu, 08 May 2025 15:31:24 +0000 Researchers have developed a technique that makes high-dimensional quantum information encoded in light more practical and reliable. The advancement could pave the way for more secure data transmission and next-generation quantum technologies. Opposing SB37 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8853 Shtetl-Optimized urn:uuid:7ccb4daa-a88b-18df-7759-3c342c71fb31 Tue, 06 May 2025 18:21:56 +0000 Yesterday, the Texas State Legislature heard public comments about SB37, a bill that would give a state board direct oversight over course content and faculty hiring at public universities, perhaps inspired by Trump’s national crackdown on higher education. (See here or here for coverage.) So, encouraged by a friend in the history department, I submitted [&#8230;] <p>Yesterday, the Texas State Legislature heard public comments about <a href="https://legiscan.com/TX/text/SB37/2025">SB37</a>, a bill that would give a state board direct oversight over course content and faculty hiring at public universities, perhaps inspired by Trump’s national crackdown on higher education. (See <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2025/04/10/texas-senate-bill-37-governing-boards-faculty-senates/">here</a> or <a href="https://aaup-texas.org/blog/f/sb-37-20-state-takeover-of-public-higher-ed?fbclid=IwY2xjawGpxz5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHWtsTYxfh4GY-_mnhAVOUpU5GUxAarX_b92jp81EZF7XHvUu61Wa1kxIBg_aem_sNmN4LA-H8N8lWPOQ44qTw">here</a> for coverage.) So, encouraged by a friend in the history department, I submitted the following public comment, whatever good it will do.</p> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/> <p>I’m a computer science professor at UT, although I’m writing in my personal capacity. For 20 years, on my blog and elsewhere, I’ve been outspoken in opposing woke radicalism on campus and (especially) obsessive hatred of Israel that often veers into antisemitism, even when that’s caused me to get attacked from my left. Nevertheless, I write to strongly oppose SB37 in its current form, because of my certainty that no world-class research university can survive ceding control over its curriculum and faculty hiring to the state. If this bill passes, for example, it will severely impact my ability to recruit the most talented computer scientists to UT Austin, if they have competing options that will safeguard their academic freedom as traditionally conceived. Even if our candidates are approved, the new layer of bureaucracy will make it difficult and slow for us to do anything. For those concerned about intellectual diversity in academia, a much better solution would include safeguarding tenure and other protections for faculty with heterodox views, and actually enforcing content-neutral time, place, and manner rules for protests and disruptions. UT has actually done a better job on these things than many other universities in the US, and could serve as a national model for how viewpoint diversity can work — but not under an intolerably stifling regime like the one proposed by this bill.</p> Obviously I'm Not Defending Aaronson Scott Experimental quantum communications network https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/05/250506131336.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:86768487-5585-6bd1-06e6-45484ad77958 Tue, 06 May 2025 17:13:36 +0000 Researchers recently connected their campuses with an experimental quantum communications network using two optical fibers. A new method for characterizing quantum gate errors https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/05/250505204915.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:32f17af0-5e0e-1d78-eb52-56353d6b7e59 Tue, 06 May 2025 00:49:15 +0000 Researchers have developed a new protocol for characterizing quantum gate errors, paving the way toward more reliable quantum simulations and fault-tolerant quantum computing. New Bayesian method enables rapid detection of quantum dot charge states https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/05/250501122449.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:8e45e119-9752-c06b-e652-7373077bd86e Thu, 01 May 2025 16:24:49 +0000 A research team has developed a new technique to rapidly and accurately determine the charge state of electrons confined in semiconductor quantum dots -- fundamental components of quantum computing systems. The method is based on Bayesian inference, a statistical framework that estimates the most likely state of a system using observed data. Battling quantum decoherence, one flat band at a time https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/news/battling-quantum-decoherence-one-flat-band-time Institute for Quantum Computing urn:uuid:e7eddf29-fc9e-95c2-d3f1-0f1c4e272a4d Thu, 01 May 2025 12:00:00 +0000 <img loading="lazy" src="https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/uploads/images/miao-research-flatbands-listing-image-news-may-2025.jpg.jpg?itok=wRwjk3qQ" width="100" height="56" alt="Three men standing in front of large scientific instrument" typeof="Image" class="image-style-thumbnail" /><p>Thu, 01 May 2025 12:00:00 +0000</p> <p class="highlight">Researchers have reported a novel material platform where flat bands universally emerge in a wide range of Transition Metal Dichalcogenide (TMD) compounds with many potential applications like manipulating properties of 2D magnetic materials through ion intercalation, which could lead to improvements and applications in areas such as memory storage technology, reconfigurable neural networks, and high-frequency sensors.</p> Tags: Research, Quantum materials and devices Naomi Grosman Quantum! AI! Everything but Trump! https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8834 Shtetl-Optimized urn:uuid:ff2b53fd-9166-7ae2-7e1f-ccd5125cc25b Thu, 01 May 2025 03:16:57 +0000 <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>Grant Sanderson, of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/3blue1brown">3blue1brown</a>, has put up a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQWpF2Gb-gU">phenomenal YouTube video explaining Grover&#8217;s algorithm</a>, and dispelling the fundamental misconception about quantum computing, that QC works simply by &#8220;trying all the possibilities in parallel.&#8221; Let me not futz around: <strong>this video explains, in 36 minutes, what I&#8217;ve tried to explain over and over on this blog for 20 years &#8230; and it does it better. It&#8217;s a masterpiece.</strong> Yes, I consulted with Grant for this video (he wanted my intuitions for &#8220;why is the answer √N?&#8221;), and I even have a cameo at the end of it, but I wish I had <em>made</em> the video. Damn you, Grant!</li> </ul> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>The incomparably great, and <em>absurdly</em> prolific, blogger <a href="https://thezvi.substack.com/">Zvi Mowshowitz</a> and yours truly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMwjqqtU5Dw">spend 1 hour and 40 minutes</a> discussing AI existential risk, education, blogging, and more. I end up “interviewing” Zvi, who does the majority of the talking, which is fine by me, as he has many important things to say! (Among them: his searing critique of those K-12 educators who see it as their life’s mission to <em>prevent</em> kids from learning too much too fast—I’ve linked his best piece on this from the header of this blog.) Thanks so much to Rick Coyle for arranging this conversation.</li> </ul> <ul class="wp-block-list"> <li><strong>Progress in quantum complexity theory!</strong> In 2000, <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0009002">John Watrous showed</a> that the Group Non-Membership problem is in the complexity class <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QMA">QMA (Quantum Merlin-Arthur)</a>. In other words, if some element g is <em>not</em> contained in a given subgroup H of an exponentially large finite group G, which is specified via a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_box_group">black box</a>, then there&#8217;s a short quantum proof that g∉H, with only ~log|G| qubits, which can be verified on a quantum computer in time polynomial in log|G|. This soon raised the question of whether Group Non-Membership could be used to separate QMA from QCMA by oracles, where <a href="https://complexityzoo.net/Complexity_Zoo:Q#qcma">QCMA (Quantum Classical Merlin Arthur)</a>, defined by <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0210077">Aharonov and Naveh</a> in 2002, is the subclass of QMA where the proof needs to be classical, but the verification procedure can still be quantum. In other words, could Group Non-Membership be the first non-quantum example where <em>quantum proofs actually help</em>?<br><br>In 2006, alas, <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604056">Greg Kuperberg and I showed</a> that the answer was probably &#8220;no&#8221;: Group Non-Membership has &#8220;polynomial QCMA query complexity.&#8221; This means that there&#8217;s a QCMA protocol for the problem where Arthur makes only polylog|G| quantum queries to the group oracle&#8212;albeit, <em>possibly</em> an exponential in log|G| number of quantum computation steps besides that! To prove our result, Greg and I needed to make mild use of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_finite_simple_groups">Classification of Finite Simple Groups</a>, one of the crowning achievements of 20th-century mathematics (its proof is about 15,000 pages long). We conjectured (but couldn&#8217;t prove) that someone else, who knew more about the Classification than we did, could show that Group Non-Membership was simply in QCMA outright.<br><br>Now, after almost 20 years, <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.05547">François Le Gall,&nbsp;Harumichi Nishimura,&nbsp;and Dhara Thakkar have finally proven our conjecture</a>&#8212;showing that Group Order, and therefore also Group Non-Membership, are indeed in QCMA. They did indeed need to use the Classification, doing one thing for almost all finite groups covered by the Classification, but a different thing for groups of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ree_group">&#8220;Ree type&#8221;</a> (whatever those are).<br><br>Interestingly, the Group Membership problem had <em>also</em> been a candidate for separating <a href="https://complexityzoo.net/Complexity_Zoo:B#bqpqpoly">BQP/qpoly</a>, or quantum polynomial time with polynomial-size quantum advice&#8212;my personal favorite complexity class&#8212;from <a href="https://complexityzoo.net/Complexity_Zoo:B#bqppoly">BQP/poly</a>, or the same thing with polynomial-size <em>classical</em> advice. And it might conceivably still be! The authors explain to me that their protocol doesn&#8217;t put Group Membership (with group G and subgroup H depending only on the input length n) into BQP/poly, the reason being that their short classical witnesses for g∉H depend on both g <em>and</em> H, in contrast to Watrous&#8217;s quantum witnesses which depended only on H. So there&#8217;s still plenty that&#8217;s open here! Actually, for that matter, I don&#8217;t know of good evidence that the entire Group Membership problem isn&#8217;t in BQP&#8212;i.e., that quantum computers can&#8217;t just <em>solve</em> the whole thing outright, with no Merlins or witnesses in sight!<br><br>Anyway, huge congratulations to Le Gall, Nishimura, and Thakkar for peeling back our ignorance of these matters a bit further! Reeeeeeeee!<br></li> <li><strong>Potential big progress in quantum algorithms!</strong> <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.11049">Vittorio Giovannetti, Seth Lloyd, and Lorenzo Maccone (GLM) have given</a> what they present as a quantum algorithm to estimate the determinant of an n×n matrix A, exponentially faster in some contexts than we know how to do it classically. The algorithm is closely related to the 2008 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HHL_algorithm">HHL (Harrow-Hassidim-Lloyd)</a> quantum algorithm for solving systems of linear equations. Which means that anyone who knows the history of this class of quantum algorithms knows to ask immediately: what&#8217;s the <a href="https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/qml.pdf">fine print</a>? A couple weeks ago, when I visited Harvard and MIT, I had a chance to catch up with Seth Lloyd, so I asked him, and he kindly told me. Firstly, we assume the matrix A is Hermitian and positive semidefinite. Next, we assume A is sparse, and not only that, but there&#8217;s a <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.01178">QRAM</a> data structure that points to its nonzero entries, so you don&#8217;t need to do Grover search or the like to find them, and can query them in coherent superposition. Finally, we assume that all the eigenvalues of A are at least some constant λ&gt;0. The algorithm then estimates det(A), to multiplicative error ε, in time that scales linearly with log(n), and polynomially with 1/λ and 1/ε.<br><br>Now for the challenge I leave for ambitious readers: <strong>is there a classical randomized algorithm to estimate the determinant under the same assumptions and with comparable running time?</strong> In other words, can the GLM algorithm be <a href="https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=3880">&#8220;Ewinized&#8221;</a>? Seth didn&#8217;t know, and I think it&#8217;s a wonderful crisp open question! On the one hand, if Ewinization is possible, it <a href="https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2155">wouldn&#8217;t be the first time</a> that publicity on this blog had led to the brutal murder of a tantalizing quantum speedup. On the other hand &#8230; well, maybe not! I also consider it possible that the problem solved by GLM&#8212;for exponentially-large, implicitly-specified matrices A&#8212;is <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0606179">BQP-complete</a>, as for example was the general problem solved by HHL. This would mean, for example, that one could embed Shor&#8217;s factoring algorithm into GLM, and that there&#8217;s no hope of dequantizing it unless P=BQP. (Even then, though, just like with the HHL algorithm, we&#8217;d still face the question of whether the GLM algorithm was &#8220;independently useful,&#8221; or whether it merely reproduced quantum speedups that were already known.)<br><br>Anyway, quantum algorithms research lives! So does dequantization research! If basic science in the US is able to continue at all&#8212;the thing I promised <em>not</em> to talk about in this post&#8212;we&#8217;ll have plenty to keep us busy over the next few years.</li> </ul> Announcements Complexity Metaphysical Spouting Quantum The Fate of Humanity Scott Engineers advance toward a fault-tolerant quantum computer https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/04/250430142617.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:8455f8b2-3eca-d8f7-97c5-73a00ef673dd Wed, 30 Apr 2025 18:26:17 +0000 Researchers demonstrated extremely strong nonlinear light-matter coupling in a quantum circuit. Stronger coupling enables faster quantum readout and operations, ultimately improving the accuracy of quantum operations. MIT engineers advance toward a fault-tolerant quantum computer https://news.mit.edu/2025/mit-engineers-advance-toward-fault-tolerant-quantum-computer-0430 MIT News - Quantum computing urn:uuid:3ea1768b-df35-71a0-9e0b-642fd7187d53 Wed, 30 Apr 2025 09:00:00 +0000 Researchers achieved a type of coupling between artificial atoms and photons that could enable readout and processing of quantum information in a few nanoseconds. <p>In the future, quantum computers could rapidly simulate new materials or help scientists develop faster machine-learning models, opening the door to many new possibilities.</p><p>But these applications will only be possible if quantum computers can perform operations extremely quickly, so scientists can make measurements and perform corrections before compounding error rates reduce their accuracy and reliability.</p><p>The efficiency of this measurement process, known as readout, relies on the strength of the coupling between photons, which are particles of light that carry quantum information, and artificial atoms, units of matter that are often used to store information in a quantum computer.</p><p>Now, MIT researchers have demonstrated what they believe is the strongest nonlinear light-matter coupling ever achieved in a quantum system. Their experiment is a step toward realizing quantum operations and readout that could be performed in a few nanoseconds.</p><p>The researchers used a novel superconducting circuit architecture to show nonlinear light-matter coupling that&nbsp;is about an order of magnitude stronger than prior demonstrations, which could enable a quantum processor to run about 10 times faster.</p><p>There is still much work to be done before the architecture could be used in a real quantum computer, but demonstrating the fundamental physics behind the process is a major step in the right direction, says Yufeng “Bright” Ye SM ’20, PhD ’24, lead author of a paper on this research.</p><p>“This would really eliminate one of the bottlenecks in quantum computing. Usually, you have to measure the results of your computations in between rounds of error correction. This could accelerate how quickly we can reach the fault-tolerant quantum computing stage and be able to get real-world applications and value out of our quantum computers,” says Ye.</p><p>He is joined on the paper by senior author Kevin O’Brien, an associate professor and principal investigator in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT who leads the Quantum Coherent Electronics Group in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), as well as others at MIT, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and Harvard University. The research <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-59152-z" target="_blank">appears today in <em>Nature Communications</em></a>.</p><p><strong>A new coupler</strong></p><p>This physical demonstration builds on years of theoretical research in the O’Brien group.</p><p>After Ye joined the lab as a PhD student in 2019, he began developing a specialized photon detector to enhance quantum information processing.</p><p>Through that work, he invented a new type of quantum coupler, which is a device that facilitates interactions between qubits. Qubits are the building blocks of a quantum computer. This so-called quarton coupler had so many potential applications in quantum operations and readout that it quickly became a focus of the lab.</p><p>This quarton coupler is a special type of superconducting circuit that has the potential to generate extremely strong nonlinear coupling, which is essential for running most quantum algorithms. As the researchers feed more current into the coupler, it creates an even stronger nonlinear interaction. In this sense, nonlinearity means a system behaves in a way that is greater than the sum of its parts, exhibiting more complex properties.</p><p>“Most of the useful interactions in quantum computing come from nonlinear coupling of light and matter. If you can get a more versatile range of different types of coupling, and increase the coupling strength, then you can essentially increase the processing speed of the quantum computer,” Ye explains.</p><p>For quantum readout, researchers shine microwave light onto a qubit and then, depending on whether that qubit is in state 0 or 1, there is a frequency shift on its associated readout resonator. They measure this shift to determine the qubit’s state.</p><p>Nonlinear light-matter coupling between the qubit and resonator enables this measurement process.</p><p>The MIT researchers designed an architecture with a quarton coupler connected to two superconducting qubits on a chip. They turn one qubit into a resonator and use the other qubit as an artificial atom which stores quantum information. This information is transferred in the form of microwave light particles called photons.</p><p>“The interaction between these superconducting artificial atoms and the microwave light that routes the signal is basically how an entire superconducting quantum computer is built,” Ye explains.</p><p><strong>Enabling faster readout</strong></p><p>The quarton coupler creates nonlinear light-matter coupling between the qubit and resonator that’s about an order of magnitude stronger than researchers had achieved before. This could enable a quantum system with lightning-fast readout.</p><p>“This work is not the end of the story. This is the fundamental physics demonstration, but there is work going on in the group now to realize really fast readout,” O’Brien says.</p><p>That would involve adding additional electronic components, such as filters, to produce a readout circuit that could be incorporated into a larger quantum system.</p><p>The researchers also demonstrated extremely strong matter-matter coupling, another type of qubit interaction that is important for quantum operations. This is another area they plan to explore with future work.</p><p>Fast operations and readout are especially important for quantum computers because qubits have finite lifespans, a concept known as coherence time.</p><p>Stronger nonlinear coupling enables a quantum processor to run faster and with lower error, so the qubits can perform more operations in the same amount of time. This means the qubits can run more rounds of error correction during their lifespans.</p><p>“The more runs of error correction you can get in, the lower the error will be in the results,” Ye says.</p><p>In the long run, this work could help scientists build a fault-tolerant quantum computer, which is essential for practical, large-scale quantum computation.</p><p>This research was supported, in part, by the Army Research Office, the AWS Center for Quantum Computing, and the MIT Center for Quantum Engineering.</p> Research Quantum computing Superconductivity Supercomputing Electronics Photonics Lincoln Laboratory Research Laboratory of Electronics Electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) School of Engineering MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Adam Zewe | MIT News Researchers demonstrated extremely strong nonlinear light-matter coupling in a quantum circuit. Stronger coupling enables faster readout and operations using qubits, which are the fundamental units of information in quantum computing. Credit: Christine Daniloff, MIT Physicists uncover hidden order in the quantum world through deconfined quantum critical points https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/04/250425113806.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:d0d48c76-5601-2b99-dbc1-4b017feae286 Fri, 25 Apr 2025 15:38:06 +0000 A recent study has unraveled some of the secrets concealed within the entangled web of quantum systems. Fight Fiercely https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8820 Shtetl-Optimized urn:uuid:1a52cb52-dc29-a683-7e1b-a2bd073874ed Thu, 24 Apr 2025 11:48:25 +0000 Last week I visited Harvard and MIT, and as advertised in my last post, gave the Yip Lecture at Harvard on the subject &#8220;How Much Math Is Knowable?&#8221; The visit was hosted by Harvard&#8217;s wonderful Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications (CMSA), directed by my former UT Austin colleague Dan Freed. Thanks so much to [&#8230;] <p>Last week I visited Harvard and MIT, and as advertised in my <a href="https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8805">last post</a>, gave the Yip Lecture at Harvard on the subject &#8220;How Much Math Is Knowable?&#8221; The visit was hosted by Harvard&#8217;s wonderful <a href="https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/about-us/">Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications (CMSA)</a>, directed by my former UT Austin colleague <a href="https://people.math.harvard.edu/~dafr/">Dan Freed</a>. Thanks so much to everyone at CMSA for the visit.</p> <p>And good news! You can now <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VplMHWSZf5c">watch my lecture on YouTube here</a>:</p> <figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> <iframe title="Scott Aaronson | How Much Math Is Knowable?" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VplMHWSZf5c?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe> </div></figure> <p>I&#8217;m told it was one of my better performances. As always, I strongly recommend watching at 2x speed. </p> <p>I opened the lecture by saying that, while obviously it would always be an honor to give the Yip Lecture at Harvard, it&#8217;s <em>especially</em> an honor right now, as the rest of American academia looks to Harvard to defend the value of our entire enterprise. I urged Harvard to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27PSHASlGUU">&#8220;fight fiercely,&#8221;</a> in the words of the Tom Lehrer song.</p> <p>I wasn&#8217;t just fishing for applause; I meant it. It&#8217;s crucial for people to understand that, in its total war against universities, MAGA has now lost, not merely the anti-Israel leftists, but <em>also</em> most conservatives, classical liberals, Zionists, etc. with any intellectual scruples whatsoever. To my mind, this opens up the possibility for a broad, nonpartisan response, highlighting everything universities (yes, even Harvard <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/15.1.0/72x72/1f602.png" alt=" Obviously I'm Not Defending Aaronson Rage Against Doofosity The Fate of Humanity Scott It's a quantum zoo out there, and scientists just found a dozen new 'species' https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/04/250421162939.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:05319808-d180-f2f8-c7c8-072d9ddf79a4 Mon, 21 Apr 2025 20:29:39 +0000 Researchers observe over a dozen never-before-seen quantum states in a unique quantum material. Scientists uncover quantum surprise: Matter mediates ultrastrong coupling between light particles https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/04/250418112911.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:c55ef513-7877-b133-a0b3-d46a9c26eebc Fri, 18 Apr 2025 15:29:11 +0000 A team of researchers has developed a new way to control light interactions using a specially engineered structure called a 3D photonic-crystal cavity that could enable transformative advancements in quantum computing, quantum communication and other quantum-based technologies. Curved neutron beams could deliver benefits straight to industry https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/04/250417144904.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:8daa2ed9-501d-f807-f2eb-c5ba525435c7 Thu, 17 Apr 2025 18:49:04 +0000 Scientists have created the first neutron 'Airy beam,' which has unusual capabilities that ordinary neutron beams do not. The achievement could enhance neutron-based techniques for investigating the properties of materials that are difficult to explore by other means. For example, the beams can probe characteristics of molecules such as chirality, which is important in biotechnology, chemical manufacturing, quantum computing and other fields. NIST’s Curved Neutron Beams Could Deliver Benefits Straight to Industry https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/news/nists-curved-neutron-beams-could-deliver-benefits-straight Institute for Quantum Computing urn:uuid:51e29f40-470e-f2b4-d42b-f003e4abbe44 Thu, 17 Apr 2025 12:00:00 +0000 <img loading="lazy" src="https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/uploads/images/airy-beams-listing-image-news-apr-2025-.png?itok=0R9Ns0k5" width="100" height="56" alt="An illustration of a red neutron source flowing through a grate with Airy Beams depicted as red dots" typeof="Image" class="image-style-thumbnail" /><p>Thu, 17 Apr 2025 12:00:00 +0000</p> <p class="highlight">Scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the University of Buffalo, IQC and other institutions have created the first neutron “Airy beam,” which has unusual capabilities that ordinary neutron beams do not.</p> Tags: Research, Quantum computing Naomi Grosman An elegant method for the detection of single spins using photovoltage https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/04/250415143815.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:a3b615b3-0f48-b103-1c99-8c3b720d11a7 Tue, 15 Apr 2025 18:38:15 +0000 Diamonds with certain optically active defects can be used as highly sensitive sensors or qubits for quantum computers, where the quantum information is stored in the electron spin state of these colour centeres. However, the spin states have to be read out optically, which is often experimentally complex. Now, a team has developed an elegant method using a photo voltage to detect the individual and local spin states of these defects. This could lead to a much more compact design of quantum sensors. I speak at Harvard as it faces its biggest crisis since 1636 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8805 Shtetl-Optimized urn:uuid:9e35bfb8-ebb4-84ad-fd45-2b81bb699c32 Tue, 15 Apr 2025 17:22:35 +0000 Every week, I tell myself I won’t do yet another post about the asteroid striking American academia, and then every week events force my hand otherwise. No one on earth—certainly no one who reads this blog—could call me blasé about the issue of antisemitism at US universities. I&#8217;ve blasted the takeover of entire departments and [&#8230;] <p>Every week, I tell myself I won’t do yet another post about the asteroid striking American academia, and then every week events force my hand otherwise.</p> <p>No one on earth—<em>certainly</em> no one who reads this blog—could call me blasé about the issue of antisemitism at US universities. I&#8217;ve blasted the takeover of entire departments and unrelated student clubs and campus common areas by the dogmatic belief that the State of Israel (and <em>only</em> Israel, among all nations on earth) should be eradicated, by the use of that belief as a litmus test for entry. Since October 7, I&#8217;ve dealt with comments and emails pretty much every day calling me a genocidal Judeofascist Zionist.</p> <p>So I hope it means something when I say: <em>today I salute Harvard for standing up to the Trump administration</em>. And I’ll say so in person, when I visit Harvard&#8217;s math department later this week to give the <a href="https://cmsa.fas.harvard.edu/event/yip-2025/">Fifth Annual Yip Lecture</a>, on “How Much Math Is Knowable?” The more depressing the news, I find, the more my thoughts turn to the same questions that bothered Euclid and Archimedes and Leibniz and Russell and Turing. Actually, what the hell, why don&#8217;t I share the abstract for this talk?</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow"> <p>Theoretical computer science has over the years sought more and more refined answers to the question of which mathematical&nbsp;truths are knowable by finite beings like ourselves,&nbsp;bounded in time and space and subject to physical laws.&nbsp; I&#8217;ll tell a story that starts with Gödel&#8217;s Incompleteness Theorem and Turing&#8217;s discovery of uncomputability.&nbsp; I&#8217;ll then introduce the spectacular Busy Beaver function, which grows faster than any computable function.&nbsp; Work by me and Yedidia, along with recent improvements by O&#8217;Rear and Riebel, has shown that the value of BB(745) is independent of the axioms of set theory; on the other end, an international collaboration proved last year that BB(5) = 47,176,870.&nbsp; I&#8217;ll speculate on whether BB(6) will ever be known,&nbsp;by us or our AI successors.&nbsp; I&#8217;ll next discuss the P≠NP conjecture and what it&nbsp;does and doesn&#8217;t mean for the limits of machine&nbsp;intelligence.&nbsp; As my own specialty is quantum computing,&nbsp;I&#8217;ll summarize what we know about how scalable quantum computers, assuming we get&nbsp;them,&nbsp;will expand the&nbsp;boundary of what&#8217;s mathematically knowable.&nbsp; I&#8217;ll end by talking about hypothetical models even beyond quantum computers, which might expand the boundary of knowability still&nbsp;further, if one is able (for example) to jump into a black hole, create a closed timelike curve, or project oneself onto the holographic boundary of the universe.</p> </blockquote> <p>Now back to the depressing news. What makes me take Harvard&#8217;s side is the experience of Columbia. Columbia had already been moving in the right direction on fighting antisemitism, and on enforcing its rules against disruption, before the government even got involved. Then, once the government <em>did</em> take away funding and present its ultimatum&#8212;completely outside the process specified in Title VI law&#8212;Columbia&#8217;s administration quickly agreed to everything asked, to howls of outrage from the left-leaning faculty. Yet <strong>despite its total capitulation,</strong> the government has <em>continued</em> to hold Columbia’s medical research and other science funding hostage, while inventing a never-ending list of additional demands, whose apparent endpoint is that Columbia submit to state ideological control like a university in Russia or Iran.</p> <p>By taking this scorched-earth route, the government has effectively telegraphed to all the <em>other</em> universities, as clearly as possible: “actually, we don’t care what you do or don’t do on antisemitism. We just want to destroy you, and antisemitism was our best available pretext, the place where you’d most obviously fallen short of your ideals. But we’re not really trying to cure a sick patient, or force the patient to adopt better health habits: we’re trying to shoot, disembowel, and dismember the patient. That being the case, you might as well fight us and go down with dignity!”</p> <p>No wonder that my distinguished Harvard friends (and past <em>Shtetl-Optimized</em> guest bloggers) <a href="https://x.com/sapinker/status/1911984035263393798">Steven Pinker</a> and <a href="https://x.com/boazbaraktcs/status/1911841870625558742">Boaz Barak</a>—not exactly known as anti-Zionist woke radicals—have come out in favor of Harvard fighting this in court. So has Harvard&#8217;s past president <a href="https://x.com/LHSummers/status/1911839522058367129">Larry Summers</a>, who&#8217;s welcome to guest-blog here as well. They all understand that events have given us no choice but to fight Trump as if there were no antisemitism, even while we continue to fight antisemitism as if there were no Trump.</p> <hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/> <p><strong><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-red-color">Update (April 16):</mark></strong> Commenter Greg <a href="https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8805#comment-2007895">argues that</a>, in the title of this post, I probably ought to revise &#8220;Harvard&#8217;s biggest crisis since 1636&#8221; to &#8220;its biggest crisis since 1640.&#8221; Why 1640? Because that&#8217;s when the new college was shut down, over allegations that its head teacher was beating the students and that the head teacher&#8217;s wife (who was also the cook) was serving the students food adulterated with dung. By 1642, Harvard was back on track and had graduated its first class.</p> Obviously I'm Not Defending Aaronson The Fate of Humanity Scott Canada’s investments in quantum research drive real-world results https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/news/canadas-investments-quantum-research-drive-real-world Institute for Quantum Computing urn:uuid:bd681822-bad0-7734-d558-f56e5850cbea Fri, 11 Apr 2025 12:00:00 +0000 <img loading="lazy" src="https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/uploads/images/world-quantum-day-listing-image-news-apr-2025.jpg?itok=KWsfv3Cb" width="100" height="56" alt="Phantom Photonics co-founders Dr. Thomas Jennewein, Alex Maierean, and Dr. Shihan Sajeed stand in a long corridor " typeof="Image" class="image-style-thumbnail" /><p>Fri, 11 Apr 2025 12:00:00 +0000</p> <p class="highlight">IQC’s impact shows power of collaboration in advancing research and commercialization of quantum technology.</p> Tags: IQC community updates and highlights Naomi Grosman Researchers demonstrate the UK's first long-distance ultra-secure communication over a quantum network https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/04/250407192548.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:4e5c3955-f476-5e05-5d5e-772411d0fd82 Mon, 07 Apr 2025 23:25:48 +0000 Researchers have successfully demonstrated the UK's first long-distance ultra-secure transfer of data over a quantum communications network, including the UK's first long-distance quantum-secured video call. Scientists merge two 'impossible' materials into new artificial structure https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/04/250402200857.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:34d96822-307e-7a59-53ed-86e4eabd40af Thu, 03 Apr 2025 00:08:57 +0000 An international team has merged two lab-synthesized materials into a synthetic quantum structure once thought impossible to exist and produced an exotic structure expected to provide insights that could lead to new materials at the core of quantum computing. Transducer could enable superconducting quantum networks https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/04/250402122846.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:f5b2152a-8dc4-3b9f-9cd1-462bf5da8a04 Wed, 02 Apr 2025 16:28:46 +0000 Applied physicists have created a photon router that could plug into quantum networks to create robust optical interfaces for noise-sensitive microwave quantum computers. Diraq and Fermilab launch five-year quantum sensing collaboration to support dark matter search https://quantumcomputingreport.com/diraq-and-fermilab-launch-five-year-quantum-sensing-collaboration-to-support-dark-matter-search/ quantum computing – News urn:uuid:88c85d5a-ee13-d954-31ad-768f01722c4c Mon, 31 Mar 2025 19:58:39 +0000 <p>Fermilab and Diraq announced a multi-institution collaboration to develop a novel quantum sensor platform for high-energy physics named Quandarum.</p> <p>The post <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com/diraq-and-fermilab-launch-five-year-quantum-sensing-collaboration-to-support-dark-matter-search/">Diraq and Fermilab launch five-year quantum sensing collaboration to support dark matter search</a> appeared first on <a href="https://news.fnal.gov">News</a>.</p> <p>The post <a href="https://quantumcomputingreport.com/diraq-and-fermilab-launch-five-year-quantum-sensing-collaboration-to-support-dark-matter-search/">Diraq and Fermilab launch five-year quantum sensing collaboration to support dark matter search</a> appeared first on <a href="https://news.fnal.gov">News</a>.</p> In the news tracym Researchers find a way to shield quantum information from 'noise' https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/03/250327141747.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:eb36e0ed-75fe-e6e3-17ca-b55b0231041c Thu, 27 Mar 2025 18:17:47 +0000 Researchers have discovered a way to protect quantum information from environmental disruptions, offering hope for more reliable future technologies. Entangled in self-discovery: Quantum computers analyze their own entanglement https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/03/250326123536.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:88663473-51ef-82ff-6de5-d621167147e3 Wed, 26 Mar 2025 16:35:36 +0000 Quantum computers are able to solve complex calculations that would take traditional computers thousands of years in just a few minutes. What if that analytical power is turned inwards towards the computer itself? New type of quantum computer studies the dance of elementary particles https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/03/250325115439.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:595c6236-3189-0ec7-cbcc-71214c6e6ddd Tue, 25 Mar 2025 15:54:39 +0000 The study of elementary particles and forces is of central importance to our understanding of the universe. Now a team of physicists shows how an unconventional type of quantum computer opens a new door to the world of elementary particles. Listen to quantum atoms talk together thanks to acoustics https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/03/250325115125.htm Quantum Computers News -- ScienceDaily urn:uuid:745ffa47-7c43-d566-9a07-b0786e76a89f Tue, 25 Mar 2025 15:51:25 +0000 To get around the constraints of quantum physics, researchers have built a new acoustic system to study the way the minuscule atoms of condensed matter talk together. They hope to one day build an acoustic version of a quantum computer.