HOST: Prof John Morton
SPEAKER: Prof Irfan Siddiqi | UC Berkeley
TIME&VENUE: Friday | 21st June 2019 | 11am | Ramsay Lecture Theatre | Christoph Ingold Building
TITLE: The dawn of superconducting quantum processors
ABSTRACT: Quantum coherence can now be observed for longer than 100 microseconds in superconducting chips containing tens of physical qubits comprised of Josephson tunnel junctions embedded in resonant microwave circuitry. Combining such long-lived coherence with quantum-noise-limited, broadband detection of weak microwave signals has enabled the realization of nascent quantum processors suitable for executing shallow-circuit quantum algorithms with modest gate counts and minimal error mitigation. As an example, I will describe the implementation of a hybrid quantum-classical variational eigensolver with superconducting transmon qubits to determine the ground and excited states of simple molecules with near-chemical accuracy, and a teleportation protocol using ternary logic to simulate scrambling processes in black holes.