On Aug. 24 and 25, CRS4, represented by Lidia Leoni, director of the Computational and Bioscience Infrastructure, Smart Projects and Quantum Computing service, and Giuliana Siddi Moreau, senior researcher, visited the laboratories of two universities and those of a quantum processor manufacturer in Boston.
CRS4 has been working since 2020 to devise new research, development and technology transfer scenarios involving the use of quantum computing, an emerging technology for solving real-world problems that are difficult to treat with conventional resources.
At the Center, computational resources of the high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure have already been deployed to make emulation of different quantum computing modes usable and to develop algorithms and software that can take advantage of the peculiarities of some of them.
The next step will be to complete the existing computing infrastructure with a true quantum processing unit characterized by a qubit (quantum bit) numerosity adequate to address real-world use cases.
The visit to Boston allowed us to better evaluate neutral atom technology for qubit realization, its current state of development, and explore which technologies can ensure scalability and coherence for next-generation quantum computing processors, making integration with CRS4's HPC infrastructure possible and enabling research and development focused on hybrid applications.
The mission included a visit to the MIT labs of Prof. Vladan Vuletic's group and a visit to the Harvard labs of Prof. Misha Lukin's group, to learn about the very latest developments in world research on neutral atom technology applied to quantum processors and to gain an anticipation of the next expected milestones inherent in such processors. In addition, it was possible to visit a manufacturer of quantum processors, QuEra Computing, which made possible the organization of the previously mentioned visits.
Parts of experimental apparatus from the laboratory of Professor Vladan Vuletić's group, at the "Center for Ultracold Atoms and Research Laboratory of Electronics," MIT Department of Physics.