1. Second quantum revolution, or Why it’s time to study quantum physics
A. Zagoskin
Department of Physics
Loughborough University
Russian Quantum Centre
Summer School 2016
August 25, 2016

2. DWave – international network + Harvard case study + 23 patents; books (Japan, China; Cambridge); outreach promoting science to school students

3. I. Life and science

4. Due to its technology, the humanity is more powerful than ever…
…and more than ever vulnerable if technology fails.

5. Great Ice Storm
Canada, 1998

6. Getting rid of technology and going back to nature
would require reducing the human population of this planet by 99.99%.
Not an option!

8. We cannot survive and flourish without technology
Technology cannot survive and develop without science.
Therefore we must understand science, even though science nowadays is very advanced, complicated and counterintuitive.

10. We must understand science better than that!
This is a vital and especially demanding task in the age of Second Quantum Revolution.

11. II. A brief story of Schrödinger’s cat

12. Quantum mechanics is arguably the most reliable scientific theory SO FAR IT MADE ZERO MISTAKES

13. Niels Bohr(1885 – 1962) Bohr’s postulates* (1913) Quantized orbits
Quantum leaps

14. Louis de Broglie (1892 – 1987)
Particle-wave duality* (1924)

15. Werner Heisenberg (1901 – 1976) Matrix mechanics (1925)
(in the middle)
Matrix mechanics (1925)
+M. Born and P. Jordan
Uncertainty principle

16. Erwin Schrödinger(1887 – 1961) Wave mechanics(1926)
«Schrödinger’s cat»

17. Ra Ra Ra

18. Paul Dirac(1902 – 1984)
Wave mechanics = matrix mechanics = quantum mechanics

19. Max Born(1882 – 1970) Matrix mechanics Probabilistic interpretation
Entanglement - «spooky action at a distance»

20. Quantum mechanics showed that Nature is RANDOM & NONLOCAL

21. Physicists did not care, since it mattered for microscopic particles only

22. By necessity, all popular interpretations of quantum mechanics are wrong
Some of them are significantly more wrong than the rest

23. First quantum revolution(1945-1970)
Only microscopic quantum coherent systems:
Quantum superpositions involved a small number of microscopic quantum states

24. First quantum revolution: outcomes
Nuclear power
Fission
Fusion
Semiconductor electronics
Tunnelling
Band theory
Lasers
Photon-atom interactions
Quantum statistics
Superconductors
Cooper pairing
Josephson effect

25. But by 1999 physicists got really interested in quantum computing.

26. Richard Feynman(1918 – 1988)
Path integrals: an elegant link between quantum and classical mechanics
Hero of Alexandria– Fermat – Lagrange – Hamilton - Dirac 1 2

27. A quantum system takes all paths at once!
Therefore a big quantum system cannot be simulated with a classical computer.
But it can be simulated with a quantum computer.
What if a quantum computer can check all solutions at once? ю

28. Steam-powered Pentium™ is hard to make…

29. On s’engage et puis on voit

30. This means “let’s engage first and see what happens”.
Of course, it did not work that well for Napoleon himself in Russia…

31. …which is necessary and useful, but should never ever be in the lead

32. III. Second quantum revolution

33. Superconducting qubits
Phase qubit: Allman et al., 2010
Natural coming from q. computing side; 128 -> 512 – already a “medium”
Charge qubits: Yamamoto
et al., 2003
Flux qubits: Grajcar et al.,
2006

35. Latest generation Chimaera C12
King et al. arxiv

36. Amazing evolution of superconducting qubits – like the development of aviation a hundred years ago
1999 – <10 ns
2015 – >100 µs
Operating time - nanoseconds

37. …still a far cry to a universal quantum computer

38. Quantum slide rules: Analogue quantum devices
𝐻 𝜆 = 𝐻 𝑖 1−𝜆 + 𝐻 𝑓 𝜆

40. D-Wave: success and controversy...

41. IV. Not only quantum computers

42. Grand Challenge

43. Grand Challenge

44. What to expect? Quantum…
Communications
Solvers
Sensors, detectors and image processors
Simulators of complex physical, chemical, biological and social systems
Pokemons?

45. Structural engineering
Unit engineering
Structural engineering
Systems engineering

46. Humans only understand what they use…
A major result of the second quantum revolution may be the public understanding of quantum mechanics:
Humans only understand what they use…
…and even that but rarely