Event

Quantum physics research is providing surprising new avenues to solve longstanding challenges in energy - from lossy power distribution systems to inefficient large-scale fertilizer production.  In this talk, I will explain how learning to build technologies that use exotic quantum effects as resources provides an exciting opportunity to improve the generation, distribution, and use of energy.  My presentation will focus on the specific example of global efforts to build special-purpose quantum computers know as quantum simulators capable of addressing critical challenges in chemistry and materials science with relevance to energy.  I will discuss my own group’s efforts on quantum control with trapped ions, describing how our experiments are revealing new fundamental physics insights and underpinning the development of useful quantum simulators.  This will include experiments using quantum control techniques to both keep quantum states “alive” and synthesize strongly correlated systems that do not exist in nature, along with the demonstration of the first quantum spin simulator at a computationally relevant scale.