USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center

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The USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center (QCC) is a joint scientific research effort between Lockheed Martin Corporation and the University of Southern California (USC). The QCC is housed at the Information Sciences Institute (ISI), a computer science and engineering research unit of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and is jointly operated by ISI and Lockheed Martin.

Contents

USC faculty, ISI researchers and students are performing basic and applied research into quantum computing, and are collaborating with researchers around the world. The QCC uses a D-Wave Two quantum annealing system, manufactured by D-Wave Systems, Inc. [1] [2] The QCC is the first organization outside of D-Wave to operate the system. [3] The second system is installed at NASA Ames Research Center, [4] and is operated jointly by NASA and Google. [5] [6] The systems must be kept extremely cold and electromagnetically shielded to operate with the longest possible coherence time.

Purpose

Quantum information processing, also called quantum computing, theoretically is known to offer dramatic speed-ups and more complete answers for some combinatorial computing problems. Quantum annealing is a branch of quantum computing whose advantages over classical computing are being investigated. [7] In quantum annealing, problems are encoded into the lowest energy state of a physical quantum system. Applications currently under study at the QCC include big data analysis, verification and validation of cyber-physical systems, pattern identification and classification, and optimization and machine learning, any of which may support breakthroughs in multiple industries and government. [8]

USC and ISI researchers, as well as Lockheed Martin engineers, seek to develop methods to benchmark quantum annealers, [9] and perform tests of 'quantumness'. [10] These include the study of quantum entanglement [11] and, more generally, the performance of quantum annealing experiments. [12]

Researchers also are working to manage quantum decoherence, the phenomenon that degrades the performance of quantum information processors when quantum states are forced out of quantum superposition. Decoherence can reduce quantum functionality to that of a classical computer, and can be counteracted using quantum error correction. [13] QCC researchers and their collaborators have developed methods to counteract decoherence in quantum annealers by combining quantum error correction with energy penalties that suppress decoherence into a single quantum annealing correction method. [14] [15] [16]

History

The QCC was launched in November, 2011 under the leadership of Scientific and Technical Director Daniel Lidar, a USC professor of electrical engineering, chemistry and physics; Operational Director Robert F. Lucas, [17] director of ISI's Computational Systems and Technology division; and Ned Allen and Greg Tallant of Lockheed Martin. The QCC began with a 128-qubit D-Wave One, [18] which was replaced in March 2013 with the 512-qubit D-Wave Two. [19]

Research

Research initially focused on testing whether the D-Wave is in fact a quantum system, [20] [21] [22] [23] and has expanded to benchmarking the D-Wave against classical algorithms, [24] [25] and various applications, including quantum machine learning. [26] Lockheed Martin researchers have focused on the application of adiabatic quantum computing to the problem of verification and validation of control systems and other tasks with similar mathematical structure, such as the design of special wave forms for RF applications with minimal side-lobes.

People

The team includes more than a dozen USC faculty members, ISI researchers, postdoctoral and graduate students, and more than 100 Lockheed Martin users.

Location

USC is located in downtown Los Angeles. ISI is located in Marina del Rey, California. Lockheed Martin headquarters is located in Bethesda, Maryland. D-Wave is located in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Information Sciences Institute</span> University of Southern California research institute

The USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI) is a component of the University of Southern California (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering, and specializes in research and development in information processing, computing, and communications technologies. It is located in Marina del Rey, California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quantum computing</span> Technology that uses quantum mechanics

A quantum computer is a computer that takes advantage of quantum mechanical phenomena.

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.

Superconducting quantum computing is a branch of solid state quantum computing that implements superconducting electronic circuits using superconducting qubits as artificial atoms, or quantum dots. For superconducting qubits, the two logic states are the ground state and the excited state, denoted respectively. Research in superconducting quantum computing is conducted by companies such as Google, IBM, IMEC, BBN Technologies, Rigetti, and Intel. Many recently developed QPUs use superconducting architecture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trapped-ion quantum computer</span> Proposed quantum computer implementation

A trapped-ion quantum computer is one proposed approach to a large-scale quantum computer. Ions, or charged atomic particles, can be confined and suspended in free space using electromagnetic fields. Qubits are stored in stable electronic states of each ion, and quantum information can be transferred through the collective quantized motion of the ions in a shared trap. Lasers are applied to induce coupling between the qubit states or coupling between the internal qubit states and the external motional states.

Quantum networks form an important element of quantum computing and quantum communication systems. Quantum networks facilitate the transmission of information in the form of quantum bits, also called qubits, between physically separated quantum processors. A quantum processor is a small quantum computer being able to perform quantum logic gates on a certain number of qubits. Quantum networks work in a similar way to classical networks. The main difference is that quantum networking, like quantum computing, is better at solving certain problems, such as modeling quantum systems.

Quantum annealing (QA) is an optimization process for finding the global minimum of a given objective function over a given set of candidate solutions, by a process using quantum fluctuations. Quantum annealing is used mainly for problems where the search space is discrete with many local minima; such as finding the ground state of a spin glass or the traveling salesman problem. The term "quantum annealing" was first proposed in 1988 by B. Apolloni, N. Cesa Bianchi and D. De Falco as a quantum-inspired classical algorithm. It was formulated in its present form by T. Kadowaki and H. Nishimori in 1998 though an imaginary-time variant without quantum coherence had been discussed by A. B. Finnila, M. A. Gomez, C. Sebenik and J. D. Doll in 1994.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">D-Wave Systems</span> Canadian quantum computing company

D-Wave Quantum Systems Inc. is a Canadian quantum computing company, based in Burnaby, British Columbia. D-Wave claims to be the world's first company to sell computers that exploit quantum effects in their operation. D-Wave's early customers include Lockheed Martin, University of Southern California, Google/NASA and Los Alamos National Lab.

Adiabatic quantum computation (AQC) is a form of quantum computing which relies on the adiabatic theorem to perform calculations and is closely related to quantum annealing.

Daniel Amihud Lidar is the holder of the Viterbi Professorship of Engineering at the University of Southern California, where he is a professor of electrical engineering, chemistry, physics and astronomy. He is the director and co-founder of the USC Center for Quantum Information Science & Technology (CQIST) as well as scientific director of the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center, notable for his research on control of quantum systems and quantum information processing.

D-Wave Two is the second commercially available quantum computer, and the successor to the first commercially available quantum computer, D-Wave One. Both computers were developed by Canadian company D-Wave Systems. The computers are not general purpose, but rather are designed for quantum annealing. Specifically, the computers are designed to use quantum annealing to solve a single type of problem known as quadratic unconstrained binary optimization. As of 2015, it was still debated whether large-scale entanglement takes place in D-Wave Two, and whether current or future generations of D-Wave computers will have any advantage over classical computers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert J. Schoelkopf</span> American physicist

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.

David P. DiVincenzo is an American theoretical physicist. He is the director of the Institute of Theoretical Nanoelectronics at the Peter Grünberg Institute at the Forschungszentrum Jülich and professor at the Institute for Quantum Information at RWTH Aachen University. With Daniel Loss, he proposed the Loss–DiVincenzo quantum computer in 1997, which would use electron spins in quantum dots as qubits.

The DiVincenzo criteria are conditions necessary for constructing a quantum computer, conditions proposed in 2000 by the theoretical physicist David P. DiVincenzo, as being those necessary to construct such a computer—a computer first proposed by mathematician Yuri Manin, in 1980, and physicist Richard Feynman, in 1982—as a means to efficiently simulate quantum systems, such as in solving the quantum many-body problem.

In quantum computing, quantum supremacy or quantum advantage is the goal of demonstrating that a programmable quantum computer can solve a problem that no classical computer can solve in any feasible amount of time, irrespective of the usefulness of the problem. The term was coined by John Preskill in 2012, but the concept dates back to Yuri Manin's 1980 and Richard Feynman's 1981 proposals of quantum computing.

In quantum computing, a qubit is a unit of information analogous to a bit in classical computing, but it is affected by quantum mechanical properties such as superposition and entanglement which allow qubits to be in some ways more powerful than classical bits for some tasks. Qubits are used in quantum circuits and quantum algorithms composed of quantum logic gates to solve computational problems, where they are used for input/output and intermediate computations.

The current state of quantum computing is referred to as the noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) era, characterized by quantum processors containing up to 1000 qubits which are not advanced enough yet for fault-tolerance or large enough to achieve quantum supremacy. These processors, which are sensitive to their environment (noisy) and prone to quantum decoherence, are not yet capable of continuous quantum error correction. This intermediate-scale is defined by the quantum volume, which is based on the moderate number of qubits and gate fidelity. The term NISQ was coined by John Preskill in 2018.

This glossary of quantum computing is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in quantum computing, its sub-disciplines, and related fields.

References

  1. ↑ Knapp, Alex (29 January 2015). "Quantum Computing Company D-Wave Raises $29 Million CAD". Forbes.
  2. ↑ "D-Wave's Dream Machine". Inc.com. 9 January 2014.
  3. ↑ "Can quantum computing change the world? This start-up is betting on it". Washington Post.
  4. ↑ "QuAIL". nasa.gov. Archived from the original on 2015-03-10.
  5. ↑ Thompson, Clive (20 May 2014). "The Revolutionary Quantum Computer That May Not Be Quantum at All". WIRED.
  6. ↑ Jones, Nicola (2013). "Google and NASA snap up quantum computer". Nature News & Comment. doi:10.1038/nature.2013.12999. S2CID   57405432.
  7. ↑ "World's first quantum computer indeed". isgtw.org.
  8. ↑ "NSA seeks to build quantum computer that could crack most types of encryption". Washington Post.
  9. ↑ Zick, Kenneth M.; Shehab, Omar; French, Matthew (2015-06-08). "Experimental quantum annealing: case study involving the graph isomorphism problem". Scientific Reports. 5 (1): 11168. arXiv: 1503.06453 . Bibcode:2015NatSR...511168Z. doi: 10.1038/srep11168 . ISSN   2045-2322. PMC   4459189 . PMID   26053973.
  10. ↑ Albash, T.; Rønnow, T.F.; Troyer, M.; Lidar, D.A. (2015). "Reexamining classical and quantum models for the D-Wave One processor". The European Physical Journal Special Topics. Springer Science and Business Media LLC. 224 (1): 111–129. arXiv: 1409.3827 . doi:10.1140/epjst/e2015-02346-0. ISSN   1951-6355. S2CID   119100508.
  11. ↑ Lanting, T.; Przybysz, A. J.; Smirnov, A. Yu.; Spedalieri, F. M.; Amin, M. H.; et al. (2014-05-29). "Entanglement in a Quantum Annealing Processor". Physical Review X. 4 (2): 021041. arXiv: 1401.3500 . Bibcode:2014PhRvX...4b1041L. doi: 10.1103/physrevx.4.021041 . ISSN   2160-3308.
  12. ↑ "The Newest, Strictest Test Of A Quantum Computer Yet". Popular Science. 18 March 2019.
  13. ↑ Lidar, D. A.; Brun T. A. (eds.), "Quantum Error Correction", Cambridge University Press (2013).
  14. ↑ Pudenz, Kristen L.; Albash, Tameem; Lidar, Daniel A. (2014-02-06). "Error-corrected quantum annealing with hundreds of qubits". Nature Communications. 5 (1): 3243. arXiv: 1307.8190 . Bibcode:2014NatCo...5.3243P. doi: 10.1038/ncomms4243 . ISSN   2041-1723. PMID   24500027.
  15. ↑ Young, Kevin C.; Blume-Kohout, Robin; Lidar, Daniel A. (2013-12-11). "Adiabatic quantum optimization with the wrong Hamiltonian". Physical Review A. 88 (6): 062314. arXiv: 1310.0529 . Bibcode:2013PhRvA..88f2314Y. doi:10.1103/physreva.88.062314. ISSN   1050-2947. S2CID   41550628.
  16. ↑ Pudenz, Kristen L.; Albash, Tameem; Lidar, Daniel A. (2015-04-02). "Quantum annealing correction for random Ising problems". Physical Review A. 91 (4): 042302. arXiv: 1408.4382 . Bibcode:2015PhRvA..91d2302P. doi:10.1103/physreva.91.042302. ISSN   1050-2947. S2CID   118516049.
  17. ↑ "Information Sciences Institute – Robert F. Lucas, Ph.D." isi.edu.
  18. ↑ Knapp, Alex (31 October 2011). "Lockheed Martin Installs Quantum Computer". Forbes.
  19. ↑ "Customers". dwavesys.com.
  20. ↑ "Quantum Computing Research May Back Controversial Company". 24 March 2014.
  21. ↑ Hsu, Jeremy (3 July 2013). "Scientists Confirm D-Wave". ieee.org.
  22. ↑ Metz, Cade (28 June 2013). "Google's Quantum Computer Proven To Be Real Thing (Almost) – WIRED". WIRED.
  23. ↑ "Seeking quantum-ness: D-Wave chip passes rigorous tests". EurekAlert!. 5 March 2014.
  24. ↑ "Search Content". Science News.
  25. ↑ Denis Delbecq (23 June 2014). "L'ordinateur quantique au banc d'essai". Le Monde.fr.
  26. ↑ "Thor Benson: Quantum Computers Are Coming, and Here's How to Process That Information – Truthdig". Truthdig.

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