Quantum Computing, do you have any idea about this?
- My first experience in Quantum Computing
Some years ago, I was reviewing different scientific articles, when I suddenly saw an unexpected paper titled "Recent Trends in Quantum Chemical Modeling of Enzymatic Reactions" [1]. This stopped me for a moment, changing inside me all perspectives on the horizon. At the same time, I started to familiarize myself with the theories in Biocatalysis and Bioprocess Engineering based on those works as precursors from my first job in R&D, in order to develop new skills.
During the next years, I have been studying myself by reading many scientific articles and books about Quantum Computing. One of them was "Quantum Computation and Quantum Information" by Michael A. Nielsen, and Isaac L. Chuang [2]. This was my first step to a new adventure in this field. Among the new words learned were from Computer Science: Qubits (Quantum bits), entanglement, superposition, entropy, NISQ (Noisy Intermediate-scale quantum), and gates (Hadamard, Toffoli, Pauli, and others).
The above book, lets me refresh different courses such as linear algebra, numeric methods, advanced calculus, programming language, and physics (Quantum mechanics postulates), as well as knowing new mathematical concepts i.e. Matrix Exponential Function, Dirac notations, Tensor Product, and more. Every exercise was made in support of an excellent textbook titled "Linear Algebra" by Jörg Liesen and Volker Merhmann [3].
- Attending online events
But, is not only reading articles, books, and other sources about this field. In 2021, during the pandemic time, I attended my first online event at Quantum Business Europe. This experience was incredible to interact with people from those companies and start-ups (Quintessence Labs, ID Quantique, Toshiba, IBM Quantum, ColdQuanta, IonQ, D-Wave, etc) that are developing quantum software, quantum sensors, quantum hardware, quantum communications, and post-quantum cryptography. It's awesome to see all the conferences, workshops, and interviews as well. Thanks for the friendly hand from someone who I knew at this event, I was online in the Inside Quantum Technology Fall New York (IQT) in the same year, with a promotional code to stay in during all the conferences. American banks such as JP Morgan, are developing quantum technologies in cyber-security.
Through social and professional networks such as Twitter and LinkedIn, I began to contact and follow different people, companies, and star-up namely Qureca, Quantropi, Zurich Instruments, Honeywell Quantum, Girls in Quantum (Founded by 16 years old girl), Google, AWS, Microsoft, and more.
This field is facing different barriers. One of them is the noise problem in the superconducting qubits when is under an electromagnetic field and the use of quantum error-correcting codes in order to minimize the over-results. Nevertheless, an NMR qubit of a Desktop Quantum Computing Device from SpinQ works with the low a noise level as possible.
But, the most important step is how the Quantum Mechanics Principle came to trust in the fact they are reals, thanks to Professor Richard Feynman, the first pusher of Quantum Computing in the world. It´s great how to see when a qubit is giving results between 0 and 1, which is different from a classical computation device where the result of a bit is 0 or 1. In a real Quantum device, we can solve multiple operations in one shot, which this another advantage.
I am experimenting with this using different ways such as Qiskit, an excellent IBM Quantum Platform where you can start building algorithms putting the known gates and seeing the results. Every day, there are multiple advances in Quantum Research to improve every day different kinds of qubits (NMR, Superconducting/Semiconducting, Ion-Trap, Optical Photon) and new quantum material development.
Figure 1. My first single simulation on Qiskit.
Finally, my point in my first blog is to invite you to encourage your curiosity and interest in this experimental field. Don´t go back if any complexity is hard to overcome, but with your passion and virtues, you can reach any goals.
See you on the next blog.
- References
[1] Himo, Fahmi. "Recent Trends in Quantum Chemical Modeling of Enzymatic Reactions". J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2017, 139, 20, 6780–6786. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.7b02671
[2] Nielsen, Michael, and Chuang, Isaac. "Quantum Computing and Quantum Information". 10th Anniversary Edition. Cambridge University Press. 2010.
[3] Liesen, Jörg and Merhmann, Volker. "Linear Algebra" Springer Undergraduate Mathematics Series. Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015.