APS March Meeting 2022: Quantum Machines Workshops

APS March Meeting is right around the corner! The long-awaited time of the year when we physicists all sync with each other and align our phases globally, hoping for some constructive interference. The QM team has been preparing all year and in addition to the scientific talks we’ll be sharing, we also have some exciting workshops lined up for you. From the implementations of quantum control on quantum error correction to a brand new lab management tool to help you manage your workflows, data, and more, we’ve got you covered on interesting workshops that you’ll want to check out.

We’ll also have live demos going on at our booth (#609) every day. Be sure to stop by to listen in and snag your own legendary quantum swag!

Bringing Quantum-Classical Processing into the Heart of Real-Time Quantum Control

While quantum computers have the potential to solve important problems beyond the reach of any classical technology, error rates pose a great challenge towards the realization of a practical machine.
In this workshop, we focus on the classical control stack, which is the enabler for mitigating these error sources in building a practical quantum computer, and demonstrate how it is implemented on QM’s Quantum Orchestration Platform (QOP) to enhance performance and optimize results.

Quantum error correction (QEC) reduces the error rates by encoding quantum information in logical qubits and is thus considered the most promising path towards realizing the full potential of quantum computers. However, many future applications of viable quantum computing will require logical error rates on the order of 10^-15, while even the most advanced quantum processors currently achieve physical error rates in the 10^-3 regime. This gap introduces great challenges for practical QEC as the overheads in both quantum and classical control resources can become very large. Moreover, these overheads can introduce new error channels, making QEC even more complex.
While significant challenges remain in designing the quantum hardware necessary for QEC, addressing the requirements on the classical control side is equally important. A highly flexible control platform that allows programming and executing QEC protocols from the software layer while utilizing demanding real-time processing and control flow is required.
We will discuss novel adaptive error syndrome measurements as well as repeat until success protocols introduced in recent works. We will also introduce new protocols we recently developed, and demonstrate their implementation on the QOP.

Workshop details: Tuesday, March 15, at 10:30 AM (Theater 1)

Entropy: A Modern Toolchain to Empower Workflows of the Current and Next-Generation Quantum Processing Units

The control of quantum computations, and the classical resources needed for such control, pose many technical challenges. Tools are needed to manage the control flow, assist in data collection and visualization, keep track of the experiment codebase and facilitate documentation of the work. Many of these challenges are generic to experimental lab work whereas others are unique to quantum computation.
Entropy is a lab management suite built to address these problems. Entropy aims to provide a modern toolchain to empower workflows and enable interaction with the current and next generation of Quantum Processing Units (QPUs) in the university lab and data center.

In this workshop, we will demonstrate how Entropy is used to describe a set of devices as one quantum abstract machine. We will then run an experiment distributed across multiple and heterogeneous instruments. We will discuss how the execution model behind Entropy is unique and useful and discuss how these capabilities are crucial to operating a well-calibrated QPU.
Finally, we will show how we can use the integrated data observability tools to monitor the experiment in real-time and collect the resulting datasets into a database for later analysis.

Workshop details: Wednesday, March 16, at 11:00 AM (Theater 2)

Real-Time Quantum Control of Neutral Atoms 2D Arrays with the Quantum Orchestration Platform

Neutral atom arrays are a promising platform for quantum computation and simulation. While this platform has the potential to support a large number of high-quality qubits, there exist several roadblocks towards neutral atom quantum devices that satisfy the DiVincenzo criteria.
In this workshop, we will discuss these challenges and the methods to overcome them using the Quantum Orchestration Platform (QOP) for designing control protocols for quantum systems.
One of the biggest challenges to realizing a scalable atom-based physical system with well-characterized qubits is the precise rearrangement of atoms on a 2D array. We will show how straightforward it is to code such rearrangement protocols using this novel platform and will discuss future directions in atom arrangement strategies and how the most advanced real-time protocols are enabled by the QOP.

Workshop details: Thursday, March 17, at 10:30 AM (Theater 1)