Quantum Computing: Advancing Fundamental Physics
- PDF / 265,833 Bytes
- 4 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 28 Downloads / 261 Views
EDITORIAL
Quantum Computing: Advancing Fundamental Physics Panagiotis Spentzouris1
© This is a U.S. Government work and not under copyright protection in the US; foreign copyright protection may apply 2020
The field of Quantum Information Science (QIS) is a rapidly growing field, with an expanding number of potential applications that explore the capabilities of currently available noisy quantum devices and promise to eventually solve problems beyond anything that classical systems can accomplish. In the past few years, this expectation for transformational applications has translated to a lot of attention, both from the media (reaching the scientific community and the general public) and the government funding agencies and technology industry. Examples of this attention include the National Quantum Initiative in the USA [1] that has already generated significant funding (e.g., $625 million investment from the Department of Energy for Quantum Centers over the next 5 years [2]), and major efforts to design and deploy quantum computers by major companies such as Google, IBM, and Microsoft, as well as a plethora of dynamic start-ups with similar goals, such as Rigetti and IonQ. More importantly, however, is that significant advances have been made in developing new techniques and algorithms and advancing quantum technologies, resulting in applications that are addressing real problems (albeit simplified, in most cases, or very specialized). I am expecting that most of the readers are familiar with the paper by Google [3] claiming ‘quantum supremacy’ [4], and the many discussions and publications it generated. Independently of what one concludes from this debate, this event and the discussions it generated are proving that quantum computers, despite being at their infancy, can be very powerful. Therefore, it is very important to understand what the implications for high energy physics (HEP) are. The field of QIS, in general, exploits quantum properties, such as coherence, superposition, and entanglement, for acquiring, communicating, and processing information. Of course, in order to take advantage of quantum systems for practical applications, it is imperative that we understand * Panagiotis Spentzouris [email protected] 1
FNAL FQI, Batavia, USA
and control their behavior in the imperfect, classical world, in which they have to operate in order to mitigate and protect from the noise and information loss induced by interactions with the classical environment. Quantum computing (including quantum simulation, which sometimes is considered independently) is one of the major QIS application areas that also includes quantum sensing and quantum communications. Although in this discussion we will focus on the potential impact of quantum computing to HEP, we cannot ignore the other two areas, since, as we will see that due to some potentially very impactful applications for HEP, the whole ecosystem is relevant. The discussion on the concept of quantum computers and their potential transformational impact on fundamental s
Data Loading...
