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Preeti Chalsani has been named the first Chief Quantum Officer at Intersect Illinois, starting August 14, 2024. Intersect Illinois a statewide economic development organization in the state of Illinois focused on bringing new businesses, jobs, and investment to Illinois. With the announcement of the Quantum Proving Ground with DARPA and the selection by PsiQuantum to locate a U.S. quantum data center in Chicago, the state government has a strong interest in attracting more quantum business development activity in the state. Dr. Chalsani will be leading this effort and will work with government, industry partners, quantum startups, researchers and others to help [...]

Quantum Delta NL (QDNL) is a quantum ecosystem in The Netherlands with the mission to create significant societal impact through advancements in quantum technology. They work in three areas of quantum including quantum computing and simulation, quantum networking, and quantum sensing. They have defined their activity by four action lines including Research and Innovation, Quantum Ecosystem, Human Capital, and Society Impact. QDNL has been awarded a  €273 million investment from The National Growth Fund (NGF) of the Dutch government to continue their with Phase 3 of their work. This brings the total amount of funding for the organization to  €615 million ($670M USD) [...]

Andy Ory has been named acting CEO at QuEra while the board searches for a permanent replacement. He succeeds Alex Keesling who will take on a new role within the company. Dr. Keesling will be focusing his efforts on building up the company's production capabilities and drive the company to achieve the aggressive roadmap that it announced in January. Mr. Ory has extensive startup experience and was a co-founder at 128 Technology, Acme Packet, and Priority Call Management. A press release from QuEra announcing this change is available on the QuEra website here. Oxford Quantum Circuits has added Nick Dixon-Clegg to [...]

Two Sites in the Chicago Metropolitan Area Being Considered to Locate the Quantum Providing Grounds The State of Illinois has signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to set up and provide significant funding for a campus to be named the “Quantum Proving Ground”. This site will be used for DARPA's Quantum Benchmarking Initiative where companies will research and test quantum computer prototypes. The site is planned to have shared cryogenic facilities, equipment labs, and spaces for companies and universities to perform research and demonstrate their progress. DARPA is planning to issue a Request for Proposals shortly [...]

IQM has continued with improvements in their qubit technology and have announced new results in their qubit fidelity and qubit coherence times that are competitive with some of the very best results reported in the industry so far. Specifically, they have reports achieving qubit relaxation times (T1) of 0.964 ± 0.092, T2 echo dephasing times of 1.155 ± 0.188 milliseconds and two-qubit gate fidelities reaching 99.91% ± 0.02. The two-qubit gates were implemented as CZ gates with the measurements verified by randomized benchmarking. An important aspect of this demonstration was that the chips were fabricated in IQM's own chip fabrication facility [...]

UK quantum hardware startup, Oxford Ionics, has released performance results from their latest prototype device showing new records for qubit gate fidelity. For single qubit gates they achieved a fidelity of 99.99916% and for two-qubit gates they achieved a fidelity of 99.97%. This is slightly better than the previous record we had seen for two-qubits gates which was 99.914% achieved in April by Quantinuum. Like a few other companies, the Oxford Ionics devices is based upon a trapped ion technology, but Oxford Ionics uses electronics to control the gate operations of the qubits whereas the others use lasers. This makes it [...]

Implementing error correction in a quantum computer requires putting together a lot of different things. Of course, you want to start with good physical qubits that have as low a physical error rate that you can achieve. You want to add in an error correction algorithm, like the surface code, color code, q-LDPC, or others that can be implemented in your architecture, and you need a fast real time error decoder that can look at the circuit output and very quickly determine what the error is so it can be corrected. The error decoder portion doesn't get as much attention in [...]

by André M. König I arrived at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB) Padma Vihar Guest House around 1:30 am with my colleague Dr. Satyam Priyadarshy waiting for me in the lobby. Satyam obtained his PhD in Quantum Chemistry from IITB in 1990 - much had changed since, and much hadn’t, he assured me. The guest house is typically reserved for international students, visiting faculty and other dignitaries. But, as I shall learn quickly, nothing is impossible when traveling with Satyam. And this journey commenced 6 hours later when we had breakfast with the Director of IITB and Dr. Vikram [...]