This is a preview issue of Quantum Campus, sharing the latest in quantum science and technology. Read by more than 1,400 researchers, we publish on Fridays and are always looking for news from across the country. Want to see your work featured? Submit your ideas to the editor.

High fence

Brian Moscioni of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs spent nearly four weeks in China with academic, industrial, and government scientists discussing the future of quantum computing and China’s relationship with the United States. His interviews covered the significant reduction in Chinese students applying for American travel and degrees, the impact of trade policy and export controls, and the influence of venture capital and investment models in both countries.

“[C]ompetition, as it relates to national security, is well understood in the eyes of the Chinese; but many are viewing [quantum computers] as a technology that holds far more applications than just a tool of technological warfare. Of those I interviewed, they believe quantum development can be more efficiently progressed if each nation wasn’t developing quantum computers in their own silos,” Moscioni wrote.

Nonetheless, “bilateral cooperation between China and the US is continuing to morph into a foreign concept for both.”

Read the full paper, “Another Technology Race: US-China Quantum Computing Landscape.”

Majorana bound states

Researchers at QuTech, the Netherland’s quantum research institute, deterministically observed and manipulated Majorana bound states. By building a chain of three coupled quantum dots in a two-dimensional electron gas, they were able to move Majorana particles from one quantum dot to another, a crucial part of topological quantum computing.

The team plans to add more quantum dots so that they can swap the positions of two Majoranas. “A T-shape made of six quantum dots will allow us to test braiding operations and create a basic qubit,” Srijit Goswami, who led the project, said in an announcement. 

This work was published in Nature.

House NQI hearing

The House of Representatives’ Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a hearing on the impact and future of the National Quantum Initiative last week. Leaders from the Quantum Economic Development Consortium, Google, PsiQuantum, and Microsoft gave testimony.

ABAA

A consortium including Rigetti, Iowa State, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, the University of Connecticut, and Lawrence Livermore National Lab received more than $5.4 million from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. The award will be used to further develop Rigetti’s Alternating-Bias Assisting Annealing chip-fabrication technology.

Details are available in announcements from Rigetti and UConn.

Quickbits

• Diraq, a DARPA QBI awardee, to expand its US-based research presence at Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park

• In situ scanning gate imaging of individual quantum two-level system defects in live superconducting circuits (Science Advances)

• Optimal entanglement distribution within a multi-ring topology (Scientific Reports)

We hope you’ll make Quantum Campus one of your weekly reads. Like it? Be sure to share with your colleagues. Not your thing? Unsubscribe at the bottom of the page.