Oskar Painter is a Canadian born (1972) experimental physicist who works on nanoscale optics, nanomechanical devices, and superconducting qubits. He is the John G. Braun Professor of Applied Physics and Professor of Physics at Caltech. Since 2019, he is also Head of Quantum Hardware at Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Painter received his PhD from Caltech in 2001 under the supervision of Prof. Axel Scherer. [1] After graduation, Painter helped found Xponent Photonics along with Pete Sercel and Caltech colleagues Kerry Vahala and Amnon Yariv. Painter joined the Caltech faculty in 2002, as an assistant professor of Applied Physics. [2] In 2012, he became Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light and was awarded a Humboldt Professorship in 2013. In 2014, he returned to Caltech. Painter has also served as the co-director of the Kavli Nanoscience Institute [3] and co-PI of the Institute of Quantum Information and Matter during his time at Caltech.
Painter's research has covered many topics, including photonic crystals and silicon photonics, to solid-state cavity quantum electrodynamics and quantum optomechanics. More recently, he has shifted his research towards superconducting quantum circuits, with a particular emphasis on hybrid circuit architectures involving the integration of optical and nanomechanical devices. [4]
A quantum computer is a computer that exploits quantum mechanical phenomena. At small scales, physical matter exhibits properties of both particles and waves, and quantum computing leverages this behavior using specialized hardware. Classical physics cannot explain the operation of these quantum devices, and a scalable quantum computer could perform some calculations exponentially faster than any modern "classical" computer. In particular, a large-scale quantum computer could break widely used encryption schemes and aid physicists in performing physical simulations; however, the current state of the art is still largely experimental and impractical.
This is a timeline of quantum computing.
Quantum error correction (QEC) is used in quantum computing to protect quantum information from errors due to decoherence and other quantum noise. Quantum error correction is theorised as essential to achieve fault tolerant quantum computing that can reduce the effects of noise on stored quantum information, faulty quantum gates, faulty quantum preparation, and faulty measurements. This would allow algorithms of greater circuit depth.
In quantum computing, more specifically in superconducting quantum computing, flux qubits are micrometer sized loops of superconducting metal that is interrupted by a number of Josephson junctions. These devices function as quantum bits. The flux qubit was first proposed by Terry P. Orlando et al. at MIT in 1999 and fabricated shortly thereafter. During fabrication, the Josephson junction parameters are engineered so that a persistent current will flow continuously when an external magnetic flux is applied. Only an integer number of flux quanta are allowed to penetrate the superconducting ring, resulting in clockwise or counter-clockwise mesoscopic supercurrents in the loop to compensate a non-integer external flux bias. When the applied flux through the loop area is close to a half integer number of flux quanta, the two lowest energy eigenstates of the loop will be a quantum superposition of the clockwise and counter-clockwise currents.The two lowest energy eigenstates differ only by the relative quantum phase between the composing current-direction states. Higher energy eigenstates correspond to much larger (macroscopic) persistent currents, that induce an additional flux quantum to the qubit loop, thus are well separated energetically from the lowest two eigenstates. This separation, known as the "qubit non linearity" criteria, allows operations with the two lowest eigenstates only, effectively creating a two level system. Usually, the two lowest eigenstates will serve as the computational basis for the logical qubit.
Jonathan P. Dowling was an Irish-American researcher and professor in theoretical physics, known for his work on quantum technology, particularly for exploiting quantum entanglement for applications to quantum metrology, quantum sensing, and quantum imaging.
Within quantum technology, a quantum sensor utilizes properties of quantum mechanics, such as quantum entanglement, quantum interference, and quantum state squeezing, which have optimized precision and beat current limits in sensor technology. The field of quantum sensing deals with the design and engineering of quantum sources and quantum measurements that are able to beat the performance of any classical strategy in a number of technological applications. This can be done with photonic systems or solid state systems.
Michael Hochberg is an American physicist. He’s authored over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, has founded several companies, and has been an inventor on over 60 patents. Hochberg's research interests include silicon photonics and large-scale photonic integration. He has worked in a number of application areas, including data communications, biosensing, quantum optics, mid-infrared photonics, optical computing, and machine learning. Much of his work in silicon photonics has been the product of a longstanding series of collaborations with Thomas Baehr-Jones.
Yoshihisa Yamamoto is the director of Physics & Informatics Laboratories, NTT Research, Inc. He is also Professor (Emeritus) at Stanford University and National Institute of Informatics (Tokyo).
Jeremy O'Brien is a physicist who researches in quantum optics, optical quantum metrology and quantum information science. He co-founded and serves as CEO of the quantum computing firm PsiQuantum. Formerly, he was Professorial Research Fellow in Physics and Electrical Engineering at the University of Bristol, and director of its Centre for Quantum Photonics.
An optical transistor, also known as an optical switch or a light valve, is a device that switches or amplifies optical signals. Light occurring on an optical transistor's input changes the intensity of light emitted from the transistor's output while output power is supplied by an additional optical source. Since the input signal intensity may be weaker than that of the source, an optical transistor amplifies the optical signal. The device is the optical analog of the electronic transistor that forms the basis of modern electronic devices. Optical transistors provide a means to control light using only light and has applications in optical computing and fiber-optic communication networks. Such technology has the potential to exceed the speed of electronics, while conserving more power.
Michael Lee Roukes is an American experimental physicist, nanoscientist, and the Frank J. Roshek Professor of Physics, Applied Physics, and Bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
The superconducting nanowire single-photon detector is a type of optical and near-infrared single-photon detector based on a current-biased superconducting nanowire. It was first developed by scientists at Moscow State Pedagogical University and at the University of Rochester in 2001. The first fully operational prototype was demonstrated in 2005 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Boulder), and BBN Technologies as part of the DARPA Quantum Network.
Quantum simulators permit the study of a quantum system in a programmable fashion. In this instance, simulators are special purpose devices designed to provide insight about specific physics problems. Quantum simulators may be contrasted with generally programmable "digital" quantum computers, which would be capable of solving a wider class of quantum problems.
Linear optical quantum computing or linear optics quantum computation (LOQC) is a paradigm of quantum computation, allowing universal quantum computation. LOQC uses photons as information carriers, mainly uses linear optical elements, or optical instruments to process quantum information, and uses photon detectors and quantum memories to detect and store quantum information.
Robert J. Schoelkopf III is an American physicist, most noted for his work on quantum computing as one of the inventors of superconducting qubits. Schoelkopf's main research areas are quantum transport, single-electron devices, and charge dynamics in nanostructures. His research utilizes quantum-effect and single-electron devices, both for fundamental physical studies and for applications. Techniques often include high-speed, high-sensitivity measurements performed on nanostructures at low temperatures. Schoelkopf serves as director of the Yale Center for Microelectronic Materials and Structures and as associate director of the Yale Institute for Nanoscience and Quantum Engineering. Since 2014, Schoelkopf is also the Director of the Yale Quantum Institute.
Integrated quantum photonics, uses photonic integrated circuits to control photonic quantum states for applications in quantum technologies. As such, integrated quantum photonics provides a promising approach to the miniaturisation and scaling up of optical quantum circuits. The major application of integrated quantum photonics is Quantum technology:, for example quantum computing, quantum communication, quantum simulation, quantum walks and quantum metrology.
The IBM Quantum Composer and the IBM Quantum Lab form an online platform allowing public and premium access to cloud-based quantum computing services provided by IBM Quantum. This includes access to a set of IBM's prototype quantum processors, a set of tutorials on quantum computation, and access to an interactive textbook. As of February 2021, there are over 20 devices on the service, six of which are freely available for the public. This service can be used to run algorithms and experiments, and explore tutorials and simulations around what might be possible with quantum computing.
Cloud-based quantum computing is the invocation of quantum emulators, simulators or processors through the cloud. Increasingly, cloud services are being looked on as the method for providing access to quantum processing. Quantum computers achieve their massive computing power by initiating quantum physics into processing power and when users are allowed access to these quantum-powered computers through the internet it is known as quantum computing within the cloud.
In quantum computing, quantum memory is the quantum-mechanical version of ordinary computer memory. Whereas ordinary memory stores information as binary states, quantum memory stores a quantum state for later retrieval. These states hold useful computational information known as qubits. Unlike the classical memory of everyday computers, the states stored in quantum memory can be in a quantum superposition, giving much more practical flexibility in quantum algorithms than classical information storage.
Quantum gate teleportation is a quantum circuit construction where a gate is applied to target qubits by first applying the gate to an entangled state and then teleporting the target qubits through that entangled state.