The Daily Qubit

💡 Quantum chips are coming to the bulk bins and the power of a singular photon

Author

Cierra Choucair
April 22, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

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Enjoy today’s breakdown of news, research, events & jobs within quantum.

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IN TODAY’S ISSUE:

  • USC team advancing scalable quantum chip production as part of DoE award and NSF initiative

  • A novel approach to the issue of barren plateaus and local minima in QML

  • Implementation of VQA projective simulation on Quandela’s Ascella

  • Plus, a vital tutorial from PennyLaneAI that provides a comprehensive overview of the QFT

TOP NEWS & RESEARCH

NEWS

USC TEAM ADVANCES SCALABLE QUANTUM CHIP PRODUCTION

Highlights:

  1. The National Science Foundation’s Future Manufacturing program is an initiative to drive domestic manufacturing in the areas of “Future Cyber Manufacturing Research”, “Future Eco Manufacturing Research”, and “Future Biomanufacturing Research.” Nakano’s research will focus on the domestic manufacturing of quantum chips.

  2. The INCITE award (Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment) will allow Nakano and his team to work alongside the DOE Argonne Leadership Computing Facility to determine quantum computing materials that are most suitable.

  3. His team uses the Allegro-Legato algorithm (created by Nakano and team previously) to support large-scale simulations. The simulations allow Nakano and his team to replicate single-layer semiconductor materials layered with other materials, such as insulators.

  4. The research focuses on 2D transition metal dichalcogenides (potential use for low-power chips and quantum emitters) and single-layer oxide ferroelectrics for memory chips.

RESEARCH

TACKLING BARREN PLATEAUS AND LOCAL MINIMA USING COORDINATE TRANSFORMATIONS

The Brief Byte: This paper presents a method that uses coordinate transformations to overcome the challenges associated with local minima and barren plateaus in classical and quantum machine-learning algorithms in hopes of reducing costs associated with artificial intelligence applications.

Highlights:

  1. Machine learning technologies rely on neural networks optimized through gradient methods which often face challenges such as barren plateaus and local minima. This results in prolonged and resource-heavy training phases.

  2. The paper proposes a method to improve gradient-based optimization with coordinate transformations, such as shifting to hyperspherical coordinates or frame rotation. These methods help avoid optimization stalls caused by barren plateaus and local minima.

  3. The proposed coordinate transformation approach was demonstrated to reduce the number of iterations needed for convergence.

RESEARCH

IMPLEMENTING VARIATIONAL QUANTUM PROJECTIVE SIMULATION ON QUANDELA’S ASCELLA

Representation of a singular photon | DALL-E

The Brief Byte: This paper implements a variational quantum algorithm for reinforcement learning using linear-optical interferometers and projective simulation on Quandela's single-photon-based quantum computer Ascella.

Highlights:

  1. Variational quantum algorithms are promising for quantum machine learning applications and use parameterized quantum circuits with classical feedback for task optimization on noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices.

  2. This paper implements a variational quantum projective simulation algorithm on the single-photon Ascella platform.

  3. The quantum PS agent was developed and tested across ideal simulators, noisy simulators, and actual quantum hardware with the training phases adjusting hyperparameters to optimize performance.

  4. Results from the implementation showed that the quantum PS agent could identify percept colors and shapes with moderate accuracy and displayed potential for superior performance in quantum environments.

MORE BRIEF BYTES

ENTANGLED INSIGHTS

RECOMMENDED RESOURCE

NEW TUTORIAL FROM PENNYLANE

QFT is used in quantum computing in algorithms like quantum phase estimation and Shor's algorithm. This tutorial provides a comprehensive guide by explaining QFT's foundation, demonstrating its implementation using basic gates on PennyLane, and showing its practical application through examples.

EVENTS

FEATURED JOBS

UNTIL TOMORROW.

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