$5M in State, Private Funding Supports Hub to Meld Quantum Science, Thermodynamics

A University of Maryland-based research initiative that combines three fields of physics—from the 19^th, 20^th and 21^st centuries—to explore how the everyday world emerges from the quantum realm has received $5 million in state and private funding to continue its operations.

The new funding for the Maryland Quantum-Thermodynamics Hub will catapult it into the next three years, enabling the addition of new team members and a renewed focus on answering open research questions that might lead to better quantum computers and even alter our fundamental understanding of the nature of time.

“The intention is to make Maryland a lodestone for quantum thermodynamics in North America,” said Nicole Yunger Halpern, an adjunct assistant professor of physics at UMD and a co-leader of the hub who is also a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and a fellow of the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science.

The hub launched three years ago with a $2 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation; the new funding includes a recommitment from Templeton that will match support from the state via Gov. Wes Moore’s Capital of Quantum Initiative and UMD campus sponsors like the National Quantum Laboratory, the Brin Mathematics Research Center and the Institute for Physical Science and Technology.

Private companies including the Fidelity Center for Applied Technology and Normal Computing will provide additional support for hub team members at UMD as well as the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; the University of Southern California; the University of Arizona; Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico; the University of Rochester in New York; and University College Dublin.

Hub researchers mix the old with the new: The oldest field is thermodynamics, which emerged from the industrial revolution in the 19th century and investigates, among other things, how machines transform energy into work and heat. Next is quantum physics, which was founded in the 20th century and provides our most fundamental understanding of nature at the level of atoms, electrons and other tiny constituents of matter and energy. Finally, quantum information science, which has become a major field in the early 21st century, applies the rules of quantum physics to information processing and has led to new applications like quantum computing, quantum networking and quantum sensing.

While fusing these fields together over the past three years, researchers at the hub have published more than 60 journal articles, conference papers and preprints, and the hub has supported five Ph.D. theses.

“I'm excited that we've obtained funding to build on the success of our first three years,” said Distinguished University Professor Christopher Jarzynski, a co-leader of the hub who is also a professor of physics and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UMD. “The hub has firmly placed Maryland on the map as a center for innovative quantum thermodynamics research, education and outreach.”

Read more about research at the Maryland Quantum-Thermodynamics Hub enabled by this new funding.