Quantum Science and Engineering
This group focuses on the interdisciplinary academic discipline that studies quantum mechanics for the acquisition, transmission, and processing of information with applications to sensing, communication, and computation, respectively. Meet some of the faculty active in this group below.
Associate Professor of Chemistry and Physics and Astronomy
“The foundation of quantum computing is the key to various quantum information technologies.”
His research uses the basics of quantum computing for high-sensitivity physical measurements. In 2011, using high-magnetic fields, Takahashi and his colleagues managed to suppress decoherence, one of the key stumbling blocks in quantum computing. Decoherence has been described as a “quantum bug” that destroys fundamental properties that quantum computers would rely on.
His team has improved the sensitivity of the magnetic resonance spectroscopy to the level of a single molecule using quantum sensing technology. Takahashi’s interdisciplinary experimental research group overlaps in the areas of physical chemistry, quantum information science and condensed matter physics.
A former Hitachi semiconductor engineer, Takahashi now collaborates with Trojan engineers like USC Viterbi’s Stephen Cronin. They recently received the Zumberge Preliminary Studies Research Award for “Development of Bright and Stable Diamond Quantum Emitters for Quantum Sensing Applications.”
Viterbi Professorship in Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Chemistry and Physics and Astronomy
“Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems that are currently impossible for classical computers, like simulating complex chemical reactions or breaking modern cryptographic codes.”
A variety of factors can cause errors, or noise, including heat, the presence of magnetic fields, or imperfections in hardware. Making quantum computers faster and better able to solve increasingly complex problems requires advanced noise suppression. One way to achieve this is encoding information in a single qubit (a unit of information in quantum computing) across multiple physical qubits. This achieves redundancy, so if an error occurs, it can be detected and fixed without the original information being lost. The same principle applies to telecommunications.
Lidar and other researchers are pushing the known boundaries on demonstrating the ability of quantum computers to speed up calculations. For example, in 2023, he and his former graduate student Bibek Pokharel, currently a research scientist at IBM Quantum, demonstrated the first unequivocal algorithmic quantum speedup advantage. Using a 27-qubit IBM Montreal Quantum chip, and with the help of error-suppression methods they developed, they showed that the quantum computer could win a “Jeopardy”-like game: It correctly guessed secret strings of bits faster than the most efficient classical computing algorithm, with an advantage that became more pronounced the longer the bitstring was.
Professor of Physics and Astronomy
"Computing is essential to the fields of quantum science and engineering because understanding quantum phenomena requires the modeling of complex, interacting particles in quantum systems, such as electrons in superconductors. These models are often highly intricate, and their properties can typically only be uncovered through advanced computational methods, such as Quantum Monte Carlo. Additionally, emerging quantum computing technology enables us to simulate dynamic processes in interacting quantum systems. For instance, at our Quantum Innovation Center, we utilize the IBM quantum computer to explore these processes.”
His group integrates computing with quantum science by employing advanced techniques like renormalization group, quantum Monte Carlo, and exact diagonalization to investigate many-body systems in fields such as quantum magnetism and superconductivity. Notable accomplishments include applying the Stochastic Series Expansion Method to study quantum spin liquids and developing optimization algorithms for nanoscale opto-electronic devices. Haas’s team also explores quantum dynamics and topological systems, contributing to the understanding of noise-assisted tunneling and hybrid topological phases.