The mysterious quantum realm, or at least a Hollywood version of it, made its way into pop culture via the recent superhero film, Ant-Man. The hero shrinks down to a subatomic level even smaller than atoms and encounters a bizarre world that warps space and time in unpredictable ways.

At such miniscule scales, the fundamental laws of physics simply break down. But scientists have found ways to store information in individual electrons, making quantum communications possible. Or, they can measure the positions of atoms in incredibly precise ways to design navigation systems.

Were working on a navigation system based on quantum physics, that will be so accurate that you dont need any more GPS, explains Marko Erman, the Global Chief Scientific Officer of French defence and aerospace giant, Thales. He shares the real-world potential of this mysterious, but exciting field.

Beyond the electrons

Quantum physics will shape Thales trajectory over the coming years, says Erman. At least two-thirds of their business will be impacted in some way by new quantum devices and systems in the next 5-10 years, he announced in November at the Saclay research and technology cluster in the south of Paris.

Quantum sensors, quantum communications and quantum computing are the three main areas of focus in Thales research collaborations with the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Universit Paris-Saclay. It is theoretically possible to build sensors that are ten thousand times more accurate; develop new energy sources; and create ultra-secure communications.

When people built atomic clocks, they never thought about global positioning systems. They didnt make the connection, says Erman. He was referring to quantum positioning, which can determine the position of a moving object with an almost absolute precision. Imagine being able to navigate submarines or underground vehicles without a satellite connection. Its possible, below seawater, Erman continues.

This technology has potential in the air too. If the GPS is not working on a plane, the pilot would be able to land at the destination with an accuracy of up to 20 kilometres, based only on the onboard inertia system, according to Erman. With a quantum positioning system however, it can land with the precision of within a metre. And in the military, quantum sensors within radar systems could help pilots detect suspicious flying objects or drones much more accurately in crowded airspace.

There are also quantum applications in the medical field. Take cancer treatment, for example. Current therapies can be destructive towards healthy cells, and not very targeted. Quantum devices could turn this on its head, and allow doctors to zoom in on individual diseased cells. I think the next phase of bio science is personalisation and going down to the cellular level; this would not be possible without quantum devices, Erman explains.

The burgeoning quantum innovation space holds great potential to transform the world as we know it. Right now, it is not particularly constrained by much regulation, Erman notes. Unlike genetics or artificial intelligence, which have a lot of debate about the societal impact and ethics, quantum escapes from that.

Research in Asia

Besides its huge focus on quantum innovation, Thales is continuing to build on research in its traditional verticals. Singapore is Thales only Asia research hub, where the company works with Nanyang Technological University (NTU) on space research such as nanosatellite technology.

The city was chosen as it is very dynamic, is very high tech oriented, according to Erman. Whats more, the government wants to push innovation and there are problems that are unique because of the size, the mission, he continues. Its an interesting place to be.

Singapore is also where you have land, air, sea, and you can basically address all aspects in one place, adds Herve Jarry, Chief Technical Officer of Thales Solutions Asia. I think also with the proximity of people, different agencies, it is quite easy to interact.

In September 2019, the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore has announced a S$30 million Joint Aviation Innovation Research Lab with Thales to build advanced air traffic management technologies. These are meant to augment air traffic controllers abilities in a stressful environment, Jarry explains.

Weve been doing some work for instance with the ATM Lab in NTU on the interactions with different sensors and heartbeat, ECG, and so on, Jarry continues. The work will also look at how to reduce the cognitive load on air traffic controllers so they can handle more objects, he adds. Other research areas in Singapore include artificial intelligence and digital identity, Jarry goes on to say.

In the lonely spaces between protons and neurons, there exists a strange quantum world which does not always make much sense. But what does make sense is how it can improve communication, health, transport, and more, in ways we cant fathom today. As Erman puts it: Its beyond imagination.

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Is quantum innovation the future of tech? - GovInsider

Peter Wittek was announced missing on September 29. PHOTO COURTESY OF SRIRAM KRISHNAN/GOFUNDME

On February 3, the Rotman School of Management and the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) held a ceremony in honour of Assistant Professor Peter Wittek, who went missing in India in late September. Wittek was a leading expert in quantum machine learning, and his work at the CDL as a founding academic director sought to lead the charge in the commercialization of these technologies.

An avid mountaineer, Wittek was part of a six-person team that was attempting to summit Mount Trishul, a 7,120 metre-high peak in the Himalaya mountain range of India. On September 29, the Indian National Disaster Response Force received an SOS distress signal that originated from Witteks camp. Search and rescue operations were unsuccessful, and it is believed that Witteks camp was caught in an avalanche. His body has yet to be found.

In a statement to U of T News, Professor Ken Corts, Acting Dean of the Rotman School of Management, said that Peters loss is keenly felt. Wittek is remembered by Corts as an exceptional contributor to Rotman and U of T and a wonderful colleague.

Over a hundred U of T students, staff, and faculty, as well as members of the artificial intelligence (AI) community attended his ceremony on Monday. A number of speakers who were close to Wittek shared stories of his brilliance and generosity of spirit.

Witteks brother, Gergo Oberfrank, came from Hungary to attend the ceremony. He expressed the anguish that he and his family feel at the possibility that they will never find Witteks body. Oberfrank began his speech by saying goodbye to not only a brother for [him], but a father figure too. The two had an 11-year age difference, and Wittek was his biggest role model.

Chief Technology Officer and Founder of Multiverse Computing Samuel Mugel also spoke about looking up to Wittek, even before he met him. Mugel recounted his time starting out in the field of quantum computing, saying, What I found difficult was that I didnt really have many role models [that were both] entrepreneurs and scientists and this is really the position that Peter started to take for me because I saw him as someone that really managed to find the balance between an entrepreneurs career [while] simultaneously [pursuing] fundamental research.

CDL Founder Ajay Agrawal also marvelled at Witteks eagerness to pursue the entrepreneurial side of cutting-edge technologies. I knew that he was a scholar and he had tendencies as a theorist. And I know that theorists can be resistant to thinking about such crass things as commercialization, Agrawal remarked with a bit of wryness in his voice.

This seems to be the crux of what made Wittek such a consequential academic and caused his fame in the field of quantum machine learning to be so enduring. He was both interested in the way nature works, [and] in understanding the underlying science, but also interested in commercialization, noted Agrawal.

Wittek was not only influential for his work in the field as a whole, but also for providing critical advice and guidance to a number of budding researchers and entrepreneurs. Mugel noted that Wittek was the one who had encouraged him to apply for the CDL Quantum Stream.

I think there [are] an awful lot of people here who can tell you something similar that Peter turned up at a key turn in their life and with advice or a push in the right direction, helped us in these really difficult decisions. Multiverse Computing is now a cutting-edge provider of quantum computing and AI software for the financial industry.

Khalid Kurji, a senior venture manager at the CDL, spoke on behalf of the team behind the Quantum Machine Learning Stream, of which Wittek was a crucial part. Kurji spoke on Witteks cosmopolitan outlook, remarking that his teams aspirations to lead globally could only become a reality because our academic director [Wittek] considered the entire planet his neighbourhood and treated every single person as if they grew up next door to him.

To Kurji, Witteks defining characteristic was his generosity. He gave the full of himself of his enthusiasm and intellect into everything he did.

Agrawal also shared this sentiment, and, as evidence, pointed out the surprising number of students who have emailed to express their gratitude for having had Wittek in their lives. I think people have a need to tell somebody how much someone has touched their life, changed the trajectory of their life, Agrawal reflected.

Agrawal also shared the story of how he first met Wittek. After reading Witteks book, Quantum Machine Learning: What Quantum Computing Means to Data Mining, Agrawal sent him an email with a few questions. Very often when I send the author a question about their book, they either dont reply or if they do reply they might send a very quick one-sentence response.

On the screen behind him, Agrawal projected an image of Witteks response to his question. The email was too long to fit on a single slide, and had to be shown in two parts. He had received it 48 minutes after his initial email. Its remarkable how much you can tell about a person from the very first interaction, Agrawal noted.

Im an economist; I was not in his community. And I was surprised that he would take the time to send me such a thorough response and then ask me if I had more questions. And I thought, This is my kind of person.

Tags: memorial, missing, Peter Wittek

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Memorial ceremony held for Peter Wittek, U of T professor who went missing in India - Varsity

The smallest scale events have giant consequences. And no field of science demonstrates that better than quantum physics, which explores the strange behaviors of mostly very small things. In 2019, quantum experiments went to new and even stranger places and practical quantum computing inched ever closer to reality, despite some controversies. These were the most important and surprising quantum events of 2019.

If one quantum news item from 2019 makes the history books, it will probably be a big announcement that came from Google: The tech company announced that it had achieved "quantum supremacy." That's a fancy way of saying that Google had built a computer that could perform certain tasks faster than any classical computer could. (The category of classical computers includes any machine that relies on regular old 1s and 0s, such as the device you're using to read this article.)

Google's quantum supremacy claim, if borne out, would mark an inflection point in the history of computing. Quantum computers rely on strange small-scale physical effects like entanglement, as well as certain basic uncertainties in the nano-universe, to perform their calculations. In theory, that quality gives these machines certain advantages over classical computers. They can easily break classical encryption schemes, send perfectly encrypted messages, run some simulations faster than classical computers can and generally solve hard problems very easily. The difficulty is that no one's ever made a quantum computer fast enough to take advantage of those theoretical advantages or at least no one had, until Google's feat this year.

Not everyone buys the tech company's supremacy claim though. Subhash Kak, a quantum skeptic and researcher at Oklahoma State University, laid out several of the reasons in this article for Live Science.

Read more about Google's achievement of quantum supremacy.

Another 2019 quantum inflection point came from the world of weights and measures. The standard kilogram, the physical object that defined the unit of mass for all measurements, had long been a 130-year-old, platinum-iridium cylinder weighing 2.2 lbs. and sitting in a room in France. That changed this year.

The old kilo was pretty good, barely changing mass over the decades. But the new kilo is perfect: Based on the fundamental relationship between mass and energy, as well as a quirk in the behavior of energy at quantum scales, physicists were able to arrive at a definition of the kilogram that won't change at all between this year and the end of the universe.

Read more about the perfect kilogram.

A team of physicists designed a quantum experiment that showed that facts actually change depending on your perspective on the situation. Physicists performed a sort of "coin toss" using photons in a tiny quantum computer, finding that the results were different at different detectors, depending on their perspectives.

"We show that, in the micro-world of atoms and particles that is governed by the strange rules of quantum mechanics, two different observers are entitled to their own facts," the experimentalists wrote in an article for Live Science. "In other words, according to our best theory of the building blocks of nature itself, facts can actually be subjective."

Read more about the lack of objective reality.

For the first time, physicists made a photograph of the phenomenon Albert Einstein described as "spooky action at a distance," in which two particles remain physically linked despite being separated across distances. This feature of the quantum world had long been experimentally verified, but this was the first time anyone got to see it.

Read more about the unforgettable image of entanglement.

In some ways the conceptual opposite of entanglement, quantum superposition is enables a single object to be in two (or more) places at once, a consequence of matter existing as both particles and waves. Typically, this is achieved with tiny particles like electrons.

But in a 2019 experiment, physicists managed to pull off superposition at the largest scale ever: using hulking, 2,000-atom molecules from the world of medical science known as "oligo-tetraphenylporphyrins enriched with fluoroalkylsulfanyl chains."

Read about the macro-scale achievement of superposition.

Under normal circumstances, heat can cross a vacuum in only one manner: in the form of radiation. (That's what you're feeling when the sun's rays cross space to beat on your face on a summer day.) Otherwise, in standard physical models, heat moves in two manners: First, energized particles can knock into other particles and transfer their energy. (Wrap your hands around a warm cup of tea to feel this effect.) Second, a warm fluid can displace a colder fluid. (That's what happens when you turn the heater on in your car, flooding the interior with warm air.) So without radiation, heat can't cross a vacuum.

But quantum physics, as usual, breaks the rules. In a 2019 experiment, physicists took advantage of the fact that at the quantum scale, vacuums aren't truly empty. Instead, they're full of tiny, random fluctuations that pop into and out of existence. At a small enough scale, the researchers found, heat can cross a vacuum by jumping from one fluctuation to the next across the apparently empty space.

Read more about heat leaping across the quantum vacuum of space.

This next finding is far from an experimentally verified discovery, and it's even well outside the realm of traditional quantum physics. But researchers working with quantum gravity a theoretical construct designed to unify the worlds of quantum mechanics and Einstein's general relativity showed that under certain circumstances an event might cause an effect that occurred earlier in time.

Certain very heavy objects can influence the flow of time in their immediate vicinity due to general relativity. We know this is true. And quantum superposition dictates that objects can be in multiple places at once. Put a very heavy object (like a big planet) in a state of quantum superposition, the researchers wrote, and you can design oddball scenarios where cause and effect take place in the wrong order.

Read more about cause and effect reversing.

Physicists have long known about a strange effect known as "quantum tunneling," in which particles seem to pass through seemingly impassable barriers. It's not because they're so small that they find holes, though. In 2019, an experiment showed how this really happens.

Quantum physics says that particles are also waves, and you can think of those waves as probability projections for the location of the particle. But they're still waves. Smash a wave against a barrier in the ocean, and it will lose some energy, but a smaller wave will appear on the other side. A similar effect occurs in the quantum world, the researchers found. And as long as there's a bit of probability wave left on the far side of the barrier, the particle has a chance of making it through the obstruction, tunneling through a space where it seems it should not fit.

Read more about the amazing quantum tunneling effect.

This was a big year for ultra-high-pressure physics. And one of the boldest claims came from a French laboratory, which announced that it had created a holy grail substance for materials science: metallic hydrogen. Under high enough pressures, such as those thought to exist at the core of Jupiter, single-proton hydrogen atoms are thought to act as an alkali metal. But no one had ever managed to generate pressures high enough to demonstrate the effect in a lab before. This year, the team said they'd seen it at 425 gigapascals (4.2 million times Earth's atmospheric pressure at sea level). Not everyone buys that claim, however.

Read more about metallic hydrogen.

Zap a mass of supercooled atoms with a magnetic field, and you'll see "quantum fireworks": jets of atoms firing off in apparently random directions. Researchers suspected there might be a pattern in the fireworks, but it wasn't obvious just from looking. With the aid of a computer, though, researchers discovered a shape to the fireworks effect: a quantum turtle. No one's yet sure why it takes that shape, however.

Read more about the quantum turtle.

Time's supposed to move in only one direction: forward. Spill some milk on the ground, and there's no way to perfectly dry out the dirt and return that same clean milk back into the cup. A spreading quantum wave function doesn't unspread.

Except in this case, it did. Using a tiny, two-qubit quantum computer, physicists were able to write an algorithm that could return every ripple of a wave to the particle that created it unwinding the event and effectively turning back the arrow of time.

Read more about reversing time's arrow.

A nice feature of quantum computers, which rely on superpositions rather than 1s and 0s, is their ability to play out multiple calculations at once. That advantage is on full display in a new quantum prediction engine developed in 2019. Simulating a series of connected events, the researchers behind the engine were able to encode 16 possible futures into a single photon in their engine. Now that's multitasking!

Read more about the 16 possible futures.

Originally published on Live Science.

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The 12 Most Important and Stunning Quantum Experiments of 2019 - Livescience.com

As 2019 winds to a close, the journey towards fully realised quantum computing continues: physicists have been able to demonstrate quantum teleportation between two computer chips for the first time.

Put simply, this breakthrough means that information was passed between the chips not by physical electronic connections, but through quantum entanglement by linking two particles across a gap using the principles of quantum physics.

We don't yet understand everything about quantum entanglement (it's the same phenomenon Albert Einstein famously called "spooky action"), but being able to use it to send information between computer chips is significant, even if so far we're confined to a tightly controlled lab environment.

"We were able to demonstrate a high-quality entanglement link across two chips in the lab, where photons on either chip share a single quantum state," explains quantum physicist Dan Llewellynfrom the University of Bristol in the UK.

"Each chip was then fully programmed to perform a range of demonstrations which utilise the entanglement."

Hypothetically, quantum entanglement can work over any distance. Two particles get inextricably linked together, which means looking at one tells us something about the other, wherever it is (in this case, on a separate computer chip).

To achieve their result, the team generated pairs of entangled photons, encoding quantum information in a way that ensured low levels of interference and high levels of accuracy. Up to four qubits the quantum equivalent of classical computing bits were linked together.

"The flagship demonstration was a two-chip teleportation experiment, whereby the individual quantum state of a particle is transmitted across the two chips after a quantum measurement is performed," says Llewellyn.

"This measurement utilises the strange behaviour of quantum physics, which simultaneously collapses the entanglement link and transfers the particle state to another particle already on the receiver chip."

The researchers were then able to run experiments in which the fidelity reached 91 percent as in, almost all the information was accurately transmitted and logged.

Scientists are learning more and more about how quantum entanglement works, but for now it's very hard to control. It's not something you can install inside a laptop: you need a lot of bulky, expensive scientific equipment to get it working.

But the hope is that advances in the lab, such as this one, might one day lead to advances in computing that everyone can take advantage of super-powerful processing power and a next-level internet with built-in hacking protections.

The low data loss and high stability of the teleportation, as well as the high level of control that the scientists were able to get over their experiments, are all promising signs in terms of follow-up research.

It's also a useful study for efforts to get quantum physics working with the silicon chip (Si-chip) tech used in today's computers, and the complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) techniques used to make those chips.

"In the future, a single Si-chip integration of quantum photonic devices and classical electronic controls will open the door for fully chip-based CMOS-compatible quantum communication and information processing networks," says quantum physicist Jianwei Wang, from Peking University in China.

The research has been published in Nature Physics.

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Physicists Just Achieved The First-Ever Quantum Teleportation Between Computer Chips - ScienceAlert

Advancing technology requires regulators to act quickly to develop standards and defenses against cyberattacks.

After a false-start in September, Google provided the first peer-reviewed evidence of quantum supremacy a month later in the prestigious journal Nature. The announcement was the latest crescendo in the development of quantum computersemerging technologies that can efficiently solve complicated computational problems with hardware that takes advantage of quantum mechanics.

With data privacy and national security at stake, agile and adaptive regulatory strategies are needed to manage the risks of fast-approaching quantum computers without thwarting their potential benefits.

Although classical computers use binary bits to perform calculations, devices under development, like Googles, use qubits that are not limited to 1s and 0s when they process information. Instead, through phenomena like superposition and entanglement, groups of qubits can have exponentially more power by not merely being on or off, but also being some blend of on and off at the same time. With the right programming and hardware design, quantum computers should be able to work smarter than classical computers when making sense of large datasets.

Demonstrating that a quantum computer can actually solve problems even supercomputers cannot handleso called quantum supremacy (or, preferably, the less violent quantum advantage)has long been an envied goal in the quantum engineering field. But, as the CEO of leading quantum technology firm Rigetti noted, practical quantum devices will create new risks and could lead to unanticipated policy challenges.

Setting risks aside, quantum technologies do promise exciting near-term benefits. Quantum advantage highlights the raw power of these devices to work with big datasets and could be used to advance drug discovery, business analytics, artificial intelligence, traffic control, and more. Although IBM has moved to cast doubt on the achievement, Googles publication claims the team is only one creative algorithm away from valuable near-term applications. The world could almost be at the dawn of an era of quantum computers with day-to-day applications.

But practical quantum computers could also rip through current cybersecurity infrastructure. The abilities of these emerging technologies create significant national security concerns, both in the United States and for other countries investing heavily in quantum technologies, such as China.

Quantum cyberattacks could also put private or sensitive information at risk or expose corporate intellectual property and trade secrets.

To be sure, one developer showing quantum advantage for a single task does not mean the quantum cyberattacks will start tomorrow, so panic should be avoided. But, despite the hype, attaining quantum advantage does signal an approaching time when these attacks could become possible.

Achieving quantum advantage or supremacy is bittersweet, then, given the potential for both benefit and harm. Even though this is the first report of the achievement in the United States, it is not impossible that this goal has been reached elsewhere or will be soon. With this understanding, what should the regulatory and policy responses look like to manage novel risks while still encouraging benefits?

Three strategies can help prepare for the coming wave of quantum computers without undermining innovation, drawing on technical standards and codes of conduct as regulatory tools.

First, private standards will be useful for responding to quantum concerns. These voluntary, technical standards can give government and industry a common language to speak by creating agreed-upon definitions and ways of measuring quantum computers performance capabilities. Technical standards can therefore facilitate policy conversations about how powerful quantum computers really are and what types of risks are realistic and deserve policymakers attention.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association (IEEE) is currently working on setting standards for terminology and performance metrics in quantum computing. Given the global authority and reputation of IEEE, these standards could become quite influential when adopted and even be helpful for industry. To get ahead of potential quantum cyberattacks, experts from government, industry, academia, and NGOs should participate in standardization efforts to accelerate this work and add different perspectives to make standards more comprehensive and inclusive.

Second, the quantum computing industry itself can be proactive even without government taking the lead. I argue in a recent paper that, to guide responsible development of these powerful new technologies, quantum computing companies could create codes of conduct todetail best practices and principles for the responsible deployment of quantum computing.

Codes of conduct can show that an emerging industry is trying to be responsible and transparent while publicly setting expectations for good behavior. With concerns that quantum computers might be used for nefarious purposes or fall into the wrong hands, the industry should respond by committing to act responsibly through quantum codesand have a chance to help define what responsibility means in this new area as an added benefit.

Finally, the industry should work to support the development of standards for another technology intended to defend from quantum cyberattacks, called post-quantum cryptography. Quantum computers excel at solving problems that require factoring large numbers, which gets right to the heart of current cybersecurity methods. Post-quantum cryptography tries to counter this strength by creating new types of encryption that quantum computers will be less adept at cracking.

Post-quantum methods still must be fully developed, standardized, and then implemented in critical networkscreating a need for policy and governance efforts to facilitate the transition to a post-quantum world. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has begun to work on post-quantum standards, but these efforts will not finish overnight. The potential urgency of practical quantum computers means that work to standardize and advance post-quantum cryptographic methods deserves greater attention and resources from both the public and private sectors, as well as expert groups and non-governmental organizations.

Googles announcement that it has reached quantum advantage or supremacy is a great achievement in the long push to develop pragmatic quantum computers that can benefit society. But even though this announcement does not mean cybersecurity ends tomorrow, the security and privacy risks of quantum computers deserve policymakers prompt attention.

Responding to these challenges with public and private standards and codes of conduct should promote responsibility, security, and growth in the development of emerging quantum technologies.

Walter G. Johnson, a J.D. candidate and research assistant at the Sandra Day OConnor College of Law at Arizona State University, where he also holds a masters degree in science and technology policy.

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Quantum Supremacy and the Regulation of Quantum Technologies - The Regulatory Review

Quantum computing has come a long way since its first introduction in the 1980s. Researchers have always been on a lookout for a better way to enhance the ability of quantum computing systems, whether it is in making it cheaper or the quest of making the present quantum computers last longer. With the latest technological advancements in the world of quantum computing which superconducting bits, a new way of improving the world of silicon quantum computing has come to light, making use of the silicon spin qubits for better communication.

Until now, the communication between different qubits was relatively slow. It could be done by passing the messages to the next bit to get the communication over to another chip at a relatively far distance.

Now, researches at Princeton University have explored the idea of two quantum computing silicon components known as silicon spin qubits interacting in a relatively spaced environment, that is with a relatively large distance between them. The study was presented in the journal Nature on December 25, 2019.

The silicon quantum spin qubits give the ability to the quantum hardware to interact and transmit messages across a certain distance which will provide the hardware new capabilities. With transmitting signals over a distance, multiple quantum bits can be arranged in two-dimensional grids that can perform more complex calculations than the existing hardware of quantum computers can do. This study will help in better communications of qubits not only on a chip but also from one to another, which will have a massive impact on the speed.

The computers require as many qubits as possible to communicate effectively with each other to take the full advantage of quantum computings capabilities. The quantum computer that is used by Google and IBM contains around 50 qubits which make use of superconducting circuits. Many researchers believe that silicon-based qubit chips are the future in quantum computing in the long run.

The quantum state of silicon spin qubits lasts longer than the superconducting qubits, which is one of their significant disadvantages (around five years). In addition to lasting longer, silicon which has a lot of application in everyday computers is cheaper, another advantage over the superconducting qubits because these cost a ton of money. Single qubit will cost around $10,000, and thats before you consider research and development costs. With these costs in mind a universal quantum computer hardware alone will be around at least $10bn.

But, silicon spin cubits have their challenges which are part of the fact that they are incredibly small, and by small we mean, these are made out from a single electron. This problem is a huge factor when it comes to establishing an interconnect between multiple qubits when building a large scale computer.

To counter the problem of interconnecting these extremely small silicon spin qubits, the Princeton team connected these qubits with a wire which are similar to the fibre optic (for internet delivery at houses) wires and these wires carry light. This wire contains photon that picks up a message from a single qubit and transmits it the next qubit. To understand this more accurately, if the qubits are placed at a distance of half-centimetre apart from each other for the communication, in real-world, it would be like these qubits are around 750 miles away.

The next step forward for the study was to establish a way of getting qubits and photons to communicate the same language by tuning both the qubits and the photon to the same frequency. Where previously the devices architecture allowed tuning only one qubit to one photon at a time, the team now succeeded in tuning both the qubits independent from each other while still coupling them to the photon.

You have to balance the qubit energies on both sides of the chip with the photon energy to make all three elements talk to each other,

Felix Borjans, a graduate student and first author on the study on what he describes as the challenging part of the work.

The researchers demonstrated entangling of electrons spins in silicon separated by distances more substantial than the device housing, this was a significant development when it comes to wiring these qubits and how to lay them out in silicon-based quantum microchips.

The communication between the distant silicon-based qubits devices builds on the works of Petta research team in 2010 which shows how to trap s single electron in quantum wells and also from works in the journal Nature from the year 2012 (transfer of quantum information from electron spins)

From the paper in Science 2016 (demonstrated the ability to transmit information from a silicon-based charge qubit to a photon), from Science 2017 (nearest-neighbour trading of information in qubits) and 2018 Nature (silicon spin qubit can exchange information with a photon).

This demonstration of interactions between two silicon spin qubits is essential for the further development of quantum tech. This demonstration will help technologies like modular quantum computers and quantum networks. The team has employed silicon and germanium, which is widely available in the market.

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How This Breakthrough Makes Silicon-Based Qubit Chips The Future of Quantum Computing - Analytics India Magazine

Scientists at the University of Bristol and the Technical University of Denmark have achieved quantum teleportation between two computer chips for the first time. The team managed to send information from one chip to another instantly without them being physically or electronically connected, in a feat that opens the door for quantum computers and quantum internet.

This kind of teleportation is made possible by a phenomenon called quantum entanglement, where two particles become so entwined with each other that they can communicate over long distances. Changing the properties of one particle will cause the other to instantly change too, no matter how much space separates the two of them. In essence, information is being teleported between them.

Hypothetically, theres no limit to the distance over which quantum teleportation can operate and that raises some strange implications that puzzled even Einstein himself. Our current understanding of physics says that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, and yet, with quantum teleportation, information appears to break that speed limit. Einstein dubbed it spooky action at a distance.

Harnessing this phenomenon could clearly be beneficial, and the new study helps bring that closer to reality. The team generated pairs of entangled photons on the chips, and then made a quantum measurement of one. This observation changes the state of the photon, and those changes are then instantly applied to the partner photon in the other chip.

We were able to demonstrate a high-quality entanglement link across two chips in the lab, where photons on either chip share a single quantum state, says Dan Llewellyn, co-author of the study. Each chip was then fully programmed to perform a range of demonstrations which utilize the entanglement. The flagship demonstration was a two-chip teleportation experiment, whereby the individual quantum state of a particle is transmitted across the two chips after a quantum measurement is performed. This measurement utilizes the strange behavior of quantum physics, which simultaneously collapses the entanglement link and transfers the particle state to another particle already on the receiver chip.

The team reported a teleportation success rate of 91 percent, and managed to perform some other functions that will be important for quantum computing. That includes entanglement swapping (where states can be passed between particles that have never directly interacted via a mediator), and entangling as many as four photons together.

Information has been teleported over much longer distances before first across a room, then 25 km (15.5 mi), then 100 km (62 mi), and eventually over 1,200 km (746 mi) via satellite. Its also been done between different parts of a single computer chip before, but teleporting between two different chips is a major breakthrough for quantum computing.

The research was published in the journal Nature Physics.

Source: University of Bristol

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Information teleported between two computer chips for the first time - New Atlas

Its taken a while for the U.S. federal government to fully climb aboard the emerging technology train, but as 2020 approaches it is clear that more agencies are ready to rideand steerthe train toward new digital trends.

Which technologies are likely to attract the most attention? It will certainly vary by agency as each has a unique mission, budget and outlook on the value of various technologies. But generally, in my conversations with government leaders, Im hearing about a few common areas of interest.

These are my federal government technology predictions for 2020:

1. Quantum computing takes a quantum leap.

Its probably the geekiest of technologies, but thats not going to stop the federal government from continuing to explore the possibilities around quantum computing in the coming year.

Whereas traditional computers are built around 1s and 0s, or what we call bits, quantum computers will use subatomic quantum bits or qubits. Its thought this still-developing technology could eventually solve problems in minutes rather than thousands of years. In fact, Google claimed it achieved quantum supremacy in October 2019, with its chip completing a task in 200 seconds that researches estimated would take a current supercomputer 10,000 years or more. This could dramatically accelerate how people create everything from drugs to cars to new food sources.

China sees quantum computing as the next front in its economic battle with the United States and is determined to own this next great technological leap. But the U.S. government is positioning to compete. In late 2018, it signed the National Quantum Initiative Act into law, which committed $1.2 billion to quantum intelligence research. More recently, the Department of Energy said it would provide $40 million for research to develop quantum computing software. And in May, a White House subcommittee issued a request for information seeking outside input on how the U.S. government should further quantum research. Even with this investment, the U.S. is falling behind the rest of the world in this field.

In 2020, expect quantum information science momentum to intensify as governments step up their game.

2. Everything-as-a-service goes mainstream.

As workplace technology needs have grown, it doesnt make sense for government agencies to handle many IT operations internally. Take device management, for example. When an organization purchases computers, it tends to buy them all at once, meaning theres a large investment up front. Then, they have to either staff up internally to manage and secure those devices or hire outside maintenance teams to do the job. On top of that, as those devices start showing signs of age, workers often have to hold onto them until the next budgetary window of opportunity allows them to be updated, which can affect worker productivity and job satisfaction.

But with a device-as-a-service (DaaS) approach, computer purchases become a monthly operating expense, so the investment is spread out over time. This system ensures that customers, always have access to the latest devices, which are maintained and secured by outside experts. Agency IT personnel are then free to focus on more strategic matters, such as critical management and operations functions beyond device maintenance. Ive seen that agencies are more open to the XaaS and DaaS model and expect adoption to expand in 2020.

3. Supply chain security becomes critical.

One of the greatest concerns of any supply chain, and especially for technology purchased by the U.S. government from international vendors, is the potential for parts suppliers to be compromised by foreign governments. This is an issue of national security, and one thats been in the headlines for most of 2019.

Its a valid concern, and one that I expect to stay top of mind in 2020. In fact, respected security wonk Bruce Schneier, a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, recently asserted that every part of the supply chain can be attacked, including emerging 5G networks and new information systems.

This is why government technology purchasing decisions are so critical. In the past, many budget-minded government agencies have defaulted to purchasing lowest priced technically acceptable, or LPTA, computers and printers, because thats how theyve always done it. With cyber threats against government institutions increasing in frequency and maliciousness, it implores every agency to consider purchasing equipment from vendors with trustworthy supply chains.

Next year I would expect more progress around government legislation, such as the recently passed House Resolution 2500 and Senate Bill 1790, which aims to bring greater accountability into the nations procurement processes and make agencies smarter buyers.

4. Ambient technology energizes workers.

As the office of the future takes shape and employees increasingly work from multiple locations, the technology underlying physical spaces will adapt for remote employees. It will work in the background to invisibly empower people to communicate and collaborate anytime and anywhere.

This approach called ambient computing isnt entirely new. The idea has been around since the late 1980s when Mark Weiser, a scientist at Xerox PARC, described its precursor, ubiquitous computing, where he imagined people interacting with computers, wherever they might be. Of course, the technology didnt really exist back then to make that happen. Gartners 2020 technology trends refer to it as multiexperience, and frames it as the replacement of technology-literate people with people-literate technology. The rise of mobile and connected devices and technologies like artificial intelligence, virtual reality and augmented reality, are all ways that ambient technology could become a part of everyday life for government workers.

In the near future technology could help us in every phase of our day, from traffic and direction recommendations, connected devices with our projects and materials fully updated, and even recommendations on where to stop after work for happy hour.

In 2020, dont be surprised to hear about more breakthroughs in ambient technology and how its playing an integral role in every office, including government agencies.

5. AI continues its march on Washington.

At times, artificial intelligence sounds like some magical technology that can cure almost any government ill. The fact is AI algorithms are great at some things and not so good at others. For government agencies, AI will become increasingly important in 2020 because of its ability to automate time-consuming tasks, such as data research, and create efficiencies for government employees. It also presents amazing opportunities for instinctively detecting and guarding against unknown, unforeseen, or zero-day cyberattacks that most IT software wouldnt catch.

Looking ahead to 2020, there are undoubtedly many more trends likely to emerge and influence government spending and use of information technology. One thing is certain, though: the key for every agency in the coming decade will be to ditch the old LPTA procurement model and focus instead on technology delivering better operational efficiency, productivity and security. Most important for government is acquiring the best security.

Tommy Gardner is chief technology officer of HP Federal.

Continue reading here:

The 5 Most Important Federal Government Tech Predictions to Watch in 2020 - Nextgov

IBM's CTO of Open Technology also looks back at the innovations of the past decade.

Open source played a significant role in software development over the past decade from containers to microservices, blockchain and serverless.

Chris Ferris, chief technology officer of Open Technology at IBM, discusses some of the open source trends from the past decade and what to expect in 2020 and beyond.

SEE: Deploying containers: Six critical concepts (TechRepublic)

The concepts of containers and microservices were merely concepts before 2010, Ferris said. Then Docker launched in 2013, planting the early seeds of the container industry.

At the same time, microservices and the technologies to make them possible were borne in open source through the Netflix OSS project.

Docker went on to become one of the most influential technologies of the 2010s, giving rise to a myriad of new open source projects, including Kubernetes, which launched in 2015.

Today, he noted, Kubernetes is the largest open source project on the planet. Companies are using the platform to transform monolithic application architectures, embracing containerized microservices that are supported by service mesh capabilities of projects such as Istio.

"In the next decade, we anticipate that open source projects such as Istio, Kubernetes and OKD will focus on making containers and microservices smaller and faster to serve the needs of cloud-native development and to reduce the container's attack surface," Ferris said.

OKD is the open source version of Red Hat's OpenShift platform. "Keep an eye on unikernels (executable images that contain system libraries, a language runtime, and necessary applications), which may also gain traction thanks to the open source communities around them."

AWS Lambda was released in 2014 and put all the PaaS services on notice. Lambda's release was followed by IBM OpenWhisk (which became Apache OpenWhisk), among others, in 2016. Both open source, distributed serverless platforms execute functions in response to events at any scale, Ferris said.

Kubernetes gained prominence in the latter part of the decade, fueling the desire to extend Kubernetes with capabilities that would enable serverless. This gave rise to Knative in 2018. Now Knative has split into multiple open source projects including Tekton, each with their own set of innovations, he said.

In the next few years, Ferris said we can expect to see containers get smaller, faster. "The potential exists to have an environment that can run containers at very little cost, instantaneously,'' pushing the boundaries of serverless platforms, he said.

IBM Watson made a huge splash when it appeared on "Jeopardy!" in 2011, bringing artificial intelligence into the mainstream. Now, Ferris noted, AI is part of our everyday lives and we interact with Siri and Alexa daily, talk with customer service chatbots regularly, use facial recognition to unlock our gadgets, and are nearing the advent of fully autonomous self-driving cars.

AI and machine learning have powered these innovations and many of the AI advancements came about thanks to open source projects such as TensorFlow and PyTorch, which launched in 2015 and 2016, respectively.

In the next decade, Ferris stressed the importance of not just making AI smarter and more accessible, but also more trustworthy. This will ensure that AI systems make decisions in a fair manner, aren't vulnerable to tampering, and can be explained, he said.

Open source is the key for building this trust into AI. Projects like the Adversarial Robustness 360 Toolkit, AI Fairness 360 Open Source Toolkit, and AI Explainability 360 Open Source Toolkit were created to ensure that trust is built into these systems from the beginning, he said.

Expect to see these projects and others from the Linux Foundation AI such as the ONNX project drive the significant innovation related to trusted AI in the future. The Linux Foundation AI provides a vendor-neutral interchange format for deep learning and machine learning.

In 2008, the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto published his now famous paper on bitcoin, which introduced the concept of a blockchain network, whose purpose was to be a decentralized cryptocurrency platform.

That innovation made people start to wonder about different ways that the blockchain concepts and technology might be applied in non-cryptocurrency use cases in asset management, supply chains, healthcare, and identity, among others, Ferris said.

In 2015, IBM contributed its Open Blockchain project to the newly established Hyperledger organization, founded to develop open source blockchain technology for the enterprise. That contribution launched what has arguably become one of the two or three most popular blockchain frameworks: Hyperledger Fabric, he said.

While blockchain's initial uses were confined to cryptocurrency, open source engagement around Hyperledger and Ethereum has expanded the possibilities for how this technology is used.

In the enterprise, different approaches are being explored not only to enhance privacy but also to build a collection of nodes required to achieve confirmation on a transaction with trust almost all in open source, he said.

There has been lots of buzz around the promise of quantum computing, and although an app with a "quantum advantage" hasn't been developed yet, the ability for developers to start using quantum processors is growing and will continue to evolve in the next decade, Ferris said.

IBM's open source Qiskit software framework, released in 2016, lets developers code in Python on real quantum hardware for systems around research, education, business, and even games.

"The possibilities for how quantum computing will solve problems and interact with today's technology seem endless quantum computing could impact a wide range of domains, such as chemistry, finance, artificial intelligence, and others," he said. For that to happen will require a "significant hardware environment," Ferris said.

Open source is the best mechanism to bring about these changes, he maintained. That is what spawned ideas like microsystems, which grew out of the virtualization space, and Knative from Kubernetes.

"That wouldn't have happened in the closed source space, so it's a matter of everyone building up on everyone else's successes and someone coming along and saying, 'Here's a better idea,'" he said.

Working together, developers have the power to change entire industries, Ferris believes. "I can't think of anything that's been developed exclusively in closed source that didn't eventually come out in open source."

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Excerpt from:

5 open source innovation predictions for the 2020s - TechRepublic

The decade thats knocking on our doors now the 2020s is likely to be a time when science fiction manifests itself in our homes and roads and skies as viable, everyday technologies. Cars that can drive themselves. Meat that is derived from plants. Robots that can be fantastic companions both in bed and outside.

Implanting kidneys that can be 3-D printed using your own biomaterial. Using gene editing to eradicate diseases, increase crop yield or fix genetic disorders in human beings. Inserting a swarm of nanobots that can cruise through your blood stream and monitor parameters or unblock arteries. Zipping between Delhi and New York on a hypersonic jet. All of this is likely to become possible or substantially closer to becoming a reality in the next 10 years.

Ideas that have been the staple of science fiction for decades artificial intelligence, universal translators, sex robots, autonomous cars, gene editing and quantum computing are at the cusp of maturity now. Many are ready to move out of labs and enter the mainstream. Expect the next decade to witness breakout years for the world of technology.

Read on:

The 2020s: A new decade promising miraculous tech innovations

Universal translators: End of language barrier

Climate interventions: Clearing the air from carbon

Personalised learning: Pedagogy gets a reboot with AI

Made in a Printer: 3-D printing going to be a new reality

Digital money: End of cash is near, cashless currencies are in vogue

Singularity: An era where machines will out-think human

Mach militaries: Redefining warfare in the 2020

5G & Beyond: Ushering a truly connected world

Technology: Solving the problem of clean water

Quantum computing : Beyond the power of classical computing

Nanotechnology: From science fiction to reality

Power Saver: Energy-storage may be the key to maximise power generation

Secret code: Gene editing could prove to be a game-changer

Love in the time of Robots: The rise of sexbots and artificial human beings

Wheels of the future: Flying cars, hyperloops and e-highways will transform how people travel

New skies, old fears: The good, bad& ugly of drones

Artificial creativity: Computer programs could soon churn out books, movies and music

Meat alternatives: Alternative meat market is expected to grow 10 times by 2029

Intelligent robots & cyborg warriors will lead the charge in battle

Why we first need to focus on the ethical challenges of artificial intelligence

It's time to reflect honestly on our motivations for innovation

India's vital role in new space age

Plastic waste: Environment-friendly packaging technologies will gain traction

Read more:

20 technologies that could change your life in the next decade - Economic Times