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This is a preview edition of Quantum Campus, which shares the latest in quantum science and technology. Read by more than 1,900 researchers, we publish on Fridays and are always looking for news from across the country. See something interesting? Be sure to share it.
Quantum-enhanced AI
Researchers from Microsoft Quantum published an extensive piece on the future of quantum-enhanced AI in drug discovery and chemistry. It covers opportunities like the modeling of reaction rates for catalyst design and electrolyte development — as well as the value of “quantum-accurate data” for AI models in these use cases.
“[I]f you train classical models on quantum-generated data, you’ll get the best of both worlds: the accuracy of quantum delivered at the speed of AI,” Microsoft’s Chi Chen and Matthias Troyer wrote.
They estimate that “meaningful chemistry simulations beyond the reach of classical computation will require hundreds to thousands of high-quality qubits with error rates of around 10-15, or one error in a quadrillion operations. Achieving this level of reliability will require fault tolerance through redundant encoding of quantum information in logical qubits, each consisting of hundreds of physical qubits, thus requiring a total of about a million physical qubits.”
The team’s piece was published this week in IEEE Spectrum.
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Cavity-altered superconductivity
A global collaboration of 17 institutions demonstrated that the quantum fluctuations from a light-confining “cavity” structure can alter the electromagnetic state of a superconductor. Demonstrating a long-held theory experimentally for the first time, the team “placed a nanometer-sized flake of hexagonal boron nitride on top of the superconducting material [known as κ-ET.] With no added lasers or other external driving forces, superconductivity came to a halt.”
This work was published in Nature, which also ran a reported piece on the work.
Atomic force microscope used in the experiments. Image from Columbia University.
Optical frequency comb
Harvard physicists generated a type of optical frequency comb known as a normal-dispersion Kerr microcomb. The platform combines the generation of the comb and electro-optic modulation of the comb on a single a thin-film lithium niobate chip. It suppresses unwanted Raman scattering and can create frequency combs in hard-to-reach spectral bands.
This work was published in Science Advances.
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Quickbits
Quantum Campus is edited by Bill Bell, a science writer and marketing consultant who has covered physics and high-performance computing for more than 25 years. Disclosure statement.
