Can AI 'eat quantum's lunch?' Heavy hitters weigh in

Quantum Campus shares the latest in quantum science and technology from university campuses. We publish on Fridays and are always looking for news from researchers across the country. Want to see your work featured? Submit your ideas to the editor.

Home turf

Technology Review asked this week whether quantum computing’s “home turf” of fundamental physics, chemistry, and materials science may be just as well served — and served sooner — by artificial intelligence applications on conventional computing systems. Talking to experts from Carnegie Mellon, IBM, University of Texas, IonQ, the Flatiron Institute, ETH Zurich, and other leading organizations, the article said:

“Given the pace of recent advances, a growing number of researchers are now asking whether AI could solve a substantial chunk of the most interesting problems in chemistry and materials science before large-scale quantum computers become a reality.”

While some argued that scientists will always need more powerful tools, according to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology’s Giuseppe Carleo, “The existence of these new contenders in machine learning is a serious hit to the potential applications of quantum computers. In my opinion…companies will find out sooner or later that their investments are not justified.”

Read the full article in Technology Review.

Diamond qubits

Researchers at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory published a pair of methods for the hydrogenation of diamond surfaces that produce less damage and that may some day be used in the production of diamonds with nitrogen-vacancy centers for use as qubits. One method involves annealing samples in high-purity, non-explosive mixtures of nitrogen and hydrogen gas, and the other exposes samples to microwave hydrogen plasmas in the absence of intentional stage heating. The team included members from the University of Melbourne and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. The work was published in Advanced Materials Interfaces. 

Another team at the lab showed new ways of growing diamond at lower temperatures — the typical temperature is currently around 1,200 Kelvin. These findings may lead to cheaper, higher-quality diamonds for the microelectronics and quantum industries in the future. They were published in Diamond and Related Materials.

Read the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory announcement.

Quantum data center

The Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center received a $5 million grant to build the first state-funded quantum computing center in Massachusetts. The center also received $11 million from QuEra Computing. It will be based in Holyoke, about 90 miles west of Boston. Expected to open in about two years, the center is a joint project of Boston University, Harvard, MIT, Northeastern, the University of Massachusetts system, and Yale.

Read the article in Data Center Dynamics.

Quantum emitters

A U.S. Naval Research Laboratory team developed a new method for modulating and encoding information in single-photon quantum emitters. They developed a nonvolatile and reversible procedure to control single photon emission purity in monolayer tungsten disulfide by integrating it with a ferroelectric material. They created an emitter in the tungsten disulfide and were able to toggle the emission between high-purity quantum light and semi-classical light by switching the ferroelectric polarization with a bias voltage.

The work was published in ACS Nano.

Quickbits

• DOE announces $30 million for quantum computing in chemistry and materials

• University of California Santa Barbara’s Van de Walle wins APS’s Aneesur Rahman Prize

• Qubit register of 1,200 neutral atoms operates continuously for one hour

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