Past Events

Abstract

Quantum information science has reached a pivotal point in its development. In the past 3-5 years it has become clear that quantum technologies will become an intricate part of human life in the 21st century and will be a technological revolution of potentially greater impact than the digital revolution of the 20th century. Quantum computation has begun to move seriously into industry, with multi-million dollar research centers being established by companies such as Lockheed-Martin and Google. In this talk I will discuss the work that we have spearheaded at NII related to the design of large-scale quantum computing architectures and the framework of how such machines will be programmed and operated. I will discuss the necessary components and design features of several quantum computing systems (in Ion Traps, NV-diamond and Atom-Optics) that can be integrated completely with crucial error correction technology, utilising advanced Topological models, and scaled to the level of trillions of devices. I will discuss the problem of programming and optimising quantum algorithms and the impact this has on the number of physical qubits and computational time necessary to successfully complete quantum algorithms. This includes demonstrating a preview release of meQuanics: The Quantum Computing game (www.mequanics.com), a game designed to crowd-source the difficult problem of optimising quantum algorithms; the first step in a fully automated quantum compilation language. Finally, I will present the framework for the classical "front-end" system needed to operate a quantum computer, compatible with all major quantum technology, that we are beginning to develop. The future looks extremely bright for large scale quantum technology and many of these problems overlap very strongly in the areas of interest for physicists, quantum engineers, classical engineers, computer scientists and software engineers.

Coffee and tea will be served 20 minutes prior to the seminar.