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A team of Princeton physicists has achieved a breakthrough in quantum mechanics by entangling individual molecules. This research opens up new possibilities for quantum computing, simulation, and sensing. The teams innovative use of optical tweezers to control molecules overcomes previous challenges in quantum entanglement, signaling a significant advancement in the field. Credit: SciTechDaily.com

In work that could lead to more robust quantum computing, Princeton researchers have succeeded in forcing molecules into quantum entanglement.

For the first time, a team of Princeton physicists has been able to link together individual molecules into special states that are quantum mechanically entangled. In these bizarre states, the molecules remain correlated with each otherand can interact simultaneouslyeven if they are miles apart, or indeed, even if they occupy opposite ends of the universe. This research was published in the journal Science.

This is a breakthrough in the world of molecules because of the fundamental importance of quantum entanglement, said Lawrence Cheuk, assistant professor of physics at Princeton University and the senior author of the paper. But it is also a breakthrough for practical applications because entangled molecules can be the building blocks for many future applications.

These include, for example, quantum computers that can solve certain problems much faster than conventional computers, quantum simulators that can model complex materials whose behaviors are difficult to model, and quantum sensors that can measure faster than their traditional counterparts.

Laser setup for cooling, controlling, and entangling individual molecules. Credit: Richard Soden, Department of Physics, Princeton University

One of the motivations in doing quantum science is that in the practical world it turns out that if you harness the laws of quantum mechanics, you can do a lot better in many areas, said Connor Holland, a graduate student in the physics department and a co-author on the work.

The ability of quantum devices to outperform classical ones is known as quantum advantage. And at the core of quantum advantage are the principles of superposition and quantum entanglement. While a classical computer bit can assume the value of either 0 or 1, quantum bits, called qubits, can simultaneously be in a superposition of 0 and 1. The latter concept, entanglement, is a major cornerstone of quantum mechanics, and occurs when two particles become inextricably linked with each other so that this link persists, even if one particle is light years away from the other particle. It is the phenomenon that Albert Einstein, who at first questioned its validity, described as spooky action at a distance. Since then, physicists have demonstrated that entanglement is, in fact, an accurate description of the physical world and how reality is structured.

Quantum entanglement is a fundamental concept, said Cheuk, but it is also the key ingredient that bestows quantum advantage.

But building quantum advantage and achieving controllable quantum entanglement remains a challenge, not least because engineers and scientists are still unclear about which physical platform is best for creating qubits. In the past decades, many different technologiessuch as trapped ions, photons, superconducting circuits, to name only a fewhave been explored as candidates for quantum computers and devices. The optimal quantum system or qubit platform could very well depend on the specific application.

Until this experiment, however, molecules had long defied controllable quantum entanglement. But Cheuk and his colleagues found a way, through careful manipulation in the laboratory, to control individual molecules and coax them into these interlocking quantum states. They also believed that molecules have certain advantagesover atoms, for examplethat made them especially well-suited for certain applications in quantum information processing and quantum simulation of complex materials. Compared to atoms, for example, molecules have more quantum degrees of freedom and can interact in new ways.

What this means, in practical terms, is that there are new ways of storing and processing quantum information, said Yukai Lu, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering and a co-author of the paper. For example, a molecule can vibrate and rotate in multiple modes. So, you can use two of these modes to encode a qubit. If the molecular species is polar, two molecules can interact even when spatially separated.

Nonetheless, molecules have proven notoriously difficult to control in the laboratory because of their complexity. The very degrees of freedom that make them attractive also make them hard to control, or corral, in laboratory settings.

Cheuk and his team addressed many of these challenges through a carefully thought-out experiment. They first picked a molecular species that is both polar and can be cooled with lasers. They then laser-cooled the molecules to ultracold temperatures where quantum mechanics takes centerstage. Individual molecules were then picked up by a complex system of tightly focused laser beams, so-called optical tweezers. By engineering the positions of the tweezers, they were able to create large arrays of single molecules and individually position them into any desired one-dimensional configuration. For example, they created isolated pairs of molecules and also defect-free strings of molecules.

Next, they encoded a qubit into a non-rotating and rotating state of the molecule. They were able to show that this molecular qubit remained coherent, that is, it remembered its superposition. In short, the researchers demonstrated the ability to create well-controlled and coherent qubits out of individually controlled molecules.

To entangle the molecules, they had to make the molecule interact. By using a series of microwave pulses, they were able to make individual molecules interact with one another in a coherent fashion. By allowing the interaction to proceed for a precise amount of time, they were able to implement a two-qubit gate that entangled two molecules. This is significant because such an entangling two-qubit gate is a building block for both universal digital quantum computing and for simulation of complex materials.

The potential of this research for investigating different areas of quantum science is large, given the innovative features offered by this new platform of molecular tweezer arrays. In particular, the Princeton team is interested in exploring the physics of many interacting molecules, which can be used to simulate quantum many-body systems where interesting emergent behavior such as novel forms of magnetism can appear.

Using molecules for quantum science is a new frontier and our demonstration of on-demand entanglement is a key step in demonstrating that molecules can be used as a viable platform for quantum science, said Cheuk.

In a separate article published in the same issue of Science, an independent research group led by John Doyle and Kang-Kuen Ni at Harvard University and Wolfgang Ketterle at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology achieved similar results.

The fact that they got the same results verify the reliability of our results, Cheuk said. They also show that molecular tweezer arrays are becoming an exciting new platform for quantum science.

Reference: On-demand entanglement of molecules in a reconfigurable optical tweezer array by Connor M. Holland, Yukai Lu and Lawrence W. Cheuk, 7 December 2023, Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.adf4272

The work was supported by Princeton University, the National Science Foundation (Grant No. 2207518), and the Sloan Foundation (Grant No. FG-2022-19104).

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Quantum Leap: Princeton Physicists Successfully Entangle Individual Molecules for the First Time - SciTechDaily

Caltech and Broadcom today announced a multi-year partnership to advance quantum science research and discoveries with the potential to seed new innovative technologies and applications.

The partnership, supported with a significant investment from Broadcom, will establish the Broadcom Quantum Laboratory at Caltech, a physical collaboration space that will bring together experts in the fields of quantum computing, quantum sensing, quantum measurement, and quantum engineering. Broadcom's investment will support joint programming and research to accelerate discovery.

Additionally, over the next five years, Broadcom and Caltech have agreed to host an annual symposium where scientists and engineers from both organizations will explore areas of mutual interest and future development opportunities in relevant fields.

"Developing deep connections to technology leaders like Broadcom amplifies the power of the science and engineering that Caltech can accomplish," says Caltech President Thomas F. Rosenbaum, the Sonja and William Davidow Presidential Chair and professor of physics. "We share a belief in the transformative potential of quantum discoveries across the disciplines and welcome this new partnership."

"Broadcom is thrilled to partner with Caltech to launch this critical R&D initiative on quantum computing. As a world-class leader in science and engineering research, Caltech has a long and rich history of technology innovation," says Hock Tan, President and CEO of Broadcom. "This multi-year investment and engineering collaboration reinforces our continued commitment to supporting advanced R&D and represents our relentless pursuit of innovation to connect our customers, employees and communities worldwide."

Caltech is one of the world's preeminent institutions for quantum science research, with faculty positioned across the Institute working on theoretical and experimental advances that have the potential to impact everything from energy storage to drug design, to information processing and security. The Institute's faculty have been at the forefront of the field since the 1980s when the late Richard Feynman, a Caltech theoretical physicist who pioneered quantum computing and introduced the concept of nanotechnology, first posited that quantum computers would be necessary for future advanced computing systems and problems.

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Caltech and Broadcom Announce Quantum Research and Development Partnership - Caltech

Physicists at Princeton University report the successful on-demand entanglement of individual molecules, a significant milestone that they say leverages quantum mechanics to achieve these unusual states, according to new research.

Quantum entanglement remains one of the great enigmas in contemporary physics. Essentially, the phenomenon entails particles that are bound together in such a manner that any alteration in the quantum state of one particle instantaneously influences its entangled counterpart.

Remarkably, this connection persists even over vast distances, an effect initially labeled as spooky action at a distance following its introduction in a seminal 1935 paper by Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen.

While remaining mysterious, recent years have seen substantial progress in unraveling the mysteries of entanglement, with the additional promise for its practical application in diverse fields such as quantum computing, cryptography, and communication technology.

Now, the Princeton teams recent success can be counted among these developments, in the application of quantum entanglement toward producing beneficial future technologies. The teams work was recently described in a paper that appeared in the journal Science.

Lawrence Cheuk, assistant professor of physics at Princeton and the papers senior author, says the achievement helps to pave the way toward the construction of quantum computers and related technologies, which will inevitably overtake their classical counterparts in speed and efficiency in the coming years.

Significantly, the new research also achieves quantum advantage, whereby quantum bits, or qubits, can simultaneously exist in multiple states, unlike classical binary computer bits which are limited to assuming values of either 0 or 1.

This is a breakthrough in the world of molecules because of the fundamental importance of quantum entanglement, Cheuk said in a statement.

But it is also a breakthrough for practical applications because entangled molecules can be the building blocks for many future applications, Cheuk added.

Although entanglement is a core component of quantum mechanics, mastering its control for use in practical applications has remained elusive. Several technologies have been put forward as potential paths toward the creation of quantum computation devices, although no single solution has arisen, and researchers may ultimately be faced with utilizing different approaches respective to the various kinds of systems that are created.

In their recent research, Cheuk and the Princeton team succeeded in what they say is the first controlled entanglement of molecules, an achievement that was once considered too complex based on the quantum degrees of freedom and interactions that molecules possess. However, this quantum flexibility also makes molecules ideal for applications like quantum information processing, as well as the simulation of complex materials, when compared with alternatives like atoms.

Yukai Lu, a graduate student and co-author of the new paper, says the results of the teams research reveal novel ways of storing and processing quantum information.

For example, a molecule can vibrate and rotate in multiple modes, Lu explains, which means that researchers can use two of these modes to encode a qubit.

To overcome the difficulty presented by attempting to control the complex behavior of molecules, Cheuk and the team used a method of picking up individual molecules with a tightly focused array of lasers, in a system appropriately known as a tweezer array.

Cheuk calls the utilization of molecules for quantum science a new frontier, adding that the teams ability to showcase entanglement essentially on-demand represents a significant step toward eventually demonstrating that molecules could be used in practical systems for the application of quantum science.

Our results demonstrate the key building blocks needed for quantum applications and may advance quantum-enhanced fundamental physics tests that use trapped molecules, the team writes in their recent paper.

Notably, similar results were described in an entirely separate study, led by Harvard University researchers John Doyle and Kang-Kuen Ni, along with Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Wolfgang Ketterle, which was published in the same issue of Science.

For Cheuk, the similarity of the two papers is only further confirmation that the tweezer array approach boasts significant potential for quantum science applications.

The fact that they got the same results verify the reliability of our results, Cheuk said.

Cheuk, Lu, and the Princeton teams paper, On-demand entanglement of molecules in a reconfigurable optical tweezer array, appeared in Science on December 7, 2023.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. He can be reached by email atmicah@thedebrief.org. Follow his work atmicahhanks.comand on X:@MicahHanks.

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Entanglement On-Demand Achieved in Breakthrough Study Pointing to New Frontier in Quantum Science - The Debrief

AUSTIN, Texas, Dec. 12, 2023 Infleqtion has been selected by Japans Science and Technology Agency (JST) as the only foreign quantum computing partner in the Quantum Moonshot program, an initiative to advance Japanese technological capabilities and to revolutionize Japans economy, industry, and security by 2050. As part of the program, Infleqtion will collaborate to develop a large-scale, neutral atom quantum computer with high-fidelity qubits.

Led by Professor Kenji Ohmori of the Institute for Molecular Science, the program will develop a leading-edge fault-tolerant quantum computer based on atomic qubits. Professor Ohmori is a world leader in the ultrafast control of atoms for quantum computing and simulation. Recently, his team successfully executed an ultrafast 2-qubit gate between two single atoms, which has disruptively accelerated the 2-qubit gate operation of neutral atom quantum computers by two orders of magnitude.

Neutral-atom technology has emerged as a promising candidate for commercial quantum computing. In particular, it has potential in that it can be easily scaled up while maintaining high coherence times compared to the superconducting and trapped-ion modalities.

Infleqtions participation in the Quantum Moonshot program marks a significant step forward in advancing quantum computing capabilities for Japan. We look forward to leveraging Infleqtions expertise to push the boundaries of quantum computing, said Professor Kenji Ohmori.

Infleqtion is honored to contribute to Japans ambitious Quantum Moonshot program, bringing our years of neutral atom leadership to Japan, said Scott Faris, Chief Executive Officer at Infleqtion. This partnership signifies a landmark moment for Infleqtions quantum computing platform. We are excited to bring our expertise in quantum technologies and photonics to the forefront of this transformative journey.

Having a trailblazing U.S. quantum company joining forces with Japans Moonshot program is a major leap in strengthening the U.S.-Japan Alliance in a critical tech frontier, said Rahm Emanuel, U.S. Ambassador to Japan. This collaboration marks a transformative era in our joint pursuit of quantum innovation.

By combining Infleqtions expertise with Professor Ohmoris groundbreaking research, the consortium aims to achieve new heights in quantum computing capabilities, helping to lay the foundation for Japans future.

About Infleqtion

Infleqtion delivers high-value quantum information precisely where it is needed. By operating at the Edge, our software-configured, quantum-enabled products deliver unmatched levels of precision and power, generating streams of high-value information for commercial organizations, the United States, and allied governments. With 16 years of ColdQuantas pioneering quantum research as our foundation, our hardware products and AI-powered solutions address critical market needs in positioning, navigation and timing, global communication security and efficiency, resilient energy distribution, and accelerated quantum computing.

Source: Infleqtion

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Infleqtion Partners with Japan's Science Agency, Eyeing a Quantum Future by 2050 - HPCwire

Harvard researchers have realized a key milestone in the quest for stable, scalable quantum computing, an ultra-high-speed technology that will enable game-changing advances in a variety of fields, including medicine, science, and finance.

The team, led by Mikhail Lukin, the Joshua and Beth Friedman University Professor in physics and co-director of the Harvard Quantum Initiative, has created the first programmable, logical quantum processor, capable of encoding up to 48 logical qubits, and executing hundreds of logical gate operations, a vast improvement over prior efforts.

Published in Nature, the work was performed in collaboration with Markus Greiner, the George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Physics; colleagues from MIT; and QuEra Computing, a Boston company founded on technology from Harvard labs.

The system is the first demonstration of large-scale algorithm execution on an error-corrected quantum computer, heralding the advent of early fault-tolerant, or reliably uninterrupted, quantum computation.

"I think this is one of the moments in which it is clear that something very special is coming"

Mikhail Lukin, Joshua and Beth Friedman University Professor in Physics

Lukin described the achievement as a possible inflection point akin to the early days in the field of artificial intelligence: the ideas of quantum error correction and fault tolerance, long theorized, are starting to bear fruit.

I think this is one of the moments in which it is clear that something very special is coming, Lukin said. Although there are still challenges ahead, we expect that this new advance will greatly accelerate the progress toward large-scale, useful quantum computers.

Denise Caldwell of the National Science Foundation agrees.

"The team has not only accelerated the development of quantum information processing by using neutral atoms, but opened a new door to explorations of large-scale logical qubit devices, which could enable transformative benefits for science and society as a whole."

Caldwell, acting assistant director of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate

This breakthrough is a tour de force of quantum engineering and design, said Caldwell, acting assistant director of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate, which supported the research through NSFs Physics Frontiers Centers and Quantum Leap Challenge Institutes programs. The team has not only accelerated the development of quantum information processing by using neutral atoms, but opened a new door to explorations of large-scale logical qubit devices, which could enable transformative benefits for science and society as a whole.

Its been a long, complex path.

In quantum computing, a quantum bit or qubit is one unit of information, just like a binary bit in classical computing. For more than two decades, physicists and engineers have shown the world that quantum computing is, in principle, possible by manipulating quantum particles be they atoms, ions, or photons to create physical qubits.

But successfully exploiting the weirdness of quantum mechanics for computation is more complicated than simply amassing a large-enough number of qubits, which are inherently unstable and prone to collapse out of their quantum states.

The real coins of the realm are so-called logical qubits: bundles of redundant, error-corrected physical qubits, which can store information for use in a quantum algorithm. Creating logical qubits as controllable units like classical bits has been a fundamental obstacle for the field, and its generally accepted that until quantum computers can run reliably on logical qubits, the technology cant really take off.

To date, the best computing systems have demonstrated one or two logical qubits, and one quantum gate operation akin to just one unit of code between them.

The Harvard teams breakthrough builds on several years of work on a quantum computing architecture known as a neutral atom array, pioneered in Lukins lab. It is now being commercialized by QuEra, which recently entered into a licensing agreement with Harvards Office of Technology Development for a patent portfolio based on innovations developed by Lukins group.

The key component of the system is a block of ultra-cold, suspended rubidium atoms, in which the atoms the systems physical qubits can move about and be connected into pairs or entangled mid-computation.

Entangled pairs of atoms form gates, which are units of computing power. Previously, the team had demonstrated low error rates in their entangling operations, proving the reliability of their neutral atom array system.

With their logical quantum processor, the researchers now demonstrate parallel, multiplexed control of an entire patch of logical qubits, using lasers. This result is more efficient and scalable than having to control individual physical qubits.

We are trying to mark a transition in the field, toward starting to test algorithms with error-corrected qubits instead of physical ones, and enabling a path toward larger devices, said paper first author Dolev Bluvstein, a Griffin School of Arts and Sciences Ph.D. student in Lukins lab.

The team will continue to work toward demonstrating more types of operations on their 48 logical qubits and to configure their system to run continuously, as opposed to manual cycling as it does now.

The work was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency through the Optimization with Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum devices program; the Center for Ultracold Atoms, a National Science Foundation Physics Frontiers Center; the Army Research Office; the joint Quantum Institute/NIST; and QuEra Computing.

Press contact

Anne J. Manning The Harvard Gazette

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Researchers create first logical quantum processor - Harvard Office of Technology Development