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Quantum News Briefs April 13: Join “Gig City Goes Quantum” in completing 1,000+ quantum learning activities to celebrate World Quantum Day; PQShield collaborates with NCCoE and industry to ease the real-world implementation of quantum-resistant cryptography; RRI to develop quantum tech-powered communication for Indian Navy + MORE

Quantum News Briefs looks at news in the quantum industry.
By Sandra Helsel posted 13 Apr 2023

Quantum News Briefs April 13: Join “Gig City Goes Quantum” in completing 1,000+ quantum learning activities to celebrate World Quantum Day; PQShield collaborates with NCCoE and industry to ease the real-world implementation of quantum-resistant cryptography; RRI to develop quantum tech-powered communication for Indian Navy + MORE.

Join “Gig City Goes Quantum” in completing 1,000+ quantum learning activities to celebrate World Quantum Day

EPB of Chattanooga and Qubitekk have joined with a range of educational, non-profit and corporate partners in launching GigCityGoesQuantum.com, an interactive web site with a variety of educational resources to engage people of all ages in 1,000+ Quantum Learning Activities to celebrate World Quantum Day, beginning April 14 through May 31. Quantum News Briefs summarizes.
Gig City Goes Quantum is an initiative to prepare for education, jobs and business opportunities in the emerging quantum technology sector by leveraging EPB Quantum NetworkSM powered by Qubitekk to accelerate the commercialization of quantum technologies. Efforts focus on collaboration with community leaders, universities, schools and companies, starting in Chattanooga and spreading cooperatively across the U.S.
Learning for All Ages and Settings
Quantum Learning Events were collected and curated with support from Hamilton County Schools, Chattanooga State Community College, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), Chattanooga 2.0, Public Education Foundation Chattanooga, National Science Foundation, National Q-12 Education Partnership, EPB, Qubitekk and Xairos.

  • Watch – Videos will be available for high school through university students, including a series of livestreamed demonstrations and presentations beginning April 14 (see below for schedule).
  • Play – Games for 5th graders to adults teach students to build a virtual quantum computer, use AI to teach computers skills and other activities, none of which require any experience or prior knowledge about quantum physics.
  • At School – Activities can be easily incorporated into lesson plans. Educators are encouraged to register for a free Quantum Education Kit with links to videos and educational resources for use in classrooms.
  • At Home – All resources are accessible and most can be completed at home (though a few do require some extra items that you might need to obtain separately).

“UTC is committed to positioning our students to apply what they learn on campus to advance quantum technology when they graduate,” said Dr. Steve Angle, chancellor of University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, which will host a quantum node connected to EPB Quantum Network.”
Livestream events will be open to anyone at GigCityGoesQuantum.com.

PQShield collaborates with NCCoE and industry to ease the real-world implementation of quantum-resistant cryptography

PQShield, a cybersecurity company specialising in post-quantum cryptography, has entered into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE), the cybersecurity division part of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), to develop practices to ease the migration to post-quantum cryptography from current public-key algorithms.
NIST’s work to standardize quantum-resistant public-key cryptographic algorithms is underway, and is expected to be completed in the next two years.
The US government has also recognised the seriousness of the quantum threat with the Quantum Preparedness Act, with the NSA requiring all US government agencies who protect National Security Systems (NSS) and related assets to start adopting quantum-resistant cryptography algorithms for software- and firmware-signing by 2025. Furthermore, ‘harvest now, decrypt later’ attacks contribute to the urgency of the threat, making the transition to post-quantum cryptography an immediate priority for many organisations.
In order to address these challenges, the NCCoE Migration to Post-Quantum Cryptography project is leveraging public and private collaborative consortium to demonstrate tools that can assist the process of crypto-discovery. The NCCoE project is also working within its consortium to look at the broader real-world challenges of using post-quantum cryptographic algorithms in the protocols used today to protect communications and information.
PQShield has joined the project with this focus in mind, working with NCCoE team members to demonstrate the practical integration of quantum-resistant cryptography into software, hardware and advanced protocols. The company will be leveraging its extensive team of specialist cryptographers and engineers and building on its experience working with customers like Microchip Technologies, Collins Aerospace and Kudelski Security. Click here to see the complete news announcement.

RRI to develop quantum tech-powered communication for Indian Navy

Raman Research Institutere signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the research and development (R&D) unit of the Indian Navy to develop quantum technology-powered maritime communication systems. Quantum News Briefs summarizes the April 12 news from Verdict.uk.
Under the five-year MOU, the Quantum Information and Computing (QuIC) lab at the RRI, will be in charge of leading the research efforts to create quantum key distribution methods for the Indian Navy.
The MoU was signed with Indian Navy’s Weapons and Electronics Systems Engineering Establishment (WESEE) last week.
QuIC lab group head Urbasi Sinha said: “We are excited with the collaboration and believe that with our expertise in the domain of secure quantum communications, we will be able to help foster cutting-edge research towards identification of potential maritime use-cases for the Indian Navy.”
In addition, QuIC Lab is the first lab in India to propose and put into practice a variety of applications utilising single and entangled photons.
These applications particularly focus on developing secure communications in crucial fields, such as banking, defence, and cyber security.

Berkeley Lab researchers develop blueprint for next-gen quantum processor based on fluxonium qubits

Researchers at the AQT at Berkeley Lab, a state-of-the-art collaborative research laboratory, developed a blueprint for a novel quantum processor based on “fluxonium” qubits. Fluxonium qubits can outperform the most widely used superconducting qubits, offering a promising path toward fault-tolerant universal quantum computing.
In collaboration with researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and Yale University, the AQT team pioneered a systematic theoretical study of how to engineer fluxonium qubits for higher performance while offering practical suggestions to adapt and build the cutting-edge hardware that will fully harness the potential of quantum computing. Their results were published in the journal PRX Quantum.
Building on AQT’s robust research and development history on superconducting circuits, the team leading the fluxonium-based architecture focused on the scalability and adaptability of the processor’s main components, with a set of parameters that researchers can tune to increase the runtime and fidelity of quantum circuits. Some of these adaptations allow simpler operation of the system. Researchers proposed, for example, controlling the fluxonium qubits at low frequency (1-GHz) via microwave pulses directly generated by an electrical arbitrary waveform generator. This straightforward approach allows researchers to design processors and set up multiple qubits flexibly.
o estimate and validate the performance of the proposed fluxonium blueprint, the team at AQT, in collaboration with the paper’s researchers, simulated two types of programmable quantum logic gates—the cross-resonance controlled-NOT (CNOT) and the differential ac-Stark controlled-Z (CZ). The high fidelities resulting from the gates’ simulation across the range of proposed qubit parameters validated the team’s expectations for the suggested blueprint. Click here to read announcement in-entirety.

Sandra K. Helsel, Ph.D. has been researching and reporting on frontier technologies since 1990.  She has her Ph.D. from the University of Arizona.

Categories: quantum computing

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