Konrad Lehnert

Senator Hickenlooper Discusses Quantum Computing's Role in Boosting Colorado's Economy at Latest JILA Visit

Steven Burrows — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 18:52:24 +0000

Senator Hickenlooper Discusses Quantum Computing's Role in Boosting Colorado's Economy at Latest JILA Visit Steven Burrows Mon, 12/18/2023 - 11:52

Kenna Hughes-Castleberry / JILA Science Communicator

Senator Hickenlooper (center) talks to JILA's instrument shop head Kyle Thatcher (left) and JILA instrument maker Hans Green (right).

In a significant visit to JILA, a joint institute established by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado Boulder, U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper discussed the transformative potential of quantum computing on Colorado's economy, job industry, and educational sector. The visit underscored the state's growing prominence in the quantum technology landscape.

To understand the research and innovation happening within JILA, Senator Hickenlooper was given a brief tour of the institute, meeting with several instrument makers in the instrument shop to see equipment purchased with congressionally directed spending championed by the Senator, and graduate students within JILA and NIST fellow Jun Ye’s laboratory.

Senator Hickenlooper then engaged in a comprehensive roundtable discussion with influential figures from the Colorado region in the quantum computing industry and academic sectors. This included Ben Bloom, Founder and CTO of Atom Computing; Dan Caruso, Founder and Managing Director of Caruso Ventures; Scott Davis, CEO and Founder of Vescent; Scott Faris, CEO of Infleqtion; Joe Garcia, Chancellor of the Colorado Community College System; Ilyas Khan, Cofounder and Chief Product Officer at Quantinuum; Zach Newman, Founder and CEO of Octave; Corban Tillemann-Dick, Founder and CEO of Maybell; and Zach Yerushalmi, Cofounder and CEO of Elevate Quantum.

The visit also featured significant CU attendees, such as Russell Moore, Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs; Massimo Ruzzene, Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation; and esteemed JILA Fellows like Konrad Lehnert, Jun Ye, and Margaret Murnane. These interactions focused on exploring collaborative opportunities and strategies to make quantum education more sustainable and inclusive to students of all backgrounds.

A distinct roundtable topic was Colorado's ongoing competition for the coveted Tech Hub designation from the U.S. Department of Commerce, which comes with substantial funding. This designation is a key driver for technological innovation and economic growth, positioning the state as a leading hub for cutting-edge technology. Colorado was recently designated as one of 31 inaugural Tech Hubs and is now competing for additional investment in the next phase of the program. The Tech Hubs program was authorized by lawmakers, including Senator Hickenlooper, last Congress as part of the CHIPS and Science Act.

Senator Hickenlooper mentioned the importance of harnessing quantum computing for economic development, job creation, and educational advancement. He highlighted the need for investments in quantum research and its applications to ensure Colorado remains at the forefront of this technological revolution.

This visit, organized by the CU System Office of Government Relations, marks a significant step towards integrating quantum computing into Colorado's economic and educational frameworks, promising a future of innovation and growth.

In a recent significant visit to JILA, a joint institute established by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado Boulder, U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper discussed the transformative potential of quantum computing on Colorado's economy, job industry, and educational sector. The visit underscored the state's growing prominence in the quantum technology landscape.

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JILA and NIST Fellow Konrad Lehnert receives a prestigious MURI award

Steven Burrows — Thu, 18 May 2023 17:17:51 +0000

JILA and NIST Fellow Konrad Lehnert receives a prestigious MURI award Steven Burrows Thu, 05/18/2023 - 11:17

Kenna Hughes-Castleberry / JILA Science Communicator

JILA and NIST Fellow Konrad Lehnert

JILA and NIST Fellow, along with University of Colorado Professor Konrad Lehnert will be leading a project through the Department of Defense (DoD) competitive Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) Program. ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� was matched only by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in receiving three MURI awards. The projects were chosen from a pool of hundreds of applications, and each team will receive an average award of $7.1 million over the next five years. Lehnert will look at using quantum phononics to advance quantum information processing.

Read the full story at this link

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Connecting Microwave and Optical Frequencies through the Ground State of a Micromechanical Object

Steven Burrows — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 16:47:56 +0000

Connecting Microwave and Optical Frequencies through the Ground State of a Micromechanical Object Steven Burrows Thu, 06/23/2022 - 10:47

Kenna Hughes-Castleberry / JILA Science Communicator

The transducer developed by the Lehnert and Regal research groups uses side-banded cooling to convert microwave photons to optical photons. Image credit: NIST

The process of developing a quantum computer has seen significant progress in the past 20 years. Quantum computers are designed to solve complex problems using the intricacies of quantum mechanics. These computers can also communicate with each other by using entangled photons (photons that have connected quantum states). As a result of this entanglement, quantum communication can provide a more secure form of communication, and has been seen as a promising method for the future of a more private and faster internet.

Quantum computers manipulate qubits (quantum bits) of information in order to solve problems. As qubits are quite fragile, any environmental noise in the system can render them unreadable. Often, superconducting qubits are used for quantum computing and are designed to operate at specific frequencies, called microwave frequencies, which have low energy. In order for these superconducting qubits to work, they need to be kept at very low temperatures. The systems that cool the qubits to low temperatures are extraordinarily difficult to scale up in size, posing a significant challenge to long-distance quantum communication systems. To override this problem, JILA Fellow Cindy Regal and her research group collaborated with JILA and NIST fellow Konrad Lehnert and his research group to create a special transducer that can send information from microwave frequencies to optical photons, which don’t require low temperatures.

In order to supply the energy needed to promote microwave signals to optical frequencies, any such transducer requires a strong laser. Unlike their previous devices and other competing technologies, their new transducer was not affected by this laser light, giving the entire system less environmental noise. Previous work from both teams had already decreased the noise in the previous system, but with their new transducer, the environmental noise was decreased even further. The researchers published their results in Physical Review X in tandem with a separate paper on connecting the transducer with superconducting qubits in Nature (a separate article about the Nature paper was written by the University of Colorado Boulder’s Strategic Relations and Communications writer Daniel Strain).

Optical Versus Microwave

Optical photons oscillateat very high frequencies (hundreds of trillions of cycles per second), and so have higher energy than photons wiggling at microwave frequencies. With this higher energy, optical frequencies yield various benefits to quantum communication because they can work at a wider range of temperatures and at longer distances. In order to harness these benefits, the researchers developed a transducer that could transform microwave frequencies from the superconducting qubit into optical frequencies, or light. The transducer performed this transition using a mechanical membrane that connects the microwave and optical systems together within a cold refrigerator. The transducer thus connected the superconducting circuit to an optical cavity, where photons could bounce around. According to graduate student Maxwell Urmey of the Regal group: “The mechanically vibrating membrane can talk to both the optical cavity [containing the photons] and superconducting circuit, so we're able to transduce from microwave to optical frequencies and back.”

Urmey also explained how the transducer would route information: “You'd want to start with your superconducting quantum computer, and then send a signal from it to the transducer, which would then convert that signal to light. You could then transmit that signal at room temperature, and detect it, ultimately with the capability to generate long-distance entanglement.” The researchers set out to fine-tune the transducer in order to reduce the noise within the context of this setup.

More Robustness and Less Noise

In designing their transducer, the researchers used a special membrane made with a silicon nitride component to better fine tune the robustness of the system. “We designed a phononic crystal structure [designed to control and direct sound waves], which essentially isolates this floppy membrane from the substrate in which it sits,” elaborated Sarang Mittal, a graduate student in the Lehnert group. “That substrate, which is a silicon chip, can also have modes that can couple to your signals. You can isolate the motion of the membrane from the motion of the substrate by designing a series of what looks like blocks and tethers. That improves our quality factor, which is easiest to think about as the number of times an excitation can bounce around in the resonator before it leaves. So, our quality factor in this paper is something like 107. So, if we put some energy into the mechanical element in the membrane, it could bounce around 10 million times before it gets lost.” This improved quality can help improve quantum communications by protecting the system from environmental noise.

By fine-tuning their transducer design, the researchers were able to lower the amount of environmental noise, making the system even more robust. “If you're converting some information between these two frequency domains, you want to make sure you don't add a lot of other random stuff to it,” Mittal said. “That would pollute the signal and ruin what's quantum about it.” As much of the noise in the transducer comes from random extra photons, lowering the number of these photons can lower the noise. As Mittal added, “Many of the improvements we made lowered the noise from 34 additional photons in our last paper to three and a half in this paper.”

The device was so well isolated that the researchers were able to reach the vibrational ground state with laser cooling. This process is analogous to how a laser cools atoms and ions. This ground-state cooling was applied specifically to the mechanical membrane of the transducer, within the phononic crystal design. “In order to ground-state cool the membrane mode, we take advantage of the excellent optical mode control of this device and crank up the laser power,” said Urmey. The researchers found that they could use a higher laser power without introducing more noise to the system. Previous studies had not been able to achieve this result, suggesting that the new transducer design could have big implications for future quantum devices. The team was excited by the abilities of their new transducer, and hope to continue fine-tuning it for even better quality and efficiency. The results of this study push brings the reality of a working quantum network one step closer, highlighting the potential of future technologies that exploit fundamental details of quantum physics.

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New Research Reveals A More Robust Qubit System, even with a Stronger Laser Light

Steven Burrows — Wed, 15 Jun 2022 16:51:22 +0000

New Research Reveals A More Robust Qubit System, even with a Stronger Laser Light Steven Burrows Wed, 06/15/2022 - 10:51

Daniel Strain / ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Strategic Communications

Artist's depiction of an electro-optic transducer, an ultra-thin wafer that can read out the information from a superconducting qubit. Image credit: Steven Burrows / JILA

In the study, a team of physicists demonstrated that it could read out the signals from a type of qubit called a superconducting qubit using laser light—and without destroying the qubit at the same time.

Artist's depiction of an electro-optic transducer, an ultra-thin wafer that can read out the information from a superconducting qubit.

Artist's depiction of an electro-optic transducer, an ultra-thin device that can capture and transform the signals coming from a superconducting qubit. (Credit: Steven Burrows/JILA)

The group’s results could be a major step toward building a quantum internet, the researchers say. Such a network would link up dozens or even hundreds of quantum chips, allowing engineers to solve problems that are beyond the reach of even the fastest supercomputers around today. They could also, theoretically, use a similar set of tools to send unbreakable codes over long distances.

The study, published June 15 in the journal Nature, was led by JILA, a joint research institute between ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� and NIST.

To read the full article, click here

Qubits are a basic building block for quantum computers, but they’re also notoriously fragile—tricky to observe without erasing their information in the process. Now, new research from ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) may be a leap forward for handling qubits with a light touch. In the study, a team of physicists demonstrated that it could read out the signals from a type of qubit called a superconducting qubit using laser light—and without destroying the qubit at the same time.

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Wiggles in Time: The Search for Dark Matter Continues

Steven Burrows — Thu, 17 Jun 2021 18:56:59 +0000

Wiggles in Time: The Search for Dark Matter Continues Steven Burrows Thu, 06/17/2021 - 12:56

Kenna Hughes-Castleberry / JILA Science Communicator

A representation of time oscillations in the EDM due to interactions with the dark matter particles around the EDM. Image credit: Steven Burrows / JILA

In a new paper published in Physical Review Letters, JILA and NIST Fellows Eric Cornell, Jun Ye, and Konrad Lehnert developed a method for measuring a potential dark matter candidate, known as an axion-like particle. Axion-like particles are a potential class of dark matter particle which could explain some aspects of galactic structure. This work is also a result of collaboration with Victor Flambaum who is a leading theorist studying possible violations of fundamental symmetries.

The microscopic nature of dark matter has been a looming question within physics for decades. According to first author Tanya Roussy: "Dark matter is one of the biggest unsolved mysteries in modern physics. And the problem is that it could be anything. We don't know what it is." Dark matter is a tricky thing to study---so far, the only way to detect its presence is through its gravitational signatures in astrophysical measurements. Being able to detect dark matter through its couplings to earth-bound ordinary matter or fields would allow physicists to better understand the particle nature of dark matter, which is essential for understanding the majority of matter in our universe.

How to Find Something Invisible

Searching for the nature of dark matter wasn't straightforward or easy. Roussy explained: "You kind of have to look everywhere, which is really hard. If we had some kind of guess for what it might be, we could narrow our search and maybe find it. So being able to do searches over a really big parameter space is really important right now. In the case of dark matter, we consider mass. So, there's 40 orders of magnitude that the mass could be in. And that's really, really big. So being able to search over something like seven orders of magnitude is a nice way to put a dent in that search."

When trying to measure an elusive particle, sensitivity is key. JILA’s team leveraged a very sensitive measurement they already had to look for signatures of their dark matter candidate: their ongoing electron electric dipole moment measurement (eEDM). JILA fellow Konrad Lehnert noted that "the main significance of this paper is that the Cornell and Ye group experiment that tries to measure EDM would also be sensitive to axion-like particles." If the dark matter in our universe was actually made up of axion-like particles, things like the eEDM would actually “wiggle” in time as the dark matter waves passed by them, like a rubber duck bobbing on the waves in a bathtub. According to Roussy: "We took an old data set and reanalyzed it…until now we always assumed our signal was constant in time. Instead we said, 'what if it actually wiggles in time?' So, we were basically checking for a wiggle in the signal." Lehnert’s group had experience in other axion search experiments and assisted with the data analysis.

This collaboration allowed the team to develop a set of protocols for using eEDMs to detect axion-like particles. "What we did was put together a recipe that other people can use to do these kinds of searches on their own, if they have sensitive measurements of this sort." Roussy commented. "We think this is better than many other recipes that are out there because it solves some problems that people have been ignoring until now." These protocols will hopefully assist other labs in searching for the nature of dark matter, and advance scientific knowledge about dark matter in a more efficient way.

This work was supported by the Marsico Foundation, NIST, and the NSF.

In a new paper published in Physical Review Letters, JILA and NIST Fellows Eric Cornell, Jun Ye, and Konrad Lehnert developed a method for measuring a potential dark matter candidate, known as an axion-like particle. Axion-like particles are a potential class of dark matter particle which could explain some aspects of galactic structure. This work is also a result of collaboration with Victor Flambaum who is a leading theorist studying possible violations of fundamental symmetries.

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Scientists develop new, faster method for seeking out dark matter

Steven Burrows — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 20:17:54 +0000

Scientists develop new, faster method for seeking out dark matter Steven Burrows Thu, 02/11/2021 - 13:17

Daniel Strain / ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Strategic Communications

An Image of the HAYSTAC system. Image credit: Steven Burrows / JILA

For nearly a century, scientists have worked to unravel the mystery of dark matter—an elusive substance that spreads through the universe and likely makes up much of its mass, but has so far proven impossible to detect in experiments. Now, a team of researchers have used an innovative technique called “quantum squeezing” to dramatically speed up the search for one candidate for dark matter in the lab.

The findings, published today in the journal Nature, center on an incredibly lightweight and as-of-yet undiscovered particle called the axion. According to theory, axions are likely billions to trillions of times smaller than electrons and may have been created during the Big Bang in humungous numbers—enough to potentially explain the existence of dark matter.

Finding this promising particle, however, is a bit like looking for a single quantum needle in one really big haystack.

There may be some relief in sight. Researchers on a project called, fittingly, the Haloscope At Yale Sensitive To Axion Cold Dark Matter (HAYSTAC) experiment report that they’ve improved the efficiency of their hunt past a fundamental obstacle imposed by the laws of thermodynamics. The group includes scientists at JILA, a joint research institute of the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

“It’s a doubling of the speed from what we were able to do before,” said Kelly Backes, one of two lead authors of the new paper and a graduate student at Yale University.

The new approach allows researchers to better separate the incredibly faint signals of possible axions from the random noise that exists at extremely small scales in nature, sometimes called “quantum fluctuations.” The team’s chances of finding the axion over the next several years are still about as likely as winning the lottery, said study coauthor Konrad Lehnert, a NIST JILA Fellow. But those odds are only going to get better.

“Once you have a way around quantum fluctuations, your path can just be made better and better,” said Lehnert, also a professor adjoint in the Department of Physics at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��.

HAYSTAC is led by Yale and is a partnership with JILA and the University of California, Berkeley.

Quantum laws

Daniel Palken, the co-first author of the new paper, explained that what makes the axion so difficult to find is also what makes it such an ideal candidate for dark matter—it’s lightweight, carries no electric charge and almost never interacts with normal matter.

“They don’t have any of the properties that make a particle easy to detect,” said Palken, who earned his PhD from JILA in 2020

But there’s one silver lining: If axions pass through a strong enough magnetic field, a small number of them may transform into waves of light—and that’s something that scientists can detect. Researchers have launched efforts to find those signals in powerful magnetic fields in space. The HAYSTAC experiment, however, is keeping its feet planted on Earth.

The project, which published its first findings in 2017, employs an ultra-cold facility on the Yale campus to create strong magnetic fields, then try to detect the signal of axions turning into light. It’s not an easy search. Scientists have predicted that axions could exhibit an extremely wide range of theoretical masses, each of which would produce a signal at a different frequency of light in an experiment like HAYSTAC. In order to find the real particle, then, the team may have to rifle through a large range of possibilities—like tuning a radio to find a single, faint station.

“If you’re trying to drill down to these really feeble signals, it could end up taking you thousands of years,” Palken said.

Some of the biggest obstacles facing the team are the laws of quantum mechanics themselves—namely, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which limits how accurate scientists can be in their observations of particles. In this case, the team can’t accurately measure two different properties of the light produced by axions at the same time.

The HAYSTAC team, however, has landed on a way to slip past those immutable laws.

Shifting uncertainties

The trick comes down to using a tool called a Josephson parametric amplifier. Scientists at JILA developed a way to use these small devices to “squeeze” the light they were getting from the HAYSTAC experiment.

Palken explained that the HAYSTAC team doesn’t need to detect both properties of incoming light waves with precision—just one of them. Squeezing takes advantage of that by shifting uncertainties in measurements from one of those variables to another.

“Squeezing is just our way of manipulating the quantum mechanical vacuum to put ourselves in a position to measure one variable very well,” Palken said. “If we tried to measure the other variable, we would find we would have very little precision.”

To test out the method, the researchers did a trial run at Yale to look for the particle over a certain range of masses. They didn’t find it, but the experiment took half the time that it usually would, Backes said.

“We did a 100-day data run,” she said. “Normally, this paper would have taken us 200 days to complete, so we saved a third of a year, which is pretty incredible.”

Lehnert added that the group is eager to push those bounds even farther—coming up with new ways to dig for that ever-elusive needle.

“There’s a lot of meat left on the bone in just making the idea work better,” he said.

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Konrad Lehnert named as a 2020 AAAS fellow

Steven Burrows — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 22:02:50 +0000

Konrad Lehnert named as a 2020 AAAS fellow Steven Burrows Wed, 11/25/2020 - 15:02

Steven Burrows / JILA Science Communications Manager

JILA and NIST Fellow Konrad Lehnert

JILA fellow Konrad Lehnert has been elected as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow by the Council of the AAAS. 489 members have earned this lifetime distinction in 2020; of which 33 are physicists. Lehnert is the 6th JILA fellow to become an AAAS fellow; he joins Eric Cornell, Henry Kapteyn, Carl Lineberger, Margaret Murnane, and Markus Raschke with this distinction.

AAAS has been electing fellows since 1874, and as a result thousands of prominent scientists have been recognized. An AAAS Fellows are determined first by their nomination by three existing Fellows, the steering group of an AAAS section, or the organization’s CEO. After which nominees are reviewed and voted on by the AAAS Council.

“I think of the fellowship as recognizing of the accomplishments of the more than 40 students, post-docs and visiting scientists who have come from around the world to advance science by studying and working with me at the University of Colorado.” Says Lehnert after hearing of his becoming an AAAS fellow.

Lehnert was elected by the AAAS council “for his pioneering contributions to quantum science, particularly quantum control and measurement of mechanical oscillators, and sub-quantum limited measurement with applications to dark matter searches.”

Lehnert has been a joint fellow of JILA and NIST since 2003. Previous awards include the Kavli Fellow in 2010 and 2011, Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2013, the Governor’s award for high impact research (with Cindy Regal) in 2016, the Silver Medal from the Department of Commerce (with Jon Teufel, Ray Simmonds, and Joe Aumentado) in 2019, and the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship in 2020.

Congratulations to Dr. Lehnert!

Konrad Lehnert becomes the 6th JILA Fellow elected as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow by the Council of the AAAS.

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Drumming to the Heisenberg Beat

Steven Burrows — Tue, 14 Jan 2020 18:52:05 +0000

Drumming to the Heisenberg Beat Steven Burrows Tue, 01/14/2020 - 11:52

Rebecca Jacobson / JILA Science Communicator

The Lehnert Lab has been able to measure the movement of a quantum drum so precisely that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is on full display. Image credit: Steven Burrows / JILA

At JILA, scientists work on mechanical oscillators which are the size of a grain of salt. They may be tiny, but they are the heartbeat of quantum technology, and are currently a promising technology for networking quantum computers.

“If you push on a mechanical oscillator, it's going to move,” said Robert Delaney, a graduate student in the Lehnert Lab. The oscillator vibrates like a tiny drum. As it moves it translates information from one signal to another, a crucial task for devices from cell phones to computers.

“You'd take information from the microwave domain, convert it to motion, and then convert it to the optical domain,” Delaney said.

And in principle these mechanical oscillators could do that almost perfectly, he added, if it weren’t for noise. Not all noise can be picked up by your ears. In physics, any unwanted fluctuation in the medium around your equipment is noise. Noise can come from a lot of sources: heat, other electric signals. Miniscule fluctuations called zero-point fluctuations are present even in the vacuum of space. Just measuring the movement of the drum creates noise. No matter where it’s coming from, noise can distort the signals to and from the oscillator.

Now the Lehnert Lab at JILA has found a way to quiet that noise around their measurements. And it turns out when you do that, you get more than a quieter drum. This method also beautifully illustrated one of the most famous tenets of quantum mechanics—the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

Squeezing out the noise

No system will ever be perfectly noiseless, but JILA Fellows Cindy Regal and Konrad Lehnert have made great progress reducing the noise around these mechanical oscillators. In order to use these oscillators in larger applications, they need to be prepared in precise state, and that involves measuring it.

But that’s where they were hitting a snag. Measurements in a quantum system can be tricky. A grain-of-salt size drum seems tiny, but that’s a large object to measure in the quantum world. And this is where Heisenberg comes in. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle says you can either perfectly know an object’s position or its momentum at any given point in time, but never both. According to this fundamental principle of quantum mechanics, a simultaneous measurement of both the position and momentum of the drum adds a lot of noise relative to that of fragile quantum signals.

However, measuring either the position or the momentum on its own can—at least in principle—be done perfectly, without any added noise. Other techniques for measuring the motion of a mechanical oscillator have mainly focused on continuously monitoring its position. But most of these techniques have had other sources which added noise, or made the mechanical oscillator’s motion unstable, preventing efficient measurement of the quantum state of motion.

Delaney and his team decided to create that instability in a way they could control. And to do that, they used microwaves to squeeze the oscillator.

“If those zero-point fluctuations were like a blob in phase space, you might stretch out that blob so that the area's the same, but it's very long in the momentum axis and very short in the position axis. That’s squeezing,” Delaney said.

Then, rather than measuring continuously, Delaney and his team used short, pulsed measurements to amplify the drum’s motion and measure it at a single instant in time. This technique turned out to be really quiet, reducing the noise by a factor of six over other methods.

“It's not noiseless but in principle it could be noiseless, and in practice it's approaching that limit,” Delaney added.

The Heisenberg beat

Not only is the measurement quiet, you can understand the quantum motion of the mechanical oscillator so precisely that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is on full display. Using this method, Delaney found that they were able to tell the drum’s position or its momentum with great precision.

“The uncertainty principle only tells you things about the product of two variables. It doesn't tell you about them individually. So if you are very certain about the position, you better be very uncertain about the momentum,” Delaney explained. “One of the things is that it's often challenging in a lot of systems to even get down to the point where the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is relevant because often things like thermal noise are going to dominate over the uncertainty principle.”

The beating heart of quantum technology

Mechanical oscillators are already at the heart of modern technology. Cell phones, for example, use a mechanical oscillator to turn the vibrations from your voice into an electrical signal, which is then converted to radio waves and sent flying through the air to your friend’s phone on the other end.

Quantum computers and quantum networks will need to do the same thing to send information, and these tiny drums will help them do it. Making them quieter will help those signals travel loud and clear.

Beyond its application for new technologies, seeing the Heisenberg uncertainty principle demonstrated so perfectly is its own reward, Delaney said.

“That's really what I found appealing about it,” he said. “I really like fundamental physics, but it's also nice to have it have some connection to something that may be a reality in the future.”

This study was published in Physical Review Letters on October 30, 2019.

Mechanical oscillators are crucial to developing quantum computers and quantum networks, but they have to fight against noise. Measuring the quantum movement of the oscillator not only reduces its noise, it perfectly displays the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.

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Perkins and Lehnert Awarded Department of Commerce Medals

Steven Burrows — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 19:56:14 +0000

Perkins and Lehnert Awarded Department of Commerce Medals Steven Burrows Wed, 09/26/2018 - 13:56

Catherine Klauss / JILA Science Communicator

26th September 2018 — JILA Fellows Dr. Tom Perkins and Dr. Konrad Lehnert both received medals from the Department of Commerce last night at the Ronald Reagan Amphitheater in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Perkins received the Gold Medal, which is the highest honorary award given by the United States Department of Commerce, or DOC. Perkins was recognized for creating the world’s best atomic force microscope tailored to biological measurements. This device can “grab” onto biological molecules, such as proteins, and measure the tiny forces involved in their folding and unfolding.

Perkins was also recognized for using this technology to study the structure and dynamics of key membrane proteins, which are proteins that control the exchange of chemicals into and out of cells. His techniques revealed the structure and dynamics of these proteins in ten times greater detail than previously possible. This research will lead to better understanding, and subsequently diagnosis and treatment, of the diseases developed through protein misfoldings, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and cystic fibrosis.

“I am honored to receive this award,” said Perkins. “It reflects a decade of efforts by my students and post-docs as we sequentially addressed a set of metrological limitations to bioAFM, including a key advance by an undergraduate. We then successfully demonstrated our metrological improvements by resolving a multitude of hidden dynamics of bacteriorhodopsin, a result that biologist and biochemists cared about.”

Dr. Lehnert received the Silver Medal as part of a team of NIST scientists building the components of a quantum communications network. In addition to Lehnert, the team included Dr. Jose Aumentado, Dr. Raymond Simmonds and Dr. John Teufel. Aumentado, Simmonds and Teuful are scientists in the Applied Physics Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, CO.

The team was recognized for the first realization of the complex components needed for future quantum networks. Quantum networks, or the ability to connect multiple quantum nodes, will advance quantum computing and the rapid, secure exchange of quantum information. The components realized by the team include techniques to store, exchange, transmit, amplify, and readout quantum information using quantum-based superconducting circuits and quantum-controlled micromechanical resonators. The team’s accomplishments represent multiple first and best advances in technologies for quantum networks.

“It was exhilarating to get out in front of this highly competitive new research area,” said Lehnert. “By working together, John, Ray, Jose and I were able to quickly make great progress.”

The awarding of DOC gold and silver medals is an annual traditional established in 1949. The awards are presented to individuals, groups, or organizations in the Department of Commerce for extraordinary, noble, or prestigious contributions.

Previous recipients of DOC awards include 14 JILA Fellows. The most recent JILA Fellow awardee was Ralph Jimenez, who was part of a NIST team awarded the Gold Medal in 2017 for developing tools to create stop-action X-ray measurements of molecules. One of the earliest JILA Fellow awardees was Jan Hall, who received the Gold Medal individually in 1969, and again as part of a team in 1974 and 2002.

JILA Fellows Dr. Tom Perkins and Dr. Konrad Lehnert both received medals from the Department of Commerce last night at the Ronald Reagan Amphitheater in Washington, D.C. Dr. Perkins received the Gold Medal, which is the highest honorary award given by the United States Department of Commerce, or DOC. Perkins was recognized for creating the world’s best atomic force microscope tailored to biological measurements. This device can “grab” onto biological molecules, such as proteins, and measure the tiny forces involved in their folding and unfolding.

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Quiet Drumming: Reducing Noise for the Quantum Internet

Steven Burrows — Mon, 24 Sep 2018 16:47:30 +0000

Quiet Drumming: Reducing Noise for the Quantum Internet Steven Burrows Mon, 09/24/2018 - 10:47

Catherine Klauss / JILA Science Communicator

Microwave signals are translated to optical signals (red) through a microscopic quantum drum (center). Recently, JILA researchers used strategic measurements of the microwave and optical signals to significantly reduced the added noise. Image credit: Steven Burrows / JILA

But as revolutionary as the quantum computer will be, its promises will be stifled without the right connections. Peter Burns, a JILA graduate student in the Lehnert/Regal lab, likens this stifle to a world without Wi-Fi.

“The regular computer was developed 70 years ago, and it took up an entire lab and could barely do basic math,” said Burns. “It wasn’t until the 80’s that people had the idea to connect multiple computers together, and from that we got the internet.”

Burns is part of a JILA research team hoping to jumpstart the “quantum internet,” or the ability to network quantum computers. These networks would use the uniquely quantum property of entanglement to transfer inherently fragile quantum information between computers. Currently, the development of quantum networks is plagued by noise, but the JILA team recently implemented a new protocol which uses strategic measurements to reduce this impediment.

Fragile Information

Just as it is difficult to build a quantum computer, it’s also difficult to build a quantum network. This difficultly arises from the inherent fragility of quantum information. Even the smallest interference from the outside world, like a warm touch or an observing glance, can collapse quantum properties.

This is why most quantum-computer prototypes are kept inside dilution refrigerators, which are the quantum equivalent of an isolation chamber. Sheltered from the outside world, and ultimately from each other, these computers cannot pass information, “unless you are going to make a really, really big dilution refrigerator,” joked Burns. Instead, researchers are working to translate quantum information into a portable form.

While in a computer, quantum information is stored in microwave signals, which are easy to process, but terrible at traveling. To travel long distances, optical signals are the better carrier. JILA researchers therefore invented a quantum drum to translate quantum information between microwave and optical signals.

The Quantum Drum

Measuring only half a millimeter wide on either side, the drum is comparably sized to a grain of salt. The drumhead, however, is only a ten-thousandth of a millimeter (100 nanometers) thick, which is thinner than most bacteria and viruses. When the drum is excited by either optical or microwave frequencies, “it vibrates at a fundamental frequency,” explained Burns.

This fundamental frequency is the common language the drum uses to translate optical and microwave signals. It does this with the help of “carrier tones”, or additional microwave and optical frequencies which, when contrasted to the signal frequency, differ by the drum’s vibrational frequency. Ultimately, the process is like that of a radio. “There’s one frequency, or carrier tone, that you tune your radio to, and then the actual information [e.g. music or talk radio] is a frequency modulation [FM] on that,” explained Burns.

The drum has successfully translated microwave signals into optical, and optical signals into microwave, with nearly 50% efficiency. But translating actual quantum signals is currently impeded by noise, said Burns.

Noise on the Radio

This noise presents itself as extra photons, which are erroneous packets of microwave and optical energies that wash out the signal photons. These extra photons are produced by the drum itself, as heat and other external energies whisper through the quantum translator. “The problem is, all those extra photons don’t carry any of the information, so you lose your signal in the noise,” said Burns.

Originally, the quantum drum produced nearly 100 extra photons for every translated signal photon. But soon the team discovered that extra photons emerged simultaneously in the optical and microwave signals, like a game of telephone where the malefactor not only throws in extra words, but whispers their misdoings back down the line. By measuring both the microwave and optical signals, the team could identify and remove 3 of every 5 extra photons, thereby significantly reducing the added noise.

While current drum prototypes produce around 10 to 40 extra photons, the ultimate goal is to reduce this number to less than one, said Burns. Realizing this goal will mean that at least some translations have zero extra photons, and the device is ready to translate quantum signals. According to Burns, the team is “very close,” citing only a few minor improvements. This is great news for those not wanting to choose between quantum computers and internet memes.

This work was published in Nature Physics in July of 2018. In addition to JILA graduate student Peter Burns, authors of this work include recent JILA Postdocs Andrew Higginbotham and Nir Kampel, current JILA postdoc Benjamin Brubaker, recent JILA graduate Robert Peterson, current JILA graduate student Maxwell Urmey, and JILA Fellows Graeme Smith, Konrad Lehnert, and Cindy Regal.

Quantum computers are set to revolutionize society. With their expansive power and speed, quantum computers could reduce today’s impossibly complex problems, like artificial intelligence and weather forecasts, to mere algorithms. But as revolutionary as the quantum computer will be, its promises will be stifled without the right connections. Peter Burns, a JILA graduate student in the Lehnert/Regal lab, likens this stifle to a world without Wi-Fi.

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