Elements is more than just a science show. It’s your science-loving best friend, tasked with keeping you updated and interested on all the compelling, innovative and groundbreaking science happening all around us. Join our passionate hosts as they help break down and present fascinating science, from quarks to quantum theory and beyond.
Quantum computing promises to revolutionize the ways in which scientists can process and manipulate information. The physical and material underpinnings for quantum technologies are still being explored, and researchers continue to look for new ways in which information can be manipulated and exchanged at the quantum level.
Our team is committed to making quantum sciences more approachable by investing heavily in the education to support this growing community and establishing the emerging technology as the next generation of computing. We need more students, educators, developers, and domain experts with “quantum ready” skills. This is why our team is proud to release educational resources and tools, while also increasing the capacity and capability of our IBM Q systems.
We are rolling out new systems and a new feature that allows for reserving time on an IBM Q system through the IBM Q Experience. This will initially be available to members of the IBM Q Network. Members will be able to reserve blocks of uninterrupted time for their users to experiment and test ideas using our advanced systems and software. Moreover, educators and academic members can take advantage of scheduling time to dynamically demonstrate quantum computing concepts on our hardware in the classroom. All the while, students can use the IBM Q Experience to follow along directly from a web browser without any additional installation required.
We published an open-source online textbook, called Learn Quantum Computation Using Qiskit, as a tool for self-learners and educators preparing the next generation of quantum developers. Written by experienced educators and leading researchers in the field, this textbook explores quantum computing through practical problems that are run on both simulators and real quantum hardware, with the aim of helping students connect theory to practice. And most importantly, because this textbook is open-source, the field’s top educators and contributors will continually update this text to ensure that students learn the latest and most-relevant quantum computing skills. The textbook also includes problem sets that can be included in coursework. Professors interested in the solutions to these problem sets should contact me – Abraham Asfaw. Additional information about the structure of the textbook can be found here.
When practical quantum computing finally arrives, it will have the power to crack the standard digital codes that safeguard online privacy and security for governments, corporations, and virtually everyone who uses the Internet. That’s why a U.S. government agency has challenged researchers to develop a new generation of quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms.
Many experts don ’t expect a quantum computer capable of performing the complex calculations required to crack modern cryptography standards to become a reality within the next 10 years. But the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) wants to stay ahead by getting new cryptographic standards ready by 2022. The agency is overseeing the second phase of its Post-Quantum Cryptography Standardization Process to narrow down the best candidates for quantum-resistant algorithms that can replace modern cryptography.
“Currently intractable computational problems that protect widely-deployed cryptosystems, such as RSA and Elliptic Curve-based schemes, are expected to become solvable,” says Rafael Misoczki, a cryptographer at the Intel Corporation and a member of two teams (named Bike and Classic McEliece) involved in the NIST process. “This means that quantum computers have the potential to eventually break most secure communications on the planet.”
Ira Pastor, ideaXme longevity and aging ambassador and founder of Bioquark, interviews James Strole, Co-Founder and Co-Director of People Unlimited and Director of the Coalition For Radical Life Extension.
Ira Pastor Comments:
On the last several shows we have spent time on different hierarchical levels the biologic-architecture of the life, disease and aging process. We’ve spent some time talking about the genome, the microbiome, tissue engineering, systems biology, quantum biology, organism hydrodynamics, biosemiotics, and chronobiology.
As exciting and promising as all of these research paths are, at the end of the day, in order for them to yield what many of us are looking for, radically extended healthspans and lifespans, and for them to be translated at scale, that is: approved by regulators, marketed by large pharma and CPG companies, and prescribed by a millions of clinicians (especially as the target market is all 7+ billion inhabitants of the planet), there needs to be an appropriate system of advocacy, education, awareness, and networking built around them to spread the word of the possibilities and the beautiful future that they can bring.
An exotic physical phenomenon, involving optical waves, synthetic magnetic fields, and time reversal, has been directly observed for the first time, following decades of attempts. The new finding could lead to realizations of what are known as topological phases, and eventually to advances toward fault-tolerant quantum computers, the researchers say.
The new finding involves the non-Abelian Aharonov-Bohm Effect and is reported today in the journal Science by MIT graduate student Yi Yang, MIT visiting scholar Chao Peng (a professor at Peking University), MIT graduate student Di Zhu, Professor Hrvoje Buljan at University of Zagreb in Croatia, Francis Wright Davis Professor of Physics John Joannopoulos at MIT, Professor Bo Zhen at the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT professor of physics Marin Soljacic.
The finding relates to gauge fields, which describe transformations that particles undergo. Gauge fields fall into two classes, known as Abelian and non-Abelian. The Aharonov-Bohm Effect, named after the theorists who predicted it in 1959, confirmed that gauge fields—beyond being a pure mathematical aid—have physical consequences.
Programming a quantum computer is a rather different discipline than programming on traditional computers.
Light-emitting diodes made of indium gallium nitride provide better luminescence efficiency than many of the other materials used to create blue and green LEDs. But a big challenge of working with InGaN is its known dislocation density defects that make it difficult to understand its emission properties.
In the Journal of Applied Physics, researchers in China report an InGaN LED structure with high luminescence efficiency and what is believed to be the first direct observation of transition carriers between different localization states within InGaN. The localization states were confirmed by temperature-dependent photoluminescence and excitation power-dependent photoluminescence.
Localization states theory is commonly used to explain the high luminescence efficiency gained via the large number of dislocations within InGaN materials. Localization states are the energy minima states believed to exist within the InGaN quantum well region (discrete energy values), but a direct observation of localization states was elusive until now.
The future of technology relies, to a great extent, on new materials, but the work of developing those materials begins years before any specific application for them is known. Stephen Wilson, a professor of materials in UC Santa Barbara’s College of Engineering, works in that “long before” realm, seeking to create new materials that exhibit desirable new states.
In the paper “Field-tunable quantum disordered ground state in the triangular-lattice antiferromagnet NaYbO2,” published in the journal Nature Physics, Wilson and colleagues Leon Balents, of the campus’s Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, and Mark Sherwin, a professor in the Department of Physics, describe their discovery of a long-sought “quantum spin liquid state” in the material NaYbO2 (sodium ytterbium oxide). The study was led by materials student Mitchell Bordelon and also involved physics students Chunxiao Liu, Marzieh Kavand and Yuanqi Lyu, and undergraduate chemistry student Lorenzo Posthuma, as well as collaborators at Boston College and at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology.
At the atomic level, electrons in one material’s lattice structure behave differently, both individually and collectively, from those in another material. Specifically, the “spin,” or the electron’s intrinsic magnetic moment (akin to an innate bar magnet) and its tendency to communicate and coordinate with the magnetic moments of nearby electrons differs by material. Various types of spin systems and collective patterns of ordering of these moments are known to occur, and materials scientists are ever seeking new ones, including those that have been hypothesized but not yet shown to exist.
