News

Canada is headed for the quantum space race with a project from the University of Waterloo.

Waterloo’s Quantum Encryption and Science Satellite (QEYSSat) initiative, announced as part of the federal government’s recent investment into space-related emerging technologies, joins a global race to quantum cybersecurity via satellites.

On behalf of the community here at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC), congratulations to the Government of Canada and the Canadian Space Agency on today’s announcement. The $80.9 million in funding to the Canadian Space Agency is an important investment in the development of new technologies that will benefit all Canadians for generations.

In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, PhD student Sascha Agne and colleagues experimentally realized a three-photon Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) interferometer and observed genuine three-photon interference for the first time, bringing scientists one step closer to exciting applications in quantum communication.

IQC postdoctoral fellow Chris Herdman led a demonstration of area law scaling of entanglement entropy in a real quantum fluid for the first time.

“Weird.” Amusing.” “What’s with the cat?” These are all phrases that were heard at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) on Thursday, February 23.

IQC PhD student Hemant Katiyar led the first experiment to violate the Leggett-Garg inequality on a three-level quantum system, demonstrating the possibility of larger violations than previously thought possible.

Waterloo, Ont. (Wednesday, December 21, 2016) — Researchers from the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo in Canada are the first to transmit a quantum key securely from a source on the ground to a receiver on an aircraft. The uplink is a prototype for secure quantum communication and shows the viability of the team’s quantum communication satellite mission (QEYSSat) proposal.

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program has awarded more than $11 million to the University of Waterloo which includes $1.7 million to an affiliate of the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC).

Alice and Bob are on a game show. They each sit in isolation booths at either ends of the set and can’t communicate in any way. The game show host asks a number of questions. Neither knows what questions are being asked, or the answers the other gives. The judges are shocked that they provide the exact same answer more often than they should. From the judges’ perspectives, Alice and Bob appear to read each others’ minds.