A selection of the most important recent news, articles, and papers about Quantum.
General News, Articles, and Analyses
Nu Quantum leverages NQCC alliance to launch Oxbridge quantum computing initiative
Author: Tony Quested
(Wednesday, October 2, 2024) “Cambridge’s Nu Quantum and the National Quantum Computing Centre (NQCC) in Harwell, today announce Project IDRA – the first phase of a four-year venture to build a pioneering optically connected, multi-node distributed quantum computing system. Nu Quantum has opened an office at NQCC, in addition to its Cambridge headquarters to maximise the collaboration.”
Launched major quantum technology initiative at OsloMet – OsloMet
https://www.oslomet.no/en/about/news/launched-major-quantum-technology-initiative
(Thursday, October 3, 2024) “The Minister of Digitalisation and Public Governance, Karianne Tung; the Minster of Defense Bjørn Arild Gram and the Minister of Research and Higher Education Oddmund Hoel have agreed to set aside NOK 70 million annually in the Norwegian state budget for research into quantum technology. The ministers visited OsloMet’s Quantum Hub to launch the initiative, which they described as highly anticipated.”
Achieving Remote Ion-Ion Entanglement: Paving the Way for Scalable Quantum Networking
https://ionq.com/posts/achieving-remote-ion-ion-entanglement-paving-the-way-for-scalable-quantum
(Thursday, October 3, 2024) “We recently achieved the second major technical milestone on our journey in photonic interconnects, our core technology that we believe will enable quantum networking between and within quantum computers. The recently achieved milestone – ion-ion interconnect entanglement – marks first-time remote entanglement in a commercial environment of two qubits. Building off our ion-photon entanglement achievement announced in February, this demonstration showcases the second out of four milestones on the path to developing photonic interconnects.”
Australia is making a billion-dollar bet on a ‘useful’ quantum computer. So what are we buying? – ABC News
(Thursday, October 3, 2024) “Australia is making a billion-dollar bet on a “useful” quantum computer in the Queensland capital, but surprisingly few experts agree on what the nation will get in return for its investment.”
Quantum computing firms D-Wave and Rigetti face stock exchange delisting, again – DCD
(Monday, October 7, 2024) “D-Wave and Rigetti Computing both announced they have received letters, from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq respectively, warning they are not complying with the minimum required share price for listing. As a result, both could be delisted if their share prices do not improve. This is the second time Rigetti has fallen foul of Nasdaq’s listing requirements and D-Wave’s third time with the NYSE.”
US Air Force reservist raises $5M for UK quantum start-up TreQ
https://news.sky.com/story/us-air-force-reservist-raises-5m-for-uk-quantum-start-up-treq-13229603
Author: Mark Kleinman
(Monday, October 7, 2024) “A US Air Force Reserve brigadier-general will this week unveil a $5m funding boost for her British-based quantum computing start-up. Sky News understands that Mandy Birch, who is also an adviser to the UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre, has secured the capital for TreQ, a manufacturing company focused on building and operating open-architecture quantum computers.”
Articles Related to Other News
Home – TreQ
“TreQ is a global, high-level manufacturing company that builds and operates bespoke quantum computing clusters, when and where our clients need them. We serve pioneers who are passionate about advancing opportunity, discovery, and collective security. TreQ expedites the journey from components and prototypes to useful and usable next-gen computing systems for businesses, institutions, and communities.”
Technical Papers, Articles, and Preprints
[2410.02446] Quantum Machine Learning for Digital Health? A Systematic Review
https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02446
Authors: Gupta, Riddhi S.; Wood, Carolyn E.; Engstrom, Teyl; Pole, Jason D.; and Shrapnel, Sally
(Thursday, October 3, 2024) “With the digitization of health data, the growth of electronic health and medical records lowers barriers for using algorithmic techniques for data analysis. While classical machine learning techniques for health data approach commercialization, there is not yet clear evidence whether quantum machine learning (QML) will provide any empirical advantage for digital health data processing. In this systematic literature review we assess whether QML algorithms have the potential to outperform existing classical methods in efficacy or efficiency. We include digital electronic health/medical records (EH/MRs) and data considered to be a reasonable proxy to EH/MRs. Eligible QML algorithms must be designed for quantum computing hardware, as opposed to quantum-inspired techniques. PubMed, Embase, IEEE, Scopus and arXiv yielded 4915 studies between 2015 to 10 June 2024. After screening 169 eligible studies, most studies contained widespread technical misconceptions about QML and we excluded 123 studies for insufficient rigor in analysis. Of the remaining 46 studies, only 16 studies consider realistic QML operating conditions, either by testing algorithms on quantum hardware, or using noisy quantum circuits when assessing QML algorithms. We find QML applications in digital health focus primarily on clinical decision support rather than health service delivery or public health. Nearly all QML models are linear quantum models, and therefore represent a subset of general quantum algorithms. Meanwhile, novel data-encoding strategies do not address scalability issues, except in regimes requiring restrictive assumptions about quantum hardware, rendering these protocols inefficient for the general encoding of large health datasets. By establishing the current state of evidence for QML-based health applications, we pave the way for meaningful dialogue about QML use-case discovery in digital health.”
