Herbert Fotso is an assistant professor of physics in UAlbany's College of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on theoretical and computational condensed matter physics. In this episode, Herbert gives insight on the global arms race in quantum computing, and where the U.S. stands in the competition to create the world's next quantum computer.
Herbert Fotso is an assistant professor of physics in UAlbany's College of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on theoretical and computational condensed matter physics. In this episode, Herbert gives insight on the global arms race in quantum computing, and where the U.S. stands in the competition to create the world's next quantum computer.
Learn more about Herbert's research.
The UAlbany News Podcast is hosted and produced by Sarah O'Carroll, a Communications Specialist at the University at Albany, State University of New York, with production assistance by Patrick Dodson and Scott Freedman.
Have a comment or question about one of our episodes? You can email us at mediarelations@albany.edu, and you can find us on Twitter @UAlbanyNews.
Sarah O'Caroll:
Welcome to the UAlbany News podcast, I'm your host, Sarah O'Caroll. My guest today is Herbert Fotso, an assistant professor of Physics. His research focuses on theoretical and computational condensed matter physics. I have Herbert here with me to give insight on the global arms race in quantum computing, and where the US stands, and the competition to create the world's next quantum computer.
Speaker 3:
The global race is on to see who will advance the fastest in quantum computing, taking existing computers to a whole new level.
Speaker 4:
China, Russia, a country that's not friendly to us, gets way ahead of us in quantum computing. We will have no encryption.
Speaker 5:
As we've heard, quantum computers are not just a faster computer. They enable an entirely different approach to performing calculations. In the realm of quantum physics, there are some incredible, and surprising phenomena that if harnessed, allow us to solve some interesting and practically unsolve the problems.
Sarah O'Caroll:
To start off, would you break down how a quantum computer is different from the computers we use today?
Herbert Fotso:
Oh, thank you. That's a very well posed question, and it's particularly relevant at this moment in time where there's, as you've stated, an arms race to build the first quantum computer. But the reality of this question is one has to realize that even our computers today are somewhat quantum.
Sarah O'Caroll:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Herbert Fotso:
If I take two fundamental aspects of classical computing, it'd be the speed, and the storage. And that's the transistor and the hard drive. And as you can see, these things have gotten smaller and smaller, exponentially in time. You wouldn't have computer as fast as what you have today if it wasn't for us using quantum mechanics increasingly baring time.
Sarah O'Caroll:
So when we talk about quantum mechanics, it seems like something far away, something we're building towards what, in fact, what you're saying is, it already is interweaved into the machinery that we use daily.
Herbert Fotso:
Precisely. The exception, once again comes down to, what is the fundamental building block? We using quantum mechanics here, but the fundamental building block is still something that's binary. That's one or zero. Now when we shift to quantum information processing or to quantum computing, is going to be something that has this superposition principle, that can be both on and off at the same time. And there, everything will change. The question of what's the new memory? What's the new transistor? How do we build computing nodes? Everything will change, because of this fundamental building block being different.
Sarah O'Caroll:
Now for your particular research, we've given a more overview of where we are, but can you break down what you're specifically looking at, and what your most recent paper was trying to focus on.
Herbert Fotso:
Yes. So, building a quantum computer, as I've just stated, is the large initiative, is the big puzzle. And so when you want to solve a big puzzle, typically what you need to do is understand the individual pieces and how they fit in the big picture. And so there's a multitude of scientific questions that people across the globe are now asking, how do we build a quantum computer? There's different issues that have to be addressed. One of them is you want to have as reliable individual quantum computers as possible, right? You want to be able, once you know what the state of your quantum bit is, to come back a few maybe seconds later, and know with full confidence that the state is still what you think it is. And so because we're here dealing with very fundamental properties, they're very sensitive. They're very sensitive to what the environment is doing.
Herbert Fotso:
They're very sensitive to all types of quote unquote parasitic interactions or if you wish noise. So one question is how do we build a better quantum bit? The other question is how do we make different quantum bits talk?
Sarah O'Caroll:
To each other.
Herbert Fotso:
To each other. And in fact, we won't be able to do much. If all we have is very good individual quantum bits. We want to be able to make them talk. To couple them in this very specific way, this very specific quantum way, which is called entanglement. So how do we generate entangled quantum bits? So these are some of the fundamental questions that arise as a result of this technological goal. And so my particular research is trying to address some of these questions from the point of view of, well, if we want to make quantum bits talk, for many of these quantum bits, they talk by exchanging particles of light. Well if you wish photons.
Sarah O'Caroll:
Photons. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Herbert Fotso:
Right, and a given quantum bit is going to have a photon, let's say, of a certain energy or let's say of a certain size. It's only going to be able to talk to another quantum bit if it can accept a photon of the same size. If the sizes are different, if you wish, if the frequencies are very different, they may not be able to communicate efficiently.
Sarah O'Caroll:
So this is very rudimentary, but you're trying to find the perfect match in pairing up these photons, and making them correlated and be able to work more efficiently.
Herbert Fotso:
Precisely. And in many ways, these perfect matches may not exist in nature. Why? Because even though you have a particle of, you have this cubit of this structure and you take the cubit of approximately the same structure, typically, because the environments are different. Because something is happening here that's slightly different from what's happening for this [inaudible 00:06:00] cubit. The particles of light may have slightly different frequencies. So our goal is then to see, okay, how can we make these operations possible despite the fact that the environments are slightly different?
Sarah O'Caroll:
Okay. So you're trying to do as much as possible to control these environment, because it seems like in nature, every fingerprint is unique. And so you're doing everything to hone in on these factors so that they would match up. Is that right?
Herbert Fotso:
You just said it exactly the way that I wanted to say it but won't be able to take you.
Sarah O'Caroll:
Thank you. Now, you focus on high temperature superconductivity and ultra cold atoms and optical lattices. From my understanding, it sounds like that means computers have to run on something very cold to work. And that's not very practical. So is the ideal to make computers work in room temperature so that companies like GE, for instance, wouldn't have to use liquid nitrogen, or other types of substances to make their computers in these environments that are not any better, extremely cold.
Herbert Fotso:
So, the question about high-temperature, super conductivities, and so on, it's very much relevant for quantum information processing. But I think it might be relevant for a slightly different from the one that's stated in your question. The more fundamental question from the point of view of quantum information processing is, that question that I just alluded to, the question of noise. We typically refer to noise as anything that's happening in the environment that's somewhat crowding, if you wish, the information that we're trying to encode. And typically, an example of a quantum bit is say the spin of one electron.
Herbert Fotso:
That one electron is going to be sitting in some type of an environment. And in that environment as all the particles that are doing all types of things. We would want for that one electron to remain in a specific state for as long as we desire. But the environment doesn't care what we want. It's doing whatever it wants to do. Right? And so that's the noise that we talk about. Now the noise in many ways is going to be dependent on temperature because the higher the temperature, the more jiggling, if you wish, there is in the environment of that electron, the more agitation, the more noise there is.
Sarah O'Caroll:
So colder temperatures give more control, and it's less distraction, less noise.
Herbert Fotso:
Precisely. Colder temperatures will mean precisely that. Now because we're talking about this very fundamental properties of particles, even at some very low temperatures, we will still have some amount of noise. But we want that noise to be below certain thresholds so we can indeed be able to encode and perform, encode information and perform computation.
Sarah O'Caroll:
Okay. Now how might your research have an implication in the national energy, sorry, the national electric grid, for example? Or could it help with energy efficiency in some way? Or perhaps is it more about security?
Herbert Fotso:
So there's two aspects to my research that are connected to this question, and I will separate the question once again into two branches. There's one branch that has to do with energy efficiency from the point of view of say, designing materials that are less, that consume less energy, that are more energy efficient. And there's another one that has to do with simply securing our power grid from hackers and from attacks. Right? And so, one aspect of my research has to do with understanding correlated materials. An example of correlated materials that has gained a lot of attention is that of strongly correlated systems or high temperature superconductivity.
Herbert Fotso:
What is a high temperature superconductor? Well, we all have this experience that everything that carries electric current generates some amount of heat, right?
Sarah O'Caroll:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Herbert Fotso:
Virtually everything that uses electricity is going to generate some amount of heat. Now, very often, we don't want that heat. There's a few occasions where we want the heat, but very often that heat is just a waste of energy.
Sarah O'Caroll:
Costly.
Herbert Fotso:
It's costly. And so we would want to minimize as much as possible how much heat is dissipated on this form. What it just so happens that there's this class of materials that can conduct electricity without dissipating any of it in the form of heat. Now, why haven't we implemented this in everyday devices. The reason is that we have to cool these systems down to very low temperatures. And so it's very hard to scale this technology up. A lot of effort has gone into trying to understand these systems, and improving them so that potentially we can make these systems superconductors at room temperature, and then we would then have access to something that's highly efficient from an energy point of view.
Sarah O'Caroll:
So when we talk about the practical ways we could use quantum computing, this would be one of them as in, all very well that we can be more energy efficient, but it's not going to do us so that much good if we can't get this at a room temperature type of way for daily, for people in their daily lives to use.
Herbert Fotso:
Precisely. So if we had access to a quantum computer, possibly in this specific area of research, what it would mean is that, we can perform more efficient computation, more reliable computations, for these systems, and we can guide and experimental this to synthesize these materials so that they can superconduct at room temperature.
Sarah O'Caroll:
Now this is also making me think of the cybersecurity questions that you're bringing up, of how this might be important if we can find a way to use encryption. So does your research crossover into quantum encryption in this way? Would that be helpful in trying to figure out how we can be more secure, the systems we use?
Herbert Fotso:
At the moment, we understand that if we had access to a quantum computer, we would be able to break most of the encryption methods that we currently use. And so the question is how can we generate encryptions that can not be broken? And we have algorithms. We have algorithms that tell us, here's how you would do that. The question now is, can we get the quantum computers to be able to do that? If we had access to a quantum computer, we would be able to generate encryptions that cannot be broken into.
Sarah O'Caroll:
And it wouldn't be this case where maybe there's one simulation that makes it impossible for current cyber security methods of attack would not be able to get into, but they could get in this backdoor for is this or something.
Herbert Fotso:
So let me take a step back, and slightly elaborate on what is encryption? What type of encryption do we currently use, right? How do we currently protect our information? The way we do that is by encoding it in such a way that yes, it is possible to break it, but it will take you forever to break it. Even if you had the fastest computer in the world, it would simply take you forever.
Sarah O'Caroll:
Okay.
Herbert Fotso:
Now what we know is that if you had a quantum computer of a certain size, it will take you minutes or even seconds to break these current encryption methods. And so that changes everything. That is a game changer. That's why the stakes are so high. Now, the flip side of that is, if you had access to quantum encryption methods, you would be able to generate encryption keys that cannot be broken into. In other words, you'd be able to detect an eavesdropper in your information exchange. And so you would know to discard that information, and maybe start over again until you can detect that somebody's eavesdropping on your communication.
Sarah O'Caroll:
So a cyber attacker essentially loses their disguise in trying to-
Herbert Fotso:
Precisely.
Sarah O'Caroll:
Because they are now wide openly seen by these quantum computer systems.
Herbert Fotso:
Yes.
Sarah O'Caroll:
Okay. So what would you say are some of your biggest questions right now, having just published a study in late 2018. Where are some residual questions you have going forward?
Herbert Fotso:
So the question that we asked was, facing this question of, this issue of, how different quantum bits can be made to talk in a more efficient way. How can we generate entanglement across multiple quantum bits in a more efficient way? Was initially to say, let's start by looking at one individual quantum bit, and see if we can make it such that the type of photons that are originating or that are being accepted by these quantum bit, are the same, regardless of what the environment is doing. So that's where we started, and we proposed a few protocols that we have found to be able to indeed minimize the effects of the environment on this particular type of process. That is the ability, the size of the photons, so if you wish, the photon frequencies, that are possible to be absorbed by this quantum bit.
Herbert Fotso:
Now there's other aspects of this question right now we have to see about, now we have to see if we can indeed entangle to individual cubits, regardless of the effect of the environment. The fact that we have so far very promising results, paves the way to ask questions of very essential operations in quantum information processing, and ask and see, can we make these operations much more efficient? Can we make the success rate of these operations much, much higher? And so those are questions that we're trying to work on right now.
Sarah O'Caroll:
Okay. So by establishing these protocols, you're helping other physicists go past just setting up the environment to be more controlled, and more fortuitous for better interaction between matched photons. So how, or how else might other physicists build upon this direct work?
Herbert Fotso:
That's a very good question, indeed. So at the moment we're reaching out to experiment this, to start implementing some of these protocols that we're proposing, and the goal will be to see how in practice, so the theoretical results indicate that indeed, we should have more efficient operations. And so we're going to start asking, let's consider this one operation, and let's see how we can make it better. Let's consider this other operation, and let's ask how can we, with this type of approach, maybe modify the approach a little bit. How can we implement that type of mindset on this audio creation and so on. There's a multitude of operations that have to be improved in order for us to be able to build a full scale quantum computer.
Sarah O'Caroll:
Okay. I'm starting to understand the whole constellation of work that is needed from so many different areas to be able to work on each piece to the quantum computer of the next generation. Where might you say the US might lie? Can you give us any sense of where the US stands as far as this global race?
Herbert Fotso:
Well, with the recent passing of the National Economy Initiative Act, I think the US is positioning itself once again as one of the leading, one of the pioneers in this scientific effort. Now we hope that this effort is going to be sustained in time, in part because like every major scientific or scientific initiative, it takes time, and there's multiple elements that have to be brought together in order to implement the main thing. So I think from my personal point of view that we're well positioned going forward with this latest initiative. Before this, I would have had a somewhat more less optimistic where I say opinion considering what the investments were in other countries say, in Europe or say in China. But I think we're finally waking up to this issue. And so that's very good to see.
Sarah O'Caroll:
And what might this quantum initiative help beyond funding, but what, how will it help physicists like you and others, like you in the field be working on these problems?
Herbert Fotso:
Synergy. It's bringing awareness to the importance of this issue, and creating platforms for people to collaborate, and converge on these issues. I think this is fundamental.
Sarah O'Caroll:
All right. Thank you so much for your time today.
Herbert Fotso:
It's been a pleasure. Thank you.
Sarah O'Caroll:
Thank you for listening to the UAlbany News podcast. I'm your host, Sarah O'Caroll. And that was Herbert Fotso, an assistant professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences. As always, you can let us know what you thought of the episode by emailing us at Media Relations at albany.edu, and you can find us on Twitter @UAlbanyNews.