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.
JPL has been at the forefront of space-based quantum technologies. Cold Atom Lab is the first orbital experiment exploring the dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates in micro-gravity. Deep Space Atomic Clock demonstrated that a trapped-Hg+ clock in space provides timing precision and accuracy required for improved spacecraft autonomous navigation.
Quantum computers introduce a radically new paradigm of information processing and revolutionize our thinking about the world. However, designing and building quantum computers that operate properly even when some of their components malfunction and cause errors is a heroic endeavor.
Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (SWNTs) exhibit a number of unique mechanical, thermal, and electronic properties that render them useful for numerous applications, ranging from molecular electronics to nano-scale construction materials. However, SWNTs are highly insoluble and are devoid of reactive functionality, posing major limitations to their modification, manipulation, and ...
Large-scale quantum computers will require error correction in order to reliably perform computations. However, the hardware overhead for error correction remains dauntingly large, with each logical qubit potentially requiring thousands of physical qubits for reliable operation.
Abstract: Strange metals have linear-in-temperature (T-linear) down to low temperature. Strange metals are found in many families of correlated electron materials, leading to the conjecture that a universal bound - the "Planckian" bound - limits the scattering rate of electrons to a value set by fundamental constants. If the Planckian bound exists, it would provide a natural explanation for why a host of seemingly disparate systems, including high-temperature superconductors and twisted bilayer graphene, all have T-linear resistivity. Perhaps more dramatically, T-linear resistivity suggests that electron-electron interactions are so strong that conventional concepts such as quasiparticles and Boltzmann transport do not apply in strange metals. I will present our work on the cuprate Nd-LSCO and the 5-layer superconducting nickelate that shows that conventional quasiparticle transport is alive and well, even in the strange metal regime where the Planckian bound is saturated. This suggests that we may not need to abandon the quasiparticle picture entirely, but that we need to better understand the source of scattering in these materials.
Abstract:
Landau-Zener tunneling, which describes the transitions in a two-level system during the passage through an anti-crossing, is a model applicable to a wide range of physical phenomena. Dissipation due to coupling between the system and the environment is an important factor in determining the transition rates. Using a superconducting tunable capacitively shunted flux qubit, we observe the crossover from weak to strong coupling to the environment. The weak coupling limit corresponds to small system-environment coupling and leads to environment-induced thermalization. In the strong coupling limit, environmental polarizations dress the system and transitions occur between the dressed states. Our results confirm previous theoretical studies of dissipative Landau-Zener tunneling in the weak and strong coupling limits, and motivate further work on understanding the intermediate regime. This work is relevant for understanding the role of open system effects in quantum annealing, where Landau-Zener transitions at small gaps, occurring in large scale systems, are important to understand for improving the success probability.
This talk is based on the preprint arXiv:2207.02017.
Abstract: In recent years, we have witnessed remarkable experimental breakthroughs in uncovering the intriguing properties of correlated metals in the vicinity of Mott transitions. Describing these phenomena theoretically remains an open challenge. This talk will focus on three recent examples of puzzling electronic behavior near Mott insulating phases and address the various conundrums. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss the microscopic origin of an unconventional T-linear resistivity with Planckian scattering in a quasi-two-dimensional “good” metal with long mean-free path, consisting of highly conducting metallic and Mott insulating layers, respectively. In the second part, I will address the origin of a low-temperature “bad” metallic behavior in the vicinity of a continuous bandwidth-tuned metal-insulator transition in a moiré semiconductor. I will end by presenting some new theoretical insights into the experimental observation of an anomalous particle-hole continuum and overdamped plasmon in the density response of cuprate “strange” metals.