BSC just opened the new STARS postdoctoral application program . The STARS (SupercompuTing And Related applicationS) fellows programme will award 20 postdoctoral researchers in the various areas developed at BSC, including Quantum Information and Computation. If you are considering a postdoc position, please apply to this program!
Two new TFG students!
Sergi Ramos and Sergi Duaigües have joined QUANTIC to work on their TFG (‘treball de final de grau’, or undergraduate thesis). They will both join Prof. J. I. Latorre’s theory team to work on coherent quantum annealing and variational quantum algorithms, respectively. They will stay until the end of the semester. Welcome to QUANTIC!
New PhD student!
The QUANTIC family is growing. A new PhD student, Carlos Bravo Prieto, joined the team to work on quantum algorithms. Carlos will be based at UB under Prof. J. I. Latorre. He will work closely with the experimental team at BSC to design a first generation of algorithms for real quantum computers. Welcome Carlos!
New paper on Two-photon Quantum Rabi model
A new publication has appeared led by Dr. Pol Forn-Díaz on the theoretical implementation of the two-photon quantum Rabi model. A purely genuine, two-photon interaction is a very intriguing effect, and it is very difficult to find a system in nature that exhibits such phenomenon. In this work, which is a collaboration with the group of Prof. Solano at UPV-EHU in Bilbao, the team found a superconducting circuit which is described by a purely two-photon interaction. The work also investigated the very intriguing phenomenon of a spectral collapse, when the two-photon interaction exceeds a certain critical value and the spectrum of the systems becomes unbounded. The work appeared in Physical Review A. The full reference is Phys. Rev. A 97, 013851 (2018).
New group member
MSc. Chris W. Warren joined the QUANTIC group as a ‘Research Engineer’. Chris will join the experimental team to set up the first generation of experiments with superconducting qubits. Chris just finished his Master thesis at the Institute for Quantum Computation (University of Waterloo) under the supervision of Prof. C. M. Wilson.
Welcome Chris!
Pol Forn-Díaz awarded “Proyectos I+D de Excelencia” grant
The “Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad” has awarded Dr. Forn-Díaz a grant for the project “Computación Cuántica Realista” with code FIS2017-89860-P.
This is the first grant awarded to the Quantic Group to begin building up a working space at BSC to perform quantum computation with superconducting circuits.
Pol Forn-Díaz awarded MISTI Seed Fund
Dr. Pol Forn-Díaz has been awarded the MIT International Science and Technology Initiative Seed Fund, together with MIT Professor William D. Oliver and Dr. Simon Gustavsson. The 20,000 USD grant is awarded by the MIT-Spain – “La Caixa” Foundation.
The award will strengthen the already existing collaboration between the BSC and MIT groups in their project to build a superconducting quantum processor.
QUANTIC group highlighted at the BSC day
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center celebrates its special day when the winter holiday period approaches. This year the event was marked by the recent news of the award to BSC of the project EuroHPC to coordinate the endeavor of producing European-made computer chips, and become a sovereign chip producer. More extended coverage of the news here (in Spanish).
During the presentation by BSC director Mateo Valero and associate director Josep Martorell, an overview of the year 2017 was given, with special emphasis on the start of MareNostrum 4. As a highlight of 2017, the creation of our group QUANTIC had its moment, particularly since some are already wondering when will BSC host a quantum computer.
Consortium on coherent quantum annealing meets in Barcelona
On Friday December 1st, an European consortium gathered at BSC to organize a project to build a Coherent Quantum Annealer using the technology of superconducting circuits. The BSC group led by Dr. Pol Forn-Díaz and Prof. J. I. Latorre will coordinate the consortium.
The consortium will participate in the FET Flagship on Quantum Technologies call. With this call, the European Union aims at bringing the European research at the forefront worldwide in the development of quantum technologies. The consortium led by the BSC team is formed out of researchers from Germany, Switzerland and Spain.
The FET call on quantum technologies was launched after the publication of the Quantum Manifesto endorsed by many important European scientists as a response to the growing industry on quantum technologies particularly in the US and China.
New article on Maximal Entanglement
Alba Cervera-Lierta and José Ignacio Latorre’s work on ‘Maximal Entanglement Generation in High Energy Physics’ has been accepted to SciPost!
This work explores how maximal entanglement is generated at the fundamental level in particle processes such as electron-electron scattering or pair annihilation into photons. It is also shown that the requirement of maximal entanglement constrains the structure of the fundamental interaction. Maximal entanglement is used to obtain a non-trivial prediction for the value of the weak mixing angle, a free parameter of the Standard Model of particles. The results are a first step towards understanding the connections between maximal entanglement and the fundamental symmetries of high-energy physics.
The reference of the article is SciPost Phys. 3, 036 (2017).