grants

Regional quantum hub NSF HQAN is renewed to pursue industry-ready computing and workforce development

Posted on
Logo of HQAN and NSF

WQI researchers are proud to be part of the groundbreaking research that will come with the next chapter of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Hybrid Quantum Architectures and Networks.

NSF announced today that it has renewed the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign-led NSF Quantum Leap Challenge Institute for Hybrid Quantum Architectures and Networks (NSF HQAN) for a second phase with $37.5 million in funding over five years.

The center brings together 45 senior researchers from six institutions to develop modular quantum computing architectures. Its participants are also working to build a quantum workforce through educational programs that have brought quantum science to over 12,000 participants.

The regional cohort is formed by Illinois, The University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Northwestern University with Stanford University and the MIT Lincoln Laboratory providing critical capabilities. The second phase center will have 16 industry partners that include Google, IBM, IonQ and Quantinuum.

Read the Illinois announcement here.

 

Shimon Kolkowitz awarded two grants to push optical atomic clocks past the standard quantum limit

Posted on
a metallic chamber with a blue fluorescence glowing orb of atoms in the center

Shimon Kolkowitz awarded two grants to push optical atomic clocks past the standard quantum limit

a metallic chamber with a blue fluorescence glowing orb of atoms in the center
Optical atomic clocks are already the gold standard for precision timekeeping, keeping time so accurately that they would only lose one second every 14 billion years. Still, they could be made to be even more precise if they could be pushed past the current limits imposed on them by quantum mechanics. With two new grants from the U.S. Army Research Office, an element of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research Laboratory, UW–Madison physics professor Shimon Kolkowitz proposes to introduce quantum entanglement — where atoms interact with each other even when physically distant — to optical atomic clocks. The improved clocks would allow researchers to ask questions about fundamental physics, and they have applications in improving quantum computing and GPS. Read the full story

WQI researchers awarded DOE Quantum Information Science grant

Posted on

WQI researchers awarded DOE Quantum Information Science grant

Three UW–Madison physics professors and their colleagues have been awarded a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) High Energy Physics Quantum Information Science award for an interdisciplinary collaboration between theoretical and experimental physicists and experts on quantum algorithms. The grant, entitled “Detection of dark matter and neutrinos enhanced through quantum information,” will bring a total of $2.3 million directly to UW-Madison. Physics faculty include principal investigator Baha Balantekin as well as Mark Saffman, and Sue Coppersmith. Collaborators on the grant include Kim Palladino at the University of Oxford, Peter Love at Tufts University, and Calvin Johnson at San Diego State University. With the funding, the researchers plan to use a quantum simulator to calculate the detector response to dark matter particles and neutrinos. The simulator to be used is an array of 121 neutral atom qubits currently being developed by Saffman’s group. Much of the research plan is to understand and mitigate the behavior of the neutral atom array so that high accuracy and precision calculations can be performed. The primary goal of this project is to apply lessons from the quantum information theory in high energy physics, while a secondary goal is to contribute to the development of quantum information theory itself.