Scale Quantum Research Articles

High mobility SiMOSFETs fabricated in a full 300 mm CMOS process

The quality of the semiconductor–barrier interface plays a pivotal role in the demonstration of high quality reproducible quantum dots for quantum information processing. In this work, we have measured SiMOSFET Hall bars on undoped Si substrates in order to investigate the device quality. For devices fabricated in a full complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process and of very thin oxide below a thickness of 10 nm, we report a record mobility of 17.5 × 103 cm2 V−1 s−1 indicating a high quality interface, suitable for future qubit applications. We also study the influence of gate materials on the mobilities and discuss the underlying mechanisms, giving insight into further material optimization for large scale quantum processors.

Detecting scale anomaly in chiral phase transition of QCD: new critical endpoint pinned down

Violation of scale symmetry, scale anomaly, being a radical concept in quantum field theory, is of importance to comprehend the vacuum structure of QCD, and should potentially contribute to the chiral phase transition in thermal QCD, as well as the chiral and U(1) axial symmetry. Though it should be essential, direct evidence of scale anomalies has never been observed in the chiral phase transition. We propose a methodology to detect a scale anomaly in the chiral phase transition, which is an electromagnetically induced scale anomaly: apply a weak magnetic field background onto two-flavor massless QCD with an extremely heavy strange quark, first observe the chiral crossover; second, adjusting the strange quark mass to be smaller and smaller, observe the second-order chiral phase transition, and then the first-order one in the massless-three flavor limit. Thus, the second-order chiral phase transition, observed as the evidence of the quantum scale anomaly, is a new critical endpoint. It turns out that this electromagnetic scale anomaly gets most operative in the weak magnetic field regime, rather than a strong field region. We also briefly address accessibility of lattice QCD, a prospected application to dense matter system, and implications to astrophysical observations, such as gravitational wave productions provided from thermomagnetic QCD-like theories.

Toward a quantum computing algorithm to quantify classical and quantum correlation of system states

Optimal measurement is required to obtain the quantum and classical correlations of a quantum state, and the crucial difficulty is how to acquire the maximal information about one system by measuring the other part; in other words, getting the maximum information corresponds to preparing the best measurement operators. Within a general setup, we designed a variational hybrid quantum–classical algorithm to achieve classical and quantum correlations for system states under the Noisy-Intermediate Scale Quantum technology. To employ, first, we map the density matrix to the vector representation, which displays it in a doubled Hilbert space, and it is converted to a pure state. Then, we apply the measurement operators to a part of the subsystem and use variational principle and a classical optimization for the determination of the amount of correlation. We numerically test the performance of our algorithm at finding a correlation of some density matrices, and the output of our algorithm is compatible with the exact calculation.

Cosmology from pregeometry

We discuss cosmological solutions for a diffeomorphism invariant gauge theory of the non-compact Lorentz group $SO(1,3)$. Besides the gauge bosons our model of pregeometry contains a vector field in the vector representation of $SO(1,3)$ and a scalar singlet. General relativity and variable gravity emerge as effective theories for large distances and times in Planck units. We propose an approximation to the effective action with up to two derivatives. For a suitable range of parameters the universe approaches for large times stable Minkowski space. For late cosmology the model predicts dynamical dark energy and provides for a candidate for dark matter. Early cosmology is characterized by an inflationary epoch. The beginning of the universe in the infinite past is great emptiness, corresponding to an ultraviolet fixed point with the associated quantum scale symmetry. The beginning universe is a vacuum state with vanishing expectation values and finite non-vanishing correlation functions for the fluctuations of all fields. There is no physical big bang singularity.

Plasma scale length and quantum electrodynamics effects on particle acceleration at extreme laser plasmas

In this work, simulations of multipetawatt lasers at irradiances ${\sim }10^{23} \ \mathrm {W}\ \mathrm {cm}^{-2}$ , striking solid targets and implementing two-dimensional particle-in-cell code was used to study particle acceleration. Preformed plasma at the front surface of a solid target increases both the efficiency of particle acceleration and the reached maximum energy by the accelerated charged particles via nonlinear plasma processes. Here, we have investigated the preformed plasma scale length effects on particle acceleration in the presence and absence of nonlinear quantum electrodynamic (QED) effects, including quantum radiation reaction and multiphoton Breit–Wheeler pair production, which become important at irradiances ${\sim } 10^{23}\ \mathrm {W}\ \mathrm {cm}^{-2}$ . Our results show that QED effects help particles gain higher energies with the presence of preformed plasma. In the results for all cases, preplasma leads to more efficient laser absorption and produces more energetic charged particles, as expected. In the case where QED is included, however, physical mechanisms changed and generated secondary particles ( $\gamma$ -rays and positrons) reversing this trend. That is, the hot electrons cool down due to QED effects, while ions gain more energy due to different acceleration methods. It is found that more energetic $\gamma$ -rays and positrons are created with increasing scale length due to high laser conversion efficiency ( ${\sim }$ 24 % for $\gamma$ -rays and $\sim$ 4 % for positrons at $L = 7\ \mathrm {\mu }\textrm {m}$ scale length), which affects the ion and electron acceleration mechanisms. It is also observed that the QED effect reduces the collimation of angular distribution of accelerated ions because the dominant ion acceleration mechanism is changing when QED is involved in the process.

Interplay between Spacetime Curvature, Speed of Light and Quantum Deformations of Relativistic Symmetries

Recent work showed that κ-deformations can describe the quantum deformation of several relativistic models that have been proposed in the context of quantum gravity phenomenology. Starting from the Poincaré algebra of special-relativistic symmetries, one can toggle the curvature parameter Λ, the Planck scale quantum deformation parameter κ and the speed of light parameter c to move to the well-studied κ-Poincaré algebra, the (quantum) (A)dS algebra, the (quantum) Galilei and Carroll algebras and their curved versions. In this review, we survey the properties and relations of these algebras of relativistic symmetries and their associated noncommutative spacetimes, emphasizing the nontrivial effects of interplay between curvature, quantum deformation and speed of light parameters.

Instruction-Set Accelerated Implementation of CRYSTALS-Kyber

Large scale quantum computers will break classical public-key cryptography protocols by quantum algorithms such as Shor’s algorithm. Hence, designing quantum-safe cryptosystems to replace current classical algorithms is crucial. Luckily there are some post-quantum candidates that are assumed to be resistant against future attacks from quantum computers, and NIST is considering standardizing them. Among these candidates, lattice-based cryptography sounds more interesting than others due to the performance results as well as confidence in the security. There are few works in the literature evaluating the performance of lattice-based cryptography in hardware. In this paper, we focus on Cryptographic Suite for Algebraic Lattices (CRYSTALS) key exchange mechanisms known as Kyber and provide an instruction-set hardware architecture and implement on Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA for performance evaluation and testing. Our proposed architecture provides an efficient and high-performance set of components to perform polynomial sampling, number-theoretic transform (NTT), and point-wise multiplication to speed up lattice-based post-quantum cryptography (PQC). This architecture implemented on ASIC outperforms state-of-the-art implementations.

A polynomial time and space heuristic algorithm for T-count

An important part of reaping computational advantage from a quantum computer is to reduce the quantum resources needed to implement a desired quantum algorithm. Quantum algorithms that are too large to be practical on noisy intermediate scale quantum devices will require fault-tolerant error correction. This work focuses on reducing the physical cost of implementing quantum algorithms when using the state-of-the-art fault-tolerant quantum error correcting codes, in particular, those for which implementing the T gate consumes vastly more resources than the other gates in the gate set. More specifically, in this paper we consider the group of unitaries that can be exactly implemented by a quantum circuit consisting of the Clifford + T gate set. The Clifford + T gate set is a universal gate set and in this group, using state-of-the-art surface codes, the T gate is by far the most expensive component to implement fault-tolerantly. So it is important to minimize the number of T gates necessary for a fault-tolerant implementation. Our primary interest is to compute a circuit for a given n-qubit unitary U, using the minimum possible number of T gates (called the T-count of unitary U). We consider the problem COUNT-T, the optimization version of which aims to find the T-count of U. In its decision version the goal is to decide if the T-count is at most some positive integer m. Given an oracle for COUNT-T, we can compute a T-count-optimal circuit in time polynomial in the T-count and dimension of U. We give a provable classical algorithm that solves COUNT-T (decision) in time and space , where N = 2 n and c ⩾ 2. This gives a space-time trade-off for solving this problem with variants of meet-in-the-middle techniques. We also introduce an asymptotically faster multiplication method that shaves a factor of N 0.7457 off of the overall complexity. Lastly, beyond our improvements to the rigorous algorithm, we give a heuristic algorithm that outputs a T-count-optimal circuit and has space and time complexity poly(m, N), under some assumptions. In our heuristic algorithm we developed a novel way of pruning the search space. While our heuristic method still scales exponentially with the number of qubits (though with a lower exponent), there is a large improvement by going from exponential to polynomial scaling with m. We implemented our heuristic algorithm with up to 4 qubit unitaries and obtained a significant improvement in time. For all benchmark and random unitaries we studied, the T-count returned by our algorithm is at most the T-count of their circuits shown in previous papers.

Gauge-Symmetry Protection Using Single-Body Terms

Quantum-simulator hardware promises new insights into problems from particle and nuclear physics. A major challenge is to reproduce gauge invariance, as violations of this quintessential property of lattice gauge theories can have dramatic consequences, e.g., the generation of a photon mass in quantum electrodynamics. Here, we introduce an experimentally friendly method to protect gauge invariance in $\mathrm{U}(1)$ lattice gauge theories against coherent errors in a controllable way. Our method employs only single-body energy-penalty terms, thus enabling practical implementations. As we derive analytically, some sets of penalty coefficients render undesired gauge sectors inaccessible by unitary dynamics for exponentially long times, and, for few-body error terms, with resources independent of system size. These findings constitute an exponential improvement over previously known results from energy-gap protection or perturbative treatments. In our method, the gauge-invariant subspace is protected by an emergent global symmetry, meaning it can be immediately applied to other symmetries. In our numerical benchmarks for continuous-time and digital quantum simulations, gauge protection holds for all calculated evolution times (up to $t>10^{10}/J$ for continuous time, with $J$ the relevant energy scale). Crucially, our gauge-protection technique is simpler to realize than the associated ideal gauge theory, and can thus be readily implemented in current ultracold-atom analog simulators as well as digital noisy intermediate scale quantum (NISQ) devices.

Tuning the Thermoelectric Properties of Transition Metal Oxide Thin Films and Superlattices on the Quantum Scale

Combining advanced growth and characterization techniques with state‐of‐the‐art first‐principles simulations in the frameworks of density functional theory and Boltzmann transport theory, recent advances in the field of transition metal oxide films and superlattices (SLs) as thermoelectric materials are discussed, with particular focus on a selection of quantum‐scale approaches to tune their thermoelectric performance. Specifically, films grown on regular and miscut substrates have enabled experimental confirmation of the large predicted out‐of‐plane Seebeck coefficient of this anisotropic material and also reveal the necessity of a Hubbard‐U parameter on the Co states. Furthermore, oxygen diffusion and incorporation from the substrate lead to a significant enhancement of the high‐temperature Seebeck coefficient in SLs. Next, it is shown how n‐ and p‐type materials can be achieved either by exploiting interface polarity in a SL or using epitaxial strain to shift orbital‐dependent transport resonances across the Fermi level in SLs. Moreover, confinement‐ and strain‐induced metal‐to‐insulator transitions induce high Seebeck coefficients and power factors in short‐period and SLs ( V, Cr, Mn). Finally, a relation between the topologically nontrivial Chern insulating behavior and enhanced thermoelectric response in SLs is established. The article concludes with a discussion of challenges and future topics of research in oxide thermoelectrics.

What the foundations of quantum computer science teach us about chemistry.

With the rapid development of quantum technology, one of the leading applications that has been identified is the simulation of chemistry. Interestingly, even before full scale quantum computers are available, quantum computer science has exhibited a remarkable string of results that directly impact what is possible in a chemical simulation with any computer. Some of these results even impact our understanding of chemistry in the real world. In this Perspective, we take the position that direct chemical simulation is best understood as a digital experiment. While on the one hand, this clarifies the power of quantum computers to extend our reach, it also shows us the limitations of taking such an approach too directly. Leveraging results that quantum computers cannot outpace the physical world, we build to the controversial stance that some chemical problems are best viewed as problems for which no algorithm can deliver their solution, in general, known in computer science as undecidable problems. This has implications for the predictive power of thermodynamic models and topics such as the ergodic hypothesis. However, we argue that this Perspective is not defeatist but rather helps shed light on the success of existing chemical models such as transition state theory, molecular orbital theory, and thermodynamics as models that benefit from data. We contextualize recent results, showing that data-augmented models are a more powerful rote simulation. These results help us appreciate the success of traditional chemical theory and anticipate new models learned from experimental data. Not only can quantum computers provide data for such models, but they can also extend the class and power of models that utilize data in fundamental ways. These discussions culminate in speculation on new ways for quantum computing and chemistry to interact and our perspective on the eventual roles of quantum computers in the future of chemistry.

Engineering of inorganic nanostructures with hierarchy of chiral geometries at multiple scales

Engineering of inorganic nanostructures with hierarchy of chiral geometries at multiple scales

Primordial flat frame: A new view on inflation

Models of inflationary cosmology admit a choice of the metric for which the geometry of homogeneous isotropic solutions becomes flat Minkowski space in the infinite past. In this primordial flat frame all mass scales vanish in the infinite past and quantum scale symmetry is realized. The cosmological evolution is dominantly described by the slow increase of a scalar field which sets the scale of all masses. We construct the primordial flat frame for standard models of inflation as Starobinsky inflation or chaotic inflation. In particular, we discuss the evolution of inhomogeneous solutions in the neighborhood of the homogeneous isotropic background solution and their relation to the observable primordial fluctuation spectrum. If the propagators for the graviton and scalar field remain regular, our observed inhomogeneous Universe can be extrapolated back to the infinite past in physical time. In this case there is no physical big-bang singularity -- the latter reflects only a singular choice of ``field coordinates". Independently of the issue of singularity the primordial flat frame offers a new view on the physical properties of the inflationary universe, which can be characterized as a very slowly evolving almost empty vacuum state with approximate scale symmetry.

Characterization, Antimicrobial and Anticancer Properties of Palladium Nanoparticles Biosynthesized Optimally Using Saudi Propolis.

Due to their unique physicochemical characteristics, palladium nanoparticles (Pd-NPs) have shown tremendous promise in biological applications. The biosynthesis of Pd-NPs employing Saudi propolis has been designed to be environmental, fast, controlled, and cost-effective. The formation and stability of biosynthesized Pd-NPs by Saudi propolis extract were proved by ultraviolet–visible spectrophotometry (UV-Vis), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), and Zeta potential analysis. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) findings show that the average particle size of Pd-NPs is between 3.14 and 4.62 nm, which is in quantum scale. The Saudi propolis enhanced the antimicrobial activity against B. subtilis, S. aureus, E. coli, K. pneumoniae, and C. albicans. Pd-NPs show effective anticancer activity against ductal carcinoma (MCF-7) with IC50 of 104.79 µg/mL.

Quantum computing: A taxonomy, systematic review and future directions

AbstractQuantum computing (QC) is an emerging paradigm with the potential to offer significant computational advantage over conventional classical computing by exploiting quantum‐mechanical principles such as entanglement and superposition. It is anticipated that this computational advantage of QC will help to solve many complex and computationally intractable problems in several application domains such as drug design, data science, clean energy, finance, industrial chemical development, secure communications, and quantum chemistry. In recent years, tremendous progress in both quantum hardware development and quantum software/algorithm has brought QC much closer to reality. Indeed, the demonstration of quantum supremacy marks a significant milestone in the Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) era—the next logical step being the quantum advantage whereby quantum computers solve a real‐world problem much more efficiently than classical computing. As the quantum devices are expected to steadily scale up in the next few years, quantum decoherence and qubit interconnectivity are two of the major challenges to achieve quantum advantage in the NISQ era. QC is a highly topical and fast‐moving field of research with significant ongoing progress in all facets. A systematic review of the existing literature on QC will be invaluable to understand the state‐of‐the‐art of this emerging field and identify open challenges for the QC community to address in the coming years. This article presents a comprehensive review of QC literature and proposes taxonomy of QC. The proposed taxonomy is used to map various related studies to identify the research gaps. A detailed overview of quantum software tools and technologies, post‐quantum cryptography, and quantum computer hardware development captures the current state‐of‐the‐art in the respective areas. The article identifies and highlights various open challenges and promising future directions for research and innovation in QC.

Full control of superconducting qubits with combined on-chip microwave and flux lines

As the field of quantum computing progresses to larger-scale devices, multiplexing will be crucial to scale quantum processors. While multiplexed readout is common practice for superconducting devices, relatively little work has been reported about the combination of flux and microwave control lines. Here, we present a method to integrate a microwave line and a flux line into a single “XYZ line.” This combined control line allows us to perform fast single-qubit gates as well as to deliver flux signals to the qubits. The measured relaxation times of the qubits are comparable to state-of-the-art devices employing separate control lines. We benchmark the fidelity of single-qubit gates with randomized benchmarking, achieving a fidelity as high as 99.93±0.04%, and we demonstrate that XYZ lines can in principle be used to run parametric entangling gates.

Quantum corrections to the thermodynamics of black branes

In this paper we study the thermodynamics of black branes at quantum scales. We analyze both perturbative and non-perturbative corrections to the thermodynamics of such black branes. It will be observed that these corrections will modify the relation between the entropy and area of these black branes. This will in turn modify their specific heat, and thus their stability. So, such corrections can have important consequences for the stability of black branes at quantum scales. We also analyze the effect of these perturbative and non-perturbative quantum corrections on various other thermodynamic quantities. Then, we obtain the metric for the quantum corrected geometry for black branes.

Quantum work and information geometry of a quantum Myers-Perry black hole

In this paper, we will obtain quantum work for a quantum scale five dimensional Myers-Perry black hole. Unlike heat represented by Hawking radiation, the quantum work is represented by a unitary information preserving process, and becomes important for black holes only at small quantum scales. It will be observed that at such short distances, the quantum work will be corrected by non-perturbative quantum gravitational corrections. We will use the Jarzynski equality to obtain this quantum work modified by non-perturbative quantum gravitational corrections. These non-perturbative corrections will also modify the stability of a quantum Myers-Perry black hole. We will define a quantum corrected information geometry by incorporating the non-perturbative quantum corrections in the information geometry of a Myers-Perry black hole. We will use several different quantum corrected effective information metrics to analyze the stability of a quantum Myers-Perry black hole.

Use of the quantum cluster algorithm and scaling dynamics in magnetic resonance imaging for prostate cancer staging

Malignant tumors in the prostate generally have amorphous geometries and roughness is evident on their surface. These characteristics, together with the escalation dynamics of this type of lesion, provide information on their degree of malignancy or stage, therefore, their understanding leads to establishing an adequate diagnosis and a good radiotherapeutic implementation. The geometry present in prostate cancers leads to an analysis based on scales and a fractal study. In the present work, an in vivo diagnosis of prostate cancer will be made with magnetic resonance images, three-dimensional, using the cluster quantum algorithm and the calculation of the critical exponents of local roughness and the fractal dimension, which will allow staging said lesions. and whose results are consistent with those reported in the literature.

Optimization of VQE-UCC Algorithm Based on Spin State Symmetry

The accurate calculation of molecular energy spectra, a very complicated work, is of importance in many applied fields. Relying on the VQE-UCC algorithm, it is very possible to calculate the molecular energy spectrum on a noisy intermediate scale quantum computer. However, due to the limitation of the number of qubits and coherent time in quantum computers, the complexity of VQE-UCC algorithm still needs to be reduced in the simulation of macromolecules. We develop a new VQE-UCC method to calculate the ground state of the molecule according to the symmetry of the system, the complexity of which is reduced. Using this method we get the ground and excite state of four kinds of molecules. The method and the results are of great significance for the promotion of quantum chemical simulations.