'Is there science behind the whiplash?' Nature covers boom and bust

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.

‘Optimism prevails’

In the wake of comments by NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang on the timeline for viable quantum computing, Nature magazine looked at the recent run up and sell down of quantum companies. Business- and university-based researchers around the world weighed in on the platforms being used, the pace of innovation, and the investments being made.

Read the article in Nature.

Creating entangled photon pairs

An international team led by Columbia University has developed a more efficient way to generate entangled photon pairs, paving the way for ultra-compact technologies like on-chip pair sources in quantum circuitry and sensing. Their 3.4 micrometer-thick device uses thin crystals of molybdenum disulfide, a van der Waals semiconducting transition metal, layered into a stack of six with each rotated 180 degrees relative to its neighbors. As light travels through this stack, quasi-phase-matching manipulates properties of the light, creating paired photons.

“We believe this breakthrough will establish van der Waals materials as the core of next-generation nonlinear and quantum photonic architectures, with them being ideal candidates for enabling all future on-chip technologies and replacing current bulk and periodically poled crystals,” said James Schuck, a mechanical engineering professor at Columbia.

Read the team’s paper in Nature Photonics.

Quantum refrigeration

In a collaboration between NIST and Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology, researchers shared a new technique for resetting qubits to their lowest energy state after a calculation. The technique “erases” the qubit by using two other qubits as its quantum refrigerator.

One qubit, connected to a warmer part of the computer, would serve as the energy supply. The second quantum bit would serve as a heat sink into which the computational qubit’s undesired extra heat could flow. The process described by the team requires minimal external control and can cool the qubit to 22 milikelvin, according to an announcement from NIST.

Read the paper in Nature Physics.

Non-Hermitian quantum switching

Materials scientists and electrical engineers at the University of Pennsylvania built a novel quantum switch that measures just 85 by 85 micrometers and operates at up to 100 picoseconds. It represents the first time Non-Hermitian switching has been demonstrated in a silicon-based photonics platform.

“This is about a billion times faster than the blink of an eye,” said Shuang Wu, a Penn doctoral student and co-author on the paper. “Previous switches were either small or fast, but it’s very, very difficult to achieve these two properties simultaneously.”

Read the paper in Nature Photonics.

Quickbits

• Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park business development lead talks to Chicago Magazine

• Miami University partners with Cleveland Clinic on quantum education initiatives

• Quantum enhanced algorithms for targeting KRAS cancer inhibitors showcased (Nature Biotechnology)

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