US national labs best positioned to advance quantum materials research
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US national labs best positioned to advance quantum materials research US science and policy experts say a big push is needed to deliver the promise of quantum information systems.
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he ability to quickly predict and invent new materials at low cost, analyze and resolve traffic congestion in large metropolitan areas, and enhance national security through impossible-tobreak cryptography are three areas of vital national interest that will become feasible with viable quantum information systems (QISs) that harness the power of quantum mechanics phenomena at the atomic scale, acording to many US experts.
However, the promise of QISs and computers, the earliest models of which are now being built, is premised on a gigantic leap forward for quantum materials research to provide the technologies that will undergird new computer architectures built on quantum principles, says Supratik Guha, a research director at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), who heads the Nanoscience and Technology Division and the Center for Nanoscale Materials at ANL.
Beamlines at US Department of Energy Advanced Photon Source enable studies of quantum materials. Photo Credit: DOE.
“Quantum materials is a label that has come to signify the area of condensed-matter physics formerly known as strongly correlated electronic systems. Although the field is broad, a unifying theme is the discovery and investigation of materials whose electronic properties cannot be understood with concepts from contemporary condensed-matter textbooks,” Joseph Orenstein, a professor of physics at University of California, Berkeley and a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, wrote in a 2012 article in Physics Today. “Much of the effort to develop practical QIS applications depends on the availability of materials with the appropriate quantum properties and the ability to package hardware that may currently fill several large laboratory tables,” says a July 2016 report on advancing quantum information sciences prepared by former US President Barack Obama’s National Science and Technology Council. QISs won’t replace the computers everyone uses today, Guha says. Rather, “they will augment classical computing devices, opening new frontiers in the sciences by being able—via quantum mechanics principles—to probe information space with unprecedented speed and efficiency.” Cryptography, computational chemistry and physics, and complex data analytics are just three areas of research identifiable now that will enter a new realm of possibilities with the capabilities of quantum processors, Guha says. And, as has happened with the blossoming of classical computing over the past 60 years, we can expect many more benefits from quantum computing not yet recognizable, he adds. US policy on quantum materials research needs to stay apace of the demand for quantum computing advances, Guha told members of the US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology on October 24, 2017. China, Europe, and other competitors with the United States are working
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