Future graduate students

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.

En francais

The Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) and the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the Faculty of Science at the University of Waterloo would like to congratulate Dr. Thomas Jennewein on his appointment to the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) Program, which he will hold at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in British Columbia.

En francais

Last week, the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) welcomed over 20 promising postdoctoral fellows from around the world to Waterloo as part of the ninth annual Quantum Innovators workshop.

Split into two streams focused on theoretical and experimental research, speakers covered topics ranging from fault-tolerance and quantum cryptography to quantum defects in diamonds and atomic arrays, and many more topics spanning cutting edge quantum information research.

Thursday, November 23, 2023 10:00 am - 11:00 am EST (GMT -05:00)

Mitacs Globalink Research Award (Quantum Stream) webinar

Online webinar through Microsoft Teams

The University of Waterloo and Mitacs will be holding a joint webinar on Thursday, November 23rd at 10am to share information about their new Globalink Research Award (Quantum stream), which provides funding for bilateral student travel with international university labs.

In this session, Amanda Green and Etienne Pineault, Senior Advisors with Mitacs, will provide information and updates on how to leverage Mitacs funding to build collaborative research projects with international university partners. 

Following the presentation, we will answer your questions about finding a partner, deciding on Mitacs eligibility and navigating program requirements (including how to work with our team to submit successful funding applications). Regan Child, International Grants and Contracts Manager with the Office of Research, will be on hand to offer assistance.

Tuesday, November 21, 2023 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EST (GMT -05:00)

Quantum Today: The Quantum Ethics Project

Live on YouTube

Join us for Quantum Today, where we sit down with researchers from the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) to talk about their work, its impact and where their research may lead.

In this special session, we’ll be joined by Joan Arrow and Özge Gülsayin of the Quantum Ethics Project, a team of researchers exploring the intersection of quantum and society. We’ll discuss how to advocate for the responsible and inclusive development of quantum technologies through education and research, and why an ethics lens is important in even the early stages of technological innovation.

 

Friday, October 20, 2023

Quantum Q&A with Shayan Majidy

En francais

Recently, Shayan Majidy was lead author of the perspective article Noncommuting conserved charges in quantum thermodynamics and beyond in Nature Review Physics, which surveys results across a subfield Majidy works in, including three of his recent papers, and discusses the future opportunities in this field of research. In this edition of ‘Quantum Q&A’, we’ve asked him to tell us  more about this new article.

En francais

Two faculty members at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) have received prestigious recognition by their peers for the outstanding contributions they have made to physics. Dr. Dmitry Pushin and Dr. Graeme Smith are newly elected as 2023 Fellows of the American Physical Society.

IQC Seminar - Johannes Prell, Institute of Communication and Navigation, OSL German Aerospace Center (DLR) Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany

Quantum Nano Centre (QNC) Room 0101 200 University Ave West, Waterloo Ontario

Satellite based laser communication technology both classical and QKD (Q uantum K ey D istribution is gaining popularity and being increasingly commercial i zed . Optical ground stations serve as the receiv ing station in satellite to ground scenarios. The DLR institute of Communications and Navigation hosts an experimental optical ground station for research and demonstration purpose. Supporting increasingly demanding technical requirements from current and futu re missions and technology demonstrations, it was decided to replace the 40cm Cassegrain telescope an equip the new one with Nasmyth Ports for direct experiments, a Coudé Path to the lab and an Adaptive Optics System . This new 80cm (31.5inch) main apertur e diameter i nstrument is a Nasmyth Design Ritchey Chretien telescope The special feature is the C oudé P ath which is guiding the received light onto an optical table in a lab oratory room below the telescope mount (see figure 1 The usage of the Coudé Path is new implemented at DLR and offers a wide possibility for several different experiments with the same setup The optical propaga tion through a custom designed lens system inside the coudé path is optimized for wavelength s used for optical communication, like 589nm, 850nm, 1064nm and 1550nm. It is possible to use the setup as a receiving station and also as a transmitting facility f or beacon lasers . The transmitt ing system ca n be installed either beside the telescope as a side installation or even launched from the optical table through coudé path and telescope directly

The optical Experiment table in the lab is equipped with an Adaptive Optics ( System including fibe r coupling. This system uses a Shack Hartmann Wave front sensor, designed to match a deformable mirror in the “ f ried g eometry”. The system couples the light into a single mode fibe r , which can be con nected to a coherent or Quantum encrypted communications system. [ The telescope itself has four usable Nasmyth ports The first one is reserved for the coudé pa th, t wo others are equipped with optical benches directly on the telescope, and on the last one has a fixed classical laser communication receiving setup including two cameras one visible light and one infra red and a signal receiving united is installed References

[1] Andrew Paul Reeves, Ilija R. Hristovski, Alexandru Octavian Duliu, Stefanie H äu sler, Hela Friew Kelemu, Pia Lützen, Florian Moll, Eltimir Peev, Juraj Poliak, Amita Shrestha, Joana Sul Torres; Adaptive Optics Corrected Bi Directional Links with a Geo Stationary Satellite from the DLR KN Optical Ground Station Figure 1 OGSOP System Overvi ew

Tuesday, October 10, 2023 2:30 pm - 3:30 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Quantum gravity meets quantum cryptography

IQC Colloquium - Alex May, Perimeter Institute

Quantum Nano Centre (QNC) Room 0101 200 University Ave West, Waterloo Ontario

The subject of quantum gravity seeks to understand gravitational physics within the framework of quantum mechanics. Increasingly, tools from quantum information, complexity, and cryptography have been brought into this challenging area. Here, I describe a set of connections between quantum gravity, specifically the AdS/CFT correspondence, and a set of cryptographic primitives studied in information theoretic cryptography and position-verification. The cryptographic perspective provides new insights into how gravitational physics can be recorded into quantum mechanics, and led to new gravitational conjectures in AdS space. These conjectures were then proven gravitationally. Conversely, the gravitational perspective has suggested new relationships among these cryptographic primitives, and these relationships were then proven within quantum cryptography. I comment on some directions this cryptography-gravity relationship may lead in the future.  

Monday, October 16, 2023 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

Fully-quantum learning: Comparison of unknown unitary channels with multiple uses

IQC Colloquium - Mio Murao, The University of Tokyo

Quantum Nano Centre (QNC) Room 0101 200 University Ave West, Waterloo Ontario

Please note start time 3:00 PM

Efficiently learning properties of unknown quantum objects is a fundamental task in quantum mechanics and quantum information. When there are two unknown quantum objects, and if we want to learn just the relationship between the objects, a method to directly compare the two objects without identifying their descriptions is preferable, especially when the number of available copies of each target object is limited. In this work, we investigate the comparison of unknown unitary channels with multiple uses of the unitary channels based on the quantum tester formalism.  We obtain the optimal minimum-error strategy and the optimal unambiguous strategy of unitary comparison of two unknown d-dimensional unitary channels when the number of uses of the channels satisfies a certain condition. These optimal strategies are implemented by parallel uses of the unitary channels, even though all sequential and adaptive strategies implementable by the quantum circuit model are considered. When the number of the smaller uses of the unitary channels is fixed, the optimal averaged success probability is achieved by a certain number of uses of the other channel. This feature contrasts with the case of pure-state comparison, where adding more copies of the unknown pure states always improves the optimal averaged success probability. It highlights the difference between corresponding tasks for states and channels, which has been previously shown for quantum discrimination tasks.  

Reference: Y. Hashimoto, A. Soeda and M. Murao, Comparison of unknown unitary channels with multiple uses, arXiv:2208.12519