These people are cool.
They use optical tweezers to place individual atoms floating in midair, and then do stuff to entangle their nuclear spins.
- 2022: $15 million www.orcacomputing.com/blog/orca-computing-completes-15-million-series-a-funding-round
- 2021: $14.5 million for an Innovate UK project
CEO: Jeremy O'Brien
Raised 215M in 2020: www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-06/quantum-computing-startup-raises-215-million-for-faster-device
Good talk by CEO before starting the company which gives insight on what they are very likely doing: Video "Jeremy O'Brien: "Quantum Technologies" by GoogleTechTalks (2014)"
PsiQuantum appears to be particularly secretive, even more than other startups in the field.
They want to reuse classical semiconductor fabrication technologies, notably they have close ties to GlobalFoundries.
Rounds:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7iAqcFCTQQ shows their base technology:
- laser beam comes in
- input set via of optical ring resonators that form a squeezed state of light. Does not seem to rely on single photon production and detection experiments?
"Quantum interconnect" refers to methods for linking up smaller quantum processors into a larger system.
As of 2024, seemingly few organizations developing quantum hardware had actually integrated multiple chips in interconnects as part of their main current roadmap. But many acknowledged that this would be an essential step towards scalable compuation.
The name "quantum interconnect" is likely partly a throwback to classical computer's "chip interconnect".
Sample usages of the term:
- news.mit.edu/2023/quantum-interconnects-photon-emission-0105
Researchers have demonstrated directional photon emission, the first step toward extensible quantum interconnects
- qpl.ece.ucsb.edu/research/quantum-interconnects
Gerhard Rempe - Quantum Dynamics by Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics
. Source. No technical details of course, but they do show off their optical tables quite a bit!Other good lists:
- quantumcomputingreport.com/resources/tools/ is hard to beat as usual.
- www.quantiki.org/wiki/list-qc-simulators
- JavaScript
- algassert.com/quirk demo: github.com/Strilanc/Quirk drag-and-drop, by a 2019-quantum-computing-Googler, impressive. You can create gates. State store in URL.
- github.com/stewdio/q.js/ demo: quantumjavascript.app/
Bibliography:
- www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/whats-happening/articles/energy-efficient-quantum-computing-simulations mentions two types of quantum computer simulation:
The most common approach to quantum simulations is to store the whole state in memory and to modify it with gates in a given order
However, there is a completely different approach that can sometimes eliminate this issue - tensor networks
The official hello world is documented at: qiskit.org/documentation/intro_tutorial1.html and contains a Bell state circuit.
Our version at qiskit/hello.py.
Sample program output,
counts are randomized each time.First we take the quantum state vector immediately after the input.We understand that the first element of
input:
state:
Statevector([1.+0.j, 0.+0.j, 0.+0.j, 0.+0.j],
dims=(2, 2))
probs:
[1. 0. 0. 0.]Statevector is , and has probability of 1.0.Next we take the state after a Hadamard gate on the first qubit:We now understand that the second element of the
h:
state:
Statevector([0.70710678+0.j, 0.70710678+0.j, 0. +0.j,
0. +0.j],
dims=(2, 2))
probs:
[0.5 0.5 0. 0. ]Statevector is , and now we have a 50/50 propabability split for the first bit.Then we apply the CNOT gate:which leaves us with the final .
cx:
state:
Statevector([0.70710678+0.j, 0. +0.j, 0. +0.j,
0.70710678+0.j],
dims=(2, 2))
probs:
[0.5 0. 0. 0.5]Then we print the circuit a bit:
qc without measure:
┌───┐
q_0: ┤ H ├──■──
└───┘┌─┴─┐
q_1: ─────┤ X ├
└───┘
c: 2/══════════
qc with measure:
┌───┐ ┌─┐
q_0: ┤ H ├──■──┤M├───
└───┘┌─┴─┐└╥┘┌─┐
q_1: ─────┤ X ├─╫─┤M├
└───┘ ║ └╥┘
c: 2/═══════════╩══╩═
0 1
qasm:
OPENQASM 2.0;
include "qelib1.inc";
qreg q[2];
creg c[2];
h q[0];
cx q[0],q[1];
measure q[0] -> c[0];
measure q[1] -> c[1];In this example we will initialize a quantum circuit with a single CNOT gate and see the output values.
By default, Qiskit initializes every qubit to 0 as shown in the qiskit/hello.py. But we can also initialize to arbitrary values as would be done when computing the output for various different inputs.
Output:which we should all be able to understand intuitively given our understanding of the CNOT gate and quantum state vectors.
┌──────────────────────┐
q_0: ┤0 ├──■──
│ Initialize(1,0,0,0) │┌─┴─┐
q_1: ┤1 ├┤ X ├
└──────────────────────┘└───┘
c: 2/═════════════════════════════
init: [1, 0, 0, 0]
probs: [1. 0. 0. 0.]
init: [0, 1, 0, 0]
probs: [0. 0. 0. 1.]
init: [0, 0, 1, 0]
probs: [0. 0. 1. 0.]
init: [0, 0, 0, 1]
probs: [0. 1. 0. 0.]
┌──────────────────────────────────┐
q_0: ┤0 ├──■──
│ Initialize(0.70711,0,0,0.70711) │┌─┴─┐
q_1: ┤1 ├┤ X ├
└──────────────────────────────────┘└───┘
c: 2/═════════════════════════════════════════
init: [0.7071067811865475, 0, 0, 0.7071067811865475]
probs: [0.5 0.5 0. 0. ]quantumcomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/13202/qiskit-initializing-n-qubits-with-binary-values-0s-and-1s describes how to initialize circuits qubits only with binary 0 or 1 to avoid dealing with the exponential number of elements of the quantum state vector.
This is an example of the
qiskit.circuit.library.QFT implementation of the Quantum Fourier transform function which is documented at: docs.quantum.ibm.com/api/qiskit/0.44/qiskit.circuit.library.QFTOutput:So this also serves as a more interesting example of quantum compilation, mapping the
init: [1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]
qc
┌──────────────────────────────┐┌──────┐
q_0: ┤0 ├┤0 ├
│ ││ │
q_1: ┤1 Initialize(1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0) ├┤1 QFT ├
│ ││ │
q_2: ┤2 ├┤2 ├
└──────────────────────────────┘└──────┘
transpiled qc
┌──────────────────────────────┐ ┌───┐
q_0: ┤0 ├────────────────────■────────■───────┤ H ├─X─
│ │ ┌───┐ │ │P(π/2) └───┘ │
q_1: ┤1 Initialize(1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0) ├──────■───────┤ H ├─┼────────■─────────────┼─
│ │┌───┐ │P(π/2) └───┘ │P(π/4) │
q_2: ┤2 ├┤ H ├─■─────────────■──────────────────────X─
└──────────────────────────────┘└───┘
Statevector([0.35355339+0.j, 0.35355339+0.j, 0.35355339+0.j,
0.35355339+0.j, 0.35355339+0.j, 0.35355339+0.j,
0.35355339+0.j, 0.35355339+0.j],
dims=(2, 2, 2))
init: [0.0, 0.35355339059327373, 0.5, 0.3535533905932738, 6.123233995736766e-17, -0.35355339059327373, -0.5, -0.35355339059327384]
Statevector([ 7.71600526e-17+5.22650714e-17j,
1.86749130e-16+7.07106781e-01j,
-6.10667421e-18+6.10667421e-18j,
1.13711443e-16-1.11022302e-16j,
2.16489014e-17-8.96726857e-18j,
-5.68557215e-17-1.11022302e-16j,
-6.10667421e-18-4.94044770e-17j,
-3.30200457e-16-7.07106781e-01j],
dims=(2, 2, 2))QFT gate to Qiskit Aer primitives.If we don't
transpile in this example, then running blows up with:qiskit_aer.aererror.AerError: 'unknown instruction: QFT'The second input is:and the output of that approximately:which can be defined simply as the normalized DFT of the input quantum state vector.
[0, 1j/sqrt(2), 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1j/sqrt(2)]From this we see that the Quantum Fourier transform is equivalent to a direct discrete Fourier transform on the quantum state vector, related: physics.stackexchange.com/questions/110073/how-to-derive-quantum-fourier-transform-from-discrete-fourier-transform-dft
Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project
Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
Intro to OurBigBook
. Source. We have two killer features:
- topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculusArticles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
- a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
- a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
Figure 1. Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page. View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivativeVideo 2. OurBigBook Web topics demo. Source. - local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
- to OurBigBook.com to get awesome multi-user features like topics and likes
- as HTML files to a static website, which you can host yourself for free on many external providers like GitHub Pages, and remain in full control
Figure 3. Visual Studio Code extension installation.
Figure 4. Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation.
Figure 5. Web editor. You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.Video 3. Edit locally and publish demo. Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.Video 4. OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo. Source. 
- Infinitely deep tables of contents:
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact