The first work is a joint work by School of ECE - TUC, Singapore and Google and appeared in Physical Review Letters, December 2016. The work concerns the transport of quantum information in quantum chips and is motivated by Archimedes screw mechanism. The team was lead by elected Associate Professor Dimitris G Angelakis of the School of ECE, his collaborators in Centre for Quantum Technologies Singapore and the Google Quantum Artificial Intelligence Team.
The work proposes a novel way to reliably transport quantum states around in a superconducting quantum processor. The work received international attention in various scientific media and blogs. The scheme is based on the ideas of physicist David J. Thouless, who won half the 2016 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on topological effects in materials. Topological effects are to do with geometry, and their use in quantum computing can help protect fragile quantum states during processing.
One of Thouless' major contributions was the invention of 'topological pumping'. This works something like Archimedes' screw pump for water. The Ancient Greek's screw spins around, but the water within it travels in a straight line up a hill. "Even though the motion of the machine is cyclical, the motion of the particles is not, they move in a line".
Read more at:
"Topological scheme for transporting quantum particles inspired byNobel winner's work", Centre for Quantum Technologies Singapore research highlights
The work was covered in several science media blogs include phys.org, phys.org, sciencenewonline, headlines-news.com
"An Archimedes' screw for groups of quantum particles"
The second work that also appeared in Physical Review Letters a few weeks after the first one concerns the protection of quantum states in quantum processors from errors due to the interaction with the environment. Its title is "Driven Open Quantum Systems and Floquet Stroboscopic Dynamics" and was done in collaboration of the Angelakis TUC's team with the University of Berlin and the Centre for Quantum Technologies Singapore.
Read more at:
"Shaking Schrödinger's cat may protect it from the environment", Centre for Quantum Technologies Singapore research highlights
