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Research from QphoX, Rigetti, and Qblox Demonstrating Optical Readout Technique for Superconducting Qubits Published in Nature Physics
GlobeNewswire
DELFT, The Netherlands and Berkeley, Calif., Feb. 11, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- QphoX B.V., a Dutch quantum technology startup that is developing leading frequency conversion systems for quantum applications, Rigetti Computing, Inc. (RGTI.NaE) , a pioneer in full-stack quantum-classical computing, and Qblox, a leading innovator in quantum control stack development, today announced that their joint research demonstrating the ability to readout superconducting qubits with an optical transducer was published in Nature Physics.
Quantum computing has the potential to drive transformative breakthroughs in fields such as advanced material design, artificial intelligence, and drug discovery. Of the quantum computing modalities, superconducting qubits are a leading platform towards realizing a practical quantum computer given their fast gate speeds and ability to leverage existing semiconductor industry manufacturing techniques. However, fault-tolerant quantum computing will likely require 10,000 to a million physical qubits. The sheer amount of wiring, amplifiers and microwave components required to operate such large numbers of qubits far exceeds the capacity of modern-day dilution refrigerators, a core component of a superconducting quantum computing system, in terms of both space and passive heat load.
A potential solution to this problem may be to replace coaxial cables and other cryogenic components with optical fibers, which have a considerably smaller footprint and negligible thermal conductivity. The challenge lies in converting the microwave signals used to control qubits into infrared light that can be transmitted through fiber. This is where microwave-to-optical transduction comes into play, a field dedicated to the coherent conversion of microwave photons to optical photons. QphoX has developed transducers with piezo-optomechanical technology that are capable of performing this conversion, forming an interface between superconducting qubits and fiber-optics.
To demonstrate the potential of this technology, QphoX, Rigetti and Qblox connected a transducer to a superconducting qubit, with the goal of measuring its state using light transmitted through an optical fiber. The results of this collaborative effort have been published in Nature Physics. Remarkably, it was discovered that not only is the transducer capable of converting the signal that reads out the qubit, but that the qubit can also be sufficiently protected from decoherence introduced by thermal noise or stray optical photons from the transducer during operation.
"Microwave-to-optics transduction is a rapidly emerging technology with far-reaching implications for quantum computing. Our work demonstrates that transducers are now ready to interface with superconducting qubit technology. This is an exciting and crucial demonstration, with the potential for this technology being far reaching and potentially transformative for the development of quantum computers,” says Dr. Thierry van Thiel, lead author of the work and Lead Quantum Engineer at QphoX.
“Developing more efficient ways to design our systems is key as we work towards fault tolerance. This innovative, scalable approach to qubit signal processing is the result of our strong partnerships with QphoX and Qblox and showcases the value of having a modular technology stack. By allowing our partners to integrate their technology with ours, we are able to discover creative ways to solve long-standing engineering challenges,” says Dr. Subodh Kulkarni, Rigetti CEO.
“Realizing industrial-scale quantum computers comes with solving several critical bottlenecks. Many of these lie in the scalability of the readout and control of qubits. As Qblox is entirely focused on exactly this theme, we are proud to be part of this pivotal demonstration that shows that QphoX microwave-to-optical transducers are a solid route to scalable quantum computing. We look forward to the next steps with Rigetti and QphoX to scale up this technology,” says Dr. Niels Bultink, Qblox CEO.
About QphoX
QphoX is the leading developer of quantum transduction systems that enable quantum computers to network over optical frequencies. Leveraging decades of progress in photonic, MEMS and superconducting device nanofabrication, their single-photon interfaces bridge the gap between microwave, optical and telecom frequencies to provide essential quantum links between computation, state storage and networking. QphoX is based in Delft, the Netherlands. See www.qphox.eu/ for more information.
About Rigetti
Rigetti is a pioneer in full-stack quantum computing. The Company has operated quantum computers over the cloud since 2017 and serves global enterprise, government, and research clients through its Rigetti Quantum Cloud Services platform. In 2021, Rigetti began selling on-premises quantum computing systems with qubit counts between 24 and 84 qubits, supporting national laboratories and quantum computing centers. Rigetti’s 9-qubit Novera™ QPU was introduced in 2023 supporting a broader R&D community with a high-performance, on-premises QPU designed to plug into a customer’s existing cryogenic and control systems. The Company’s proprietary quantum-classical infrastructure provides high-performance integration with public and private clouds for practical quantum computing. Rigetti has developed the industry’s first multi-chip quantum processor for scalable quantum computing systems. The Company designs and manufactures its chips in-house at Fab-1, the industry’s first dedicated and integrated quantum device manufacturing facility. Learn more at www.rigetti.com/.
About Qblox
Qblox is a leading provider of scalable and modular qubit control stacks. Qblox operates at the frontier of the quantum revolution in supporting academic and industrial labs worldwide. The Qblox control stack, known as the Cluster, combines key technologies for qubit control and readout and supports a wide variety of qubit technologies. Qblox has grown to 130+ employees and continues to innovate to enable the quantum industry. Learn more at www.qblox.com/.
Baku, Azerbaijan
I thought I'd fill you all in on the events of this day... which has nothing to do with my picture except to say it was the culmination of a very long day!
Our flight out of Istanbul's new International airport was early morning which meant an even earlier get-up and check-in. The hotel booked us a taxi from the front door and off we set. Now we'd enquired about travel times to the airport as this was just on the cusp of the rush-hour start. Typically the airport run is about 30 minutes away but we were advised to allow 40 minutes just in case of traffic build up. This was going to be no problem - we always plan ahead, unfortunately our taxi driver had other ideas.
Having studied all about velocity, mass and momentum at college, I/we always put on seatbelts front or back but these seemed inadequate in this particular taxi... a full four-way racing harness would have been better. Whether someone had just beaten his airport run pole time we'll never know but he was sure as hell intent on regaining it this very morning!
Speed signs and limits were just for other drivers this morning as we hurtled down the main highway out of the Sultanahmet. He was only forced to brake when we came across what looked like a road block or accident... mainly lorries for some reason! We came to a stop in the outer lane only for our driver to crunch his gearbox into reverse and driver backwards down the road before we had chance to compute what the hell was going on. We passed a break in the central reservation Armco barrier... low and behold back into first gear and drove through the gap!
So there we were driving up the wrong side of the road with cars coming head on, flashing their headlights (who wouldn't in a situation like this) darting out of the way for this madman.
"What the hell (please insert fruitier language here) are you doing!!!" I shouted or was it screamed to the driver as we both looked for grab handles and planned for the brace position. "It's ok, this shortcut and I put hazard light on"
That's ok then, I thought, perfectly understandable! What seemed like an eternity could only have been about 400 yards for we quickly passed the road block which turned to be a lane closure for road works and the "good" traffic had filtering into the one lane at the crossroads.
Just to keep the tension on heart attack levels we darted back onto the right side of the highway without a consideration for the lights or who had right of way. We sat in stunned silence with our hands gripped vice-like to the roof handles in fear. The rest of journey was somewhat of an anticlimax after that incident albeit at breakneck speed. We arrived in 22 minutes dead... he seemed pleased with himself so I assumed he had just regained pole position. I paid him the fare... I didn't give a tip!
The flight was pretty uneventful except to mention it was full of gymnasts on their way to a competition in Baku. The young South Korean girl gymnast in the seat next to Mrs R was clearly very excited for she practiced her floor routine in her seat for the full duration of the flight... with that dedication I hope she won a medal!
Fast forward to Baku...
Taxis in Baku are wonderful compared to our last one. The state owned ones are Hackney carriages, like in the UK, but purple in colour. Fees are all fixed and very cheap compared to UK black cabs... you can, however, hail private cabs but run the risk of getting ripped off by as much as 1 or 2 Manats (50p or £1), the choice is yours!
We got a purple cab from the airport to our hotel - the Flame Towers, and passed the very reason I wanted to come to Baku in the first place on route, but that's another story. Our hotel is simply a jaw dropping example of modern architecture that reflects the economic wealth of Azerbaijan in oil and gas hence the flame design. We had paid for an upgraded room for a sea view and upon checking in, the hotel had upgraded us to a suite... without wanting to sound gloaty it was bigger than the footprint of our home.
We don't squander time when on holiday and headed out after a very quick unpack and freshen up, which leads to this picture and the previous one. The afternoon was spent gaining our bearings and wandering down the promenade and into town. It was late afternoon and we hadn't eaten so the first diner we came across that took care of that. By the time we came out the light was fading and so we decided to head back to our hotel. It's at this point we realised how high the hotel is situated and it's a bit of a hike up the hills. When we eventually arrived back it was dark and we felt a little disappointed that the three towers weren't illuminated. I must confess I hadn't researched whether these were only illuminated for special occasions or a nightly show... we needed have worried! By the time we exited the lift, we pass a glass fronted balcony overlooking the sea and the opposite tower on the way to our room - the show was in full swing!
I hadn't planned on going out first night for photography as this wasn't that sort of holiday but how could I by-pass the opportunity. "I take it you'll need your tripod?"... bless her!
So we went out into the night... by the way this was Mrs R's idea and the picture her's as well.
Join new astronavigation programm now! Become a member of our computing team! Use your mind to lay a way to the stars! Note: all messages about brain injures and mental disorders, caused by collective mind computing, are totally fake.
That is some high tech right there.
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See detailed setup info and learn more about this image at the source.
Source: photos.jdhancock.com/photo/2014-02-09-023953-cloud-comput...
We use this machine at our research center to train deep neural networks and for other compute-intensive tasks.
I made this picture for the Inria contest on "Computing: past, present, and future". The abacus is, to me, the birth of computing.
I borrowed a camera with a very fast lens, and went to the server room of our research center, where I played finding a spot for the abacus in the middle of the computing equipment. A large numerical aperture gave me a short depth of field, turning the lights in a nice bokeh.
I did fairly little post-processing, using darktable as always. I used a local contrast filter on the abacus itself, and pushed the colors in the top right of the photo toward green.
Old cash register on display at the cute and quaint Al Vecchio Convento hotel in Forlì-Cesena, Italy.
..in west of Ireland. Old Head Beach, located along the County Mayo coastline. This popular beach is located 16 kilometers(10 miles) west of Westport town.
Taken from Noonamah area at about 0300hrs today. Clouds backlit by lightning which was probably about 50Km east of Acacia Hills.
Petri Computor 35, with CC Petri 2.8/40 lens.
Compact camera, produced from 1970 until 1974. Clearly inspired by the Konica C35, so it has the programmed shutter and rangefinder focussing, but it differs in details. The exposure metering in not controlled by a needle displayed in the viewfinder, but by two lights (green/orange) for acceptable or risky shutter speeds. They are visible on top and in the viewer.
The film speed is set with a ring around the lens and not with a fiddly ring inside the filter thread. As the camera has no dial for exposure compensation, you can manipulate the exposure very quickly here.
Man, I thought this was the coolest thing ever back in the day! So much so that I've never been able to part with it. It's been sitting in my junk drawer for so many years. I was happily surprised that the two AAA batteries had not corroded and also that I found two charged up ones to replace them with. And the thing fired right up!
The Palm IIIxe was introduced in February 2000 at a cost of US$249. If you care to read a bit about the Palm IIIxe click here.
Today's shot is for The Hereios' theme, computers.
88/365
All, thanks for coming, since your here, check out the rest of my photostream .
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All of my vintage computing photos can be seen here
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Thanks,
SA_Steve
P.S. Also check out my fast food ads from the seventies, targeting African American Consumers
Science Fiction surely?
No, the future is now, it's the Raspberry Pi!
A piece of electronic wizardry that aims to inspire children (and adults) to code and look behind the flashy buttons to see the bare bones of computing.
HMM! Theme "Science Fiction"
Apologies for the lack of communication, away at Center Parcs with pretty much zero connection. Back now and knackered.
A closer view of what sits on my desk in our office... Too see a wider angle view and more stuff Click Here, the description on the other photo also goes into much more detail about what I use and how I use it.
In short, about 5 years ago I uploaded a photo (now quite outdated) of what my desk looked like and the computing technology that I used... but now long overdue I have upgraded and replaced quite a bit. Things are now much simpler and easier to use... oh and I finally made the switch to Mac and have been loving life on OS-X.
What this photo shows is:
A 30" NEC monitor connected to an Apple Hex Core 3.33Ghz. Mac Pro w/12GB of RAM, dual 50GB OWC Solid State Drives(SSD), four 2TB Western Digital Black hard drives and a NewerTech eSATA card and two external 500GB Western Digital Studio Edition hard drives. The desktop has an Apple Wireless Keyboard, a Magic Trackpad and a Magic Mouse connected via Bluetooth and a Microsoft Ergonomic 4000 keyboard and a Microsoft LaserMouse6000 connected via USB2 sitting on a HumanScale 4G keyboard tray (it's designed for the Microsoft 'natural' form factor). Finally the Mac Pro has a Wacom Intuos3 tablet and a set of Klipsch ProMedia 2.1 speakers.
Laptop - An Apple 15" MacBookPro Core i5 2.4Ghz. notebook with 8GB of RAM and a 500GB Seagate MomentusXT hard drive (which also includes a 4GB SSD cache), with the upgraded high res. display. Attached is a 500GB G-Tech G-Drive Mini and a 1TB OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro external drives connected via Firewire800 and an Apple MagicMouse via Bluetooth.
There is more going on in terms of networking, storage, etc. but if you want to know more about that, click on this other image.
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My Husband! Apparently slightly bored with wandering around the Sunflower Maze with me two weeks running and catching up on some emails on his iPhone. He had no idea I had taken this image until today :o)
I have quite obviously run some filters though this image and smoothed out the clouds a little so as to make it more of a concept image.
A newborn baby fixates on human faces… but a newborn boy will turn his gaze to blinking lights.
Stereo equipment designers have exploited this innate attraction for years. =)
And in this full size photo, you can appreciate IBM’s pinnacle of geek bling-bling – an immersive widescreen of blinky bliss.
This IBM System/360 Model 91 was a scientific computer used at SLAC in 1968. It used Solid Logic Technology (modules of five to six transistors) during the transition period between discrete transistors and the IC.