Programme

Evening lecture: Christopher Monroe (IonQ Inc./Duke Univ.): "Quantum Computing with Atoms"

Abstract: Trapped atomic ions are a leading physical platform for quantum computers, featuring qubits with essentially infinite idle coherence times and the highest purity quantum gate operations. Such atomic clock qubits are controlled with laser beams, allowing densely-connected and reconfigurable universal gate sets. The path to scale involves concrete architectural paths, from shuttling ions between QPU cores to modular photonic interconnects between multiple QPUs.  Full-stack ion trap quantum computers have thus moved away from the physics of qubits and gates and toward the engineering of optical control signals, quantum gate compilation for algorithms, and software-defined error correction. I will summarize the state-of-the-art in these quantum computers in both academic and industrial settings, and summarize how they are being used for both scientific and commercial applications.