--- title: Mapping the Quantum Frontier date: 2022-08-10T05:30:00-04:00 author: University of Maryland canonical_url: "https://today.umd.edu/mapping-the-quantum-frontier" section: Articles --- # Mapping the Quantum Frontier *August 10, 2022* — by [Chris Carroll](/author/chris-carroll) > UMD Expands Its Footprint as the ‘Capital of Quantum’ With the Latest Lab and Institute to Advance Mind-bending Computing *Quantum Chip Kollar Lab 02182022 JC 1920x1080 — A lithography mask photographed in the lab of physics Assistant Professor Alicia Kollár is used by researchers to help test their ability to make quantum bits, or "qubits"—the basic unit of quantum information such as that used by quantum computers.* It’s hard to envision a time when computers didn’t more or less disappear into beige office landscapes or pile up, obsolete in closets like increasingly ancient geological strata. The technological behemoths that Franz Klein works with, however, still evoke a twinge of dawn-of-the-space-age wonder. As a high-performance computing engineer in the University of Maryland’s Division of Information Technology, he helps run massive computing clusters linked by kilometers of cable that gobble enough electricity to run hundreds of average houses while crunching exponentially more data than your laptop. Astronomers, geneticists, climatologists and others queue up for solutions only supercomputers like UMD's soon-to-debut Zaratan, not to mention larger clusters at government laboratories and high-tech firms, can spit out. Yet with all this digital horsepower at his fingertips, Klein now is venturing in a new direction with his recent concurrent appointment directing the [National Quantum Lab at Maryland](https://hpcc.umd.edu/hpcc/qlab/index.html), aka the Q-Lab. Along with the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded [Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Robust Quantum Simulation](https://rqs.umd.edu/) (RQS), it's one of two recent initiatives centered at UMD to accelerate the nascent field of quantum computing and help map out an unfamiliar new world. As various quantum technologies take off, a new class of computers enabled by the latest advances in physics is expected to revolutionize every aspect of life, just as today’s devices led to the internet, mobile technology and advanced manufacturing. \[[*Q-Lab Seed Grant Program to Support New Quantum Connections*](https://today.umd.edu/q-lab-seed-grant-program-to-support-new-quantum-connections)\] But this world of possibility has plenty of technological terra incognita, including limitations that echo the 1940s, when the first computers sparked to life, Klein saId. “There’s a mismatch between the reality of the technology and what quantum computer science and information science want to do with large, ideal systems that don't exist yet,” he said. UMD's aggressive new push, he adds, could help reality catch up. --- ## Hardcore Engineering, ‘Wacky’ Ideas Klein isn’t the first to note this mismatch, and the initiatives approach it from very different angles: The RQS, a multi-institutional project led by UMD and supported by $25 million from the NSF, takes a basic science tack with computer scientists, physicists, engineers and chemists exploring the universe at the scale of atoms while experimenting with different technologies and systems. It’s all connected by the interim step toward powerful quantum computers known as quantum simulation—using the current hardware to "simulate" and study quantum systems in nature, from the workings of molecules to how light behaves. *superconducting quantum device — In the center of a copper circuit board, a superconducting quantum device less than a centimeter across allows UMD physicists to explore new methods to control qubits.* --- ## Qubit Connection A wide developmental gulf divides quantum computing from the “classical” computing that runs phones, smart fridges and supercomputers. With tech roots stretching back 80 years to the dawn of transistors, even a standard processor on sale at Best Buy can handle billions of “bits”-zeros and ones that are the basic units of information in standard computing. But quantum computers? You and some friends could count on your fingers how many “qubits,” or quantum bits, they have. But thanks to non-intuitive quantum effects like “superposition,” which essentially allows a qubit to be both a zero and a one simultaneously, and “entanglement,” which means qubits can be correlated in classically impossible ways, each qubit far surpasses a bit in terms of information-processing potential. A machine of just a few thousand qubits should outperform the biggest classical supercomputer: cracking modern cryptography, perhaps supercharging artificial intelligence and machine learning, or mastering chemistry at an unprecedented level. But getting to 1,000 reliable qubits, for now, is as daunting as Everest before Hillary and Tenzing. Qubits must maintain delicate quantum states for the computer to operate; errors result from vibrations, temperature fluctuations or other environmental variables. The upshot, many believe, is that each functional qubit will need many more backup qubits to correct errors, unless a more reliable qubit technology comes to dominate. So 1,000 “logical” qubits might translate into 10,000, or even 100,000 individual qubits. --- ## Accessible Goals But what if we dropped the requirement that a quantum computer be as reliable as a regular computer? What if we worked up to Everest by first climbing hills? Broadly, that describes the RQS’s approach, said its director and principal investigator, Andrew Childs, a professor of computer science who also co-leads the [Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science](https://quics.umd.edu/), a UMD-NIST partnership. When quantum computers were first proposed in the 1980s, the idea was to use them to understand quantum systems too complex for classical computers, Childs said. “One approach to that is you build a large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computer that you can program any way you want to simulate quantum mechanics,” he said. Since such computers don’t yet exist, scientists at Maryland have led the way with an alternative approach that is already feasible: analog quantum simulation. “In this case, instead of a digital computer you can use for anything, you build a system that will reproduce the features of the quantum system you want to study,” he said. “Maybe it’s somewhat programmable in that you have some knobs you twist to adjust the parameters, but it’s still mocking up a system rather than providing the complete flexibility of a full digital computer.” Kollár, who is focusing on developing a new kind of superconducting qubit, calls herself “an analog hardware person at heart.” “With a digital quantum computer, the goal is complete control, and the qubit does exactly what you want,” she said. “A quantum simulator is much more about letting nature run its course and figuring out what it’s doing—but trying to find an interesting course.” Even a modest knob-twisting simulator, Childs points out, is still a quantum processor, even if it’s not what he envisions in his theoretical work on algorithms for ideal systems. “For now, it’s an accessible way to move forward … and at the same time, understand some of the big-picture questions.” --- ## Expanding the Network *lasers in quantum lab — Lasers cast an eerie light on an experiment in the lab of Professor Ronald Walsworth, director of the Quantum Technology Center.* **Sidebar note:** This story is featured on the cover of the 2022 issue of *EnTERPrise* magazine. See the full issue at [research.umd.edu](https://research.umd.edu/news/enterprise-magazine). **Topics:** [Research](https://today.umd.edu/tags/research) **Tags:** [Computer Science](https://today.umd.edu/topic/computer-science), [Physics](https://today.umd.edu/topic/physics), [Quantum Science](https://today.umd.edu/topic/quantum-science), [Research](https://today.umd.edu/topic/research) **Units:** [A. James Clark School of Engineering](https://today.umd.edu/topic/james-clark-school-engineering), [College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences](https://today.umd.edu/topic/college-computer-mathematical-and-natural-sciences), [Division of Information Technology](https://today.umd.edu/topic/division-information-technology)