IQC faculty member Jonathan Baugh has been awarded a $139,000 grant to purchase state-of-the-art equipment for quantum information research.
The one-year Research Tools and Instrumentation grant, awarded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), is intended to help top Canadian scientists acquire leading-edge equipment. The grant will allow Baugh to purchase microwave instrumentation to manipulate single electron spins in quantum dots, which are essentially artificial atoms.
Baugh's team of researchers at IQC is investigating ways to use electron spins to encode and manipulate quantum information. This approach, which relies on nanoscale fabrication techniques developed in the semiconductor industry, has the potential for the creation of a system with many quantum bits (qubits), through which the full power of quantum computing might be realized.
Founded in 2002, the mission of the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) is to aggressively explore and advance the application of quantum mechanical systems to a vast array of relevant information processing techniques.
A part of the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ont., Canada, IQC creates a truly unique environment fostering cutting-edge research and collaboration between researchers in the areas of computer, engineering, mathematical and physical sciences.
At the time of this release, IQC has 17 faculty members, 22 postdoctoral fellows and over 55 students and research assistants, as well as a support staff of 18.
The Institute for Quantum Computing acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through Industry Canada and the Government of Ontario through the Ministry of Research and Innovation.