Welcome to the Institute for Quantum Computing

News

On April 18, Transformative Quantum Technologies (TQT) awarded six research teams and their design ideas for the Quantum for Environment (Q4Environment) Design Challenge, whose green-tech solutions address global environmental issues. Ideas included using quantum computing to improve medical devices, and sensors that can detect microplastics and toxic nanomaterials in our oceans. 

Friday, April 26, 2024

IQC Welcomes Dr. Bradley Hauer

Breakthroughs in understanding how gravity affects quantum mechanics could be on the horizon at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) with the addition of Dr. Bradley Hauer as IQC's newest faculty member and Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Hauer’s research focuses on studying cavity optomechanical systems and superconducting circuits and their applications in metrology, quantum information and non-classical state preparation.

En francais

Each year, the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) invites top undergraduate students from around the world to the University of Waterloo for the opportunity to immerse themselves in quantum information science and technology. This program, the Undergraduate School on Experimental Quantum Information Processing (USEQIP), provides participants with lectures on quantum information theory and experimental approaches to quantum devices, as well as over 30 hours of hands-on laboratory and experimental exploration.

Events

Wednesday, May 1, 2024 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

IQC Student Seminar Featuring Alexander Frei

Fermionic encodings: BK Superfast, ternary trees, and even fermionic encodings

Quantum-Nano Centre, 200 University Ave West, Room QNC 1201 Waterloo, ON CA N2L 3G1

We give an introduction to fermionic encoding schemes applicable in the context of quantum simulation of fermionic systems in condensed matter physics, lattice gauge theories, and in quantum chemistry.
 
For this we will focus on the circuit depth overhead for a variety of constructions of fermionic encodings, more precisely in terms of their weight given by the choice of encoding within the Pauli group, and as such also in terms of their circuit depth due to multi-qubit rotation gates.
 
In particular we will introduce the Fenwick tree encoding due to Bravyi and Kitaev, as well as an optimal all-to-all encoding scheme in terms of ternary trees due to Jiang et al, and put those in perspective with the well-known fermionic encoding given by the Jordan-Wigner transformation. Such encoding schemes of fermionic systems with all-to-all connectivity become relevant especially in the context of molecular simulation in quantum chemistry.
 
We then further discuss the encoding of the algebra of even fermionic operators, which becomes particularly handy in the estimation of ground state energies for complex materials and their phase transitions in condensed matter physics.
 
In particular, we will introduce here the so-called Bravyi--Kitaev superfast encoding for the algebra of even fermionic operators, as well as the compact encoding due to Klassen and Derby as a particular variant thereof. These encoding schemes require the further use of stabilizer subspaces and so of fault-tolerant encoding schemes for their practical implementation for the purpose of quantum simulation. We then finish with a further improvement, the so-called supercompact encoding, due to Chen and Xu. In particular, we will focus here on its code parameters (more precisely its encoding rate and code distance) and put those in perspective with the previous compact encoding due to Klassen and Derby.
 
This talk is meant as an expository talk on available encoding schemes for fermionic systems, together with their best practices for the purpose of quantum simulations.

Tuesday, May 14, 2024 - Thursday, May 16, 2024 (all day)

ETSI/IQC Quantum Safe Cryptography Conference 2024

ETSI and the Institute for Quantum Computing are pleased to announce the 10th ETSI/IQC Quantum Safe Cryptography Conference, taking place in Singapore on May 14-16, 2024. The event will be hosted by the Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore.

This event was designed for members of the business, government, and research communities with a stake in cryptographic standardization to facilitate the knowledge exchange and collaboration required to transition cyber infrastructures and business practices to make them safe in an era with quantum computers. It aims to showcase both the most recent developments from industry and government and cutting-edge potential solutions coming out of the most recent research.