0:05

Physics World. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

0:08

has, this morning, decided to award a 2022

0:12

Nobel Prize in Physics in equal share

0:16

to Allee Aspen, Universite Paris a Clais,

0:19

and Ecole Polytechnique Palaisseux, France.

0:23

John F Klauser, J F Klauser and Associates,

0:27

Walnut Creek, California, USA.

0:30

And to Anton Seilinger, University of Vienna,

0:34

Austria. They received a prize

0:37

for experiments with entangled photons,

0:40

establishing the violation of Bell inequalities,

0:44

and pioneering quantum information science. Hello, and welcome

0:47

to the Physics World Stories podcast. I'm Andrew

0:50

Glester, and that was Hans Elegren, the secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy

0:55

of Sciences, announcing this year's winners of the Nobel Prize

1:00

in Physics. And in this episode, we'll be exploring how

1:03

the science that won that Nobel Prize is

1:06

being applied in real world technologies today.

1:10

We'll hear from Oscar Kennedy, a quantum engineer

1:12

at Oxford Quantum Circuits. But first, his Max Seek,

1:17

his company AEGIQ, that's a e g I q,

1:21

received the business startup aboard from the IOP

1:25

in 2021 for the development of a breakthrough quantum photonics

1:29

platform, which enabled new applications

1:32

in quantum communications, computing,

1:35

and imaging using high performance sources

1:38

of indistinguishable single photons.

1:41

EJEC is a quantum technology company.

1:46

So we are focused on

1:48

accelerating global adoption of quantum type

1:51

with the most scalable, technologies,

1:55

for mass market applications, and we use photonics

1:58

for that. As and as the main component,

2:03

and our first product is already in the market.

2:07

It's a source true true source of,

2:10

quantum light, mostly with all those. And there's more exciting stuff in a way.

2:15

We'll return to the tech very soon. But

2:18

first, just what did those scientists do to

2:20

win the Nobel Prize? They they proved

2:24

the inequalities as they called.

2:27

And so I'm sure some of the listeners

2:29

know what it is, but, for those who don't,

2:35

the North Irish physicist, John Bell, he was very concerned about, like,

2:40

quantum, and, like, is it real?

2:45

Is quantum mechanics correct? And so

2:49

he designed a set of, theoretical,

2:53

equations. Well, actually, they're inequalities, that if they were correct, if they held,

3:01

to test, that would mean that the quantum

3:03

mechanics isn't correct. And if they're violated,

3:08

that means the quantum mechanics is correct, and

3:12

we do not have something called hidden variables.

3:15

But, basically, the classical description,

3:19

doesn't hold on that level. So so John Klusser,

3:25

Alan Aspect, and Anton Zillinger. So they managed

3:30

to conduct a series of experiments that,

3:33

with ever increasing accuracy,

3:37

foreign has proved that, that is indeed the case, and they could

3:40

violate that inequality. So quantum works,

3:44

bottom line. Yeah. And you

3:48

and your company employ it? So the first thing we put

3:52

there is, is a generator

3:54

of identical indistinguishable,

3:59

single photons that are generated on demand. So you have

4:03

a very deterministic output. And that is a derivative

4:09

or part of building entangled states.

4:12

So in the same way, you can build a

4:15

bunch of photons. And this is exactly the

4:21

the opportunity that opens up because whole of

4:24

the quantum technology, so quantum computing, quantum networking,

4:27

and communication is based on the fact that entanglement exists,

4:31

and it's real. And when we say quantum entanglement,

4:36

it's it's a little bit different to what

4:38

happens with your shoelaces or the cables that

4:40

you have on your desk. It means that you can I mean, the

4:46

information is still, transferred with the speed of

4:48

light, but, nevertheless, you can,

4:52

know what the impact in 1 or the other

4:55

particle without directly measuring,

4:58

the first one, for example? And that that gives that opportunity for,

5:05

you know, new types and new ways to

5:07

send information across. Something called, say, quantum teleportation is just one

5:12

example. And it means that you can send information

5:16

from a to b without ever

5:19

actually transferring it from a to b. Go

5:21

on. That's the beauty. I mean, then we get

5:24

into the, bit where I need to get pen and

5:27

paper out. Okay. To to literally do the maths. Right?

5:33

Yeah. To show it. I I think, when you try to describe quantum mechanics verbally,

5:40

it's, the the one thing, that is more challenging

5:45

than actually doing quantum mechanics

5:47

is described in the verbal. The concept behind

5:49

quantum mechanics are quite a bit different from the,

5:56

mechanistic or the sensory world that we're used to.

6:02

I think having the word mechanics in there

6:04

is, it's a funny one because it's definitely not

6:07

mechanics, but it is mechanics.

6:11

So quite often, when we try to understand

6:15

new concepts, new ideas, we try to have some some relation to,

6:22

like, our our own perception,

6:25

our sensory experiences that we had before.

6:29

And with quantum, it's not possible. Like, you

6:31

know, you just came up with a very imaginary,

6:37

ways to describe, you know, nature.

6:40

You give it names, and you'd hear things

6:43

like wave functions, spin, you know, all these things.

6:47

And for some people, it might be, oh, yeah. That's a like, oh, yeah. That's really

6:51

spinning like this. And there is a way to make that

6:55

analogy, but actually it doesn't. It's just a way to name a property,

6:59

and you could have called it a, b, c, d, but then you will forget what

7:02

it is. It's like, you know, flavors in elementary particles.

7:07

I mean, they don't taste anything. You can't taste them. It it's impossible.

7:12

But, nevertheless, they are there. So

7:15

it's a way to, like, bring some structure to that,

7:20

zoo of different properties that are otherwise

7:24

unrelated to, to anything. And

7:28

this is saying micro world, so, basically,

7:32

a place where you have too many molecules

7:34

and atoms together, which, are us.

7:38

This world behaves very differently,

7:41

if you if you go down to single, single level.

7:45

So our all our sensory experiences are based on

7:51

group effects of everything. So it's large numbers

7:54

averaged out, like, for example, temperature. That's probably

7:57

the simplest analogy here. We just know that

8:00

temperature is the, it's the amount of energy there isn't, so

8:03

kinetic energy in the molecules around us.

8:06

But we say it's temperature in degrees. Like you know? And it's really

8:13

something that exists on on that level. There

8:15

is no such thing. You can you can make it you can

8:19

translate that in some ways to say, okay.

8:21

This is temperature. We're allowed to know the lattice or something,

8:25

but, actually, it's just the energy and the and the, the back of it.

8:32

So you have to accept that level of

8:34

obstruction. And, you know,

8:37

when you're playing a computer game and there are dragons

8:40

and all the fairies and all that stuff, and don't you don't

8:45

need them every day, but, you accept it.

8:47

Or if you believe in, you know, like, back in the day, we

8:50

had the, you know, the pantheon of gods,

8:53

for example, Greek mythology as an example.

8:57

Nobody have ever seen them. They still exist.

9:00

So there's a way for you to believe in things,

9:03

and just accept it as a as an

9:05

imaginary concept, and it works. I mean, that that's difficult.

9:09

And then then then Ben will came along, then the others came along and said, well,

9:14

give it a go, and it worked. So that's the difference. Right?

9:18

The this there isn't maths that proves the gods, and

9:22

there isn't maths that proves the fairies and

9:24

the dragons. Yeah. And that's the difference between our modern

9:27

society and, societies back in the day.

9:31

I know we have to develop and believe in science and scientific method.

9:36

And I think that's the fundamental difference that

9:38

allowed the society to have an incredible

9:43

development in the last 2 centuries

9:46

compared to everything that happened before, and that's

9:49

the, the main thing. And so you use that scientific method,

9:54

quite vigorously for testing quantum mechanics.

9:58

But does so does it, bother you when the word quantum is used

10:06

in marketing speak or to make things sound

10:09

more exotic? No.

10:12

I think it's fine. It it leads to some confusion sometimes,

10:17

what it is. Probably not everybody's gonna agree with me on

10:21

that, approach, but I think,

10:26

generally, quantum means something very progressive

10:29

right now or people trying to use it

10:31

to bring in that progressive, you know, cutting edge,

10:36

something. And that's for a good reason.

10:40

When did you sort of say, oh, this is this is the field for me I'm

10:44

gonna get into this? When I was doing my undergrad,

10:47

I just chose quantum physics.

10:52

It was in the early 2000. So

10:56

it was still, you know, just just at the time when,

11:01

you know, Alan Aspect and, the final experiments

11:05

were just happening there. And that that was the first time you start

11:09

hearing about, oh, the Bell inequality has been

11:12

violated. And then you had to figure out what's

11:15

happened, on that front. And we just knew that

11:19

quantum I mean, it was just generic feeling. That

11:22

quantum is, is an exciting it's a new

11:25

area even though, you know, there's already textbook,

11:27

but at the same time, it didn't feel like it's, it's established.

11:33

And so that that's how I started. Well, then I did a PhD, then I

11:36

did the research fellowship, in and around this field.

11:41

And then we observed how, so quantum

11:45

science transformed into quantum technologies,

11:48

and into sector

11:51

emerging sector in our economy. So UK was

11:56

the first country in the world, to put together,

12:00

quantum technology program. And, you know, one of

12:06

the masterminds behind it is, sir Peter Knight.

12:11

And that started that was signed off in

12:13

7/13, started in 7/14. We just saw how,

12:18

you know, explosive development it was.

12:21

To give you a comparison, so the very

12:23

first quantum UK Quantum Technology Showcase,

12:28

I don't know exact number, but I was there. It was 2014,

12:32

and there were probably 40, 50 people,

12:35

something like that. This year's

12:37

Quantum Technology Showcase, the

12:41

show sold out month and a half before

12:46

at the beginning, and it hit the limits of the

12:49

Queen Elizabeth the second, the exhibition center. What

12:53

kind of technologies were we seeing? So the QuantumTech has got, like, 3 key pillars

12:58

and in terms of applications. So one is quantum computing

13:03

and probably the one that's most talked about.

13:07

The second, is quantum communications,

13:11

and the third is quantum sensing metrology imaging.

13:14

I mean, they they they should go in no particular order. I just named that like

13:18

that. But in terms of importance,

13:22

they are I mean, you cannot derive one that is more important

13:27

than the other. That's that's impossible.

13:30

But I think you should really compare the quantum technology

13:33

to how Digitalk came to to us. So quantum is

13:37

there to, be the next

13:40

technological suite, if you want, the set of technologies

13:44

that's gonna come after digital. So,

13:48

you know, back in the day when people first rolled out transistors on, you know, Von

13:52

Neumann logic, Did they think we're gonna be recording this

13:56

podcast on a digital device? Probably not.

14:01

Same applies to, to quantum. I think we're at this, really,

14:06

really exciting stage where it's it's full opportunity,

14:11

and you can it's gonna grow, incredible, and

14:14

we'll see some incredible applications coming out of

14:16

that. So we see, incredible applications. Right? But

14:19

will we see day to day applications?

14:22

Of course. Do you use digital day to day now?

14:25

Yeah. So you will do quantum.

14:28

How is quantum going to improve what we're doing on the day to day?

14:32

Well, it's gonna be faster,

14:35

better computing, better, more sensitive sensors,

14:40

better, more secure communication. It's that that's what it's gonna be. So

14:46

you're gonna be able to solve the problems,

14:50

computationally that were impossible with digital completely.

14:55

That includes anything from drug simulation

15:00

discovery to the large data,

15:04

processing and, you know, big data

15:07

machine learning and quantum computing and neural networks

15:11

are, entangled,

15:14

triplets. You know? It's just that quantum is something that has been

15:18

unknown and sitting in the dark, for a really long time.

15:22

And then, you know, quantum communications is gonna take us

15:26

into a different domain in terms of how

15:29

we send data across,

15:32

how we share data. You know, when digital came over, you stopped

15:37

writing as many letters by your hand. Right?

15:40

And that's completely changed how we share information.

15:45

Likewise, quantum is gonna change, the way we share information as well. It's

15:49

gonna be everywhere. I think it's not doesn't mean that you're gonna have a, you know,

15:53

a 100% quantum smartphone in your pocket.

15:57

It would have elements of everything in it.

16:00

It's gonna touch in every aspect of life.

16:03

Maybe you won't know that it does it,

16:06

but it would. We'll come back to Max

16:08

later in the podcast. But here's Oscar Kennedy. I'm a quantum engineer.

16:13

I work at Oxford Quantum Circuits, and we're

16:15

a start up from the University of Oxford,

16:18

Berkeley based in Reading, and we're building quantum computers.

16:22

We're trying to build them so that we can put them on the Internet and provide

16:26

access to them to the world to solve

16:28

some really interesting problems. What's a quantum

16:31

engineer? There's probably a lot of things that

16:33

are a quantum engineer. Specifically in our company,

16:36

the quantum engineers are the people who are

16:40

doing measurements of our quantum systems

16:44

and building them, I suppose. So

16:49

a little bit of background, we are a company that builds superconducting quantum computers.

16:54

What that means is that we have a

16:56

chip much like a kind of like a microelectronics

16:59

chip, but instead of being made of silicon,

17:01

we have a post a chip that's got superconductors on

17:05

it. And we design these chips to

17:08

realize superconducting cubits, superconducting cubits. I realize I'm gonna have to

17:14

go down the hill of jargon. A superconducting cubit is another thing that we've

17:18

engineered. So it's basically a system which has

17:21

2 different energy, 2 different states. So it

17:23

can be up or down, you can think of

17:26

it as. And our quantum computer

17:29

uses the fact that it can be in these 2 different states, but it can also

17:33

be in a quantum superposition of these 2

17:35

states at the same time. So you can't just take a chip and say, alright. Cool.

17:38

I've made it. So it's a quantum computer. There's a lot of stuff that goes around

17:41

that. So in order for

17:44

our chip to operate as the quantum regime,

17:47

it has to be at really low temperatures.

17:50

So we put it in a cryostat which will reach kind of 10 millikelvin.

17:53

So that's, a 100th of a degree above absolute 0.

17:58

So that's really cold. And these are incredibly impressive pieces of kit.

18:02

They're beautiful. One of my fun facts about them is

18:05

so repeated without sourcing.

18:09

But, if you think of like extreme environments

18:11

in the universe, you've got the highest temperature,

18:13

the highest pressure, the lowest temperature, the lowest

18:16

pressure. Most of these extreme environments are created by

18:20

the universe and nature. So, like, the the inside of a sun is gonna be hotter

18:23

and higher pressure than anything we can dream of. The coldest place in the universe that

18:27

we know of are things that humans have created and that's the only like

18:30

human engineered extreme. Unless, of course, I'm talking rubbish because I

18:34

don't have any source of that. Well, but I think that's true. So we put them inside these cryostats.

18:38

We cool them down to really low temperatures

18:40

and we have to do some clever, we're gonna interact with these by sending pulses

18:45

of microwaves down. We use these pulses of microwaves to control

18:49

the state of our qubit, but also to read out the state of our qubit.

18:54

And so we've got to play this difficult

18:56

game where we've got to take our delicate

18:58

quantum chip and isolate it from the environment

19:01

and the world so that it stays, you know, lovely in quantum,

19:04

but also connect it just enough so that

19:06

we can also send all these control signals

19:09

down so that we can actually do intentional

19:11

computation. And so a quantum engineer, which was your

19:13

original question, is someone who sort of bridges this gap between

19:18

our superconducting chip and the outside world. We

19:21

build, build the microwave environments and send the microwave

19:25

pulses down, interpret the data we're getting out, and use

19:28

this data to understand what's happening in our

19:31

chip so that we can optimize that for the future. The superconducting

19:34

chip, the quantum chip, how do you make

19:37

that in the first place? So there's a lot of

19:40

quite well established microfabrication techniques.

19:44

So this is not really specifically the realms

19:46

of quantum. This is more the realm of

19:48

just microfabrication. So you can deposit

19:52

thin you you take a planar substrate, which

19:55

will be a crystalline substrate, polished very flat,

19:58

and you can buy these off the shelf. You'll clean it up so that it's not

20:02

got gunk all over it, and then you'll deposit a superconducting

20:06

film, and you can deposit superconducting films through lots

20:09

of different techniques. You can typically, it will involve a vacuum chamber where

20:13

you either evaporate a metal or you do something

20:17

called sputtering, where sputtering is basically you just

20:19

take your gas and you bombard a metallic target to knock off bits of

20:23

it, which will go and eventually sit on your substrate.

20:26

You've now got a a film and you can do lithography, and lithography is sort of

20:30

like old school photography, where you're using,

20:34

chemicals which are sensitive to types of radiation,

20:38

shining radiation on those chemicals, and then putting

20:41

them in a developer. And that developer chemical

20:43

will selectively process

20:45

the bit of the chemical that's seen this radiation

20:48

and leave the stuff that hasn't seen the radiation untouched.

20:52

And this allows you to and so you can use different,

20:55

fabrication techniques to build up layers of resist

21:00

and pattern your film that you've deposited.

21:03

We could spend maybe a few hours doing a rundown of

21:07

techniques. But the the basic idea is it's

21:09

a bit like photography, but it obviously is

21:11

a much finer feature process,

21:15

more precise, carefully calibrated, and this allows you to build up a

21:18

device layer by layer. It's an awfully long

21:20

way from cryo chambers and making sure that

21:25

your superconducting chip is is exactly the right

21:28

temperature to quantum computers being part of our everyday. You're

21:32

absolutely right. So, Optum Circuits,

21:36

we're a full hardware stack company. So we're

21:38

interested in basically doing everything from making the

21:41

chip, installing in a cryostat, putting microwave lines down the cryostat, connecting that

21:46

up to classical computers and control systems, which

21:49

will send the right microwave pulses down,

21:52

and then building a software infrastructure that will

21:54

put this on the cloud so that end

21:56

user can log in and say, I wanna do this

21:59

computation and, like, compile that computation and send

22:01

it into our chip. So there's a but there's lots of

22:05

different stages there which span huge different technical

22:08

remits. Yeah. It's difficult.

22:11

Yeah. Yeah. But but how I mean, is it a thing that's

22:14

happening? So we have a quantum computer which is

22:17

currently online based on the time. So I think it's

22:20

on from 10 till 4 GMT or UK time, and you can log

22:25

on to AWS Bracket. So it's an Amazon

22:29

Quantum service, and that will allow you to send compute directly to our

22:34

quantum chip, which is in our lab downstairs. Our quantum computer is called Lucy, and so

22:39

we name all of our different quantum computing generations after famous pioneering female scientists.

22:44

And this one is named after Lucy Mensing.

22:48

So you can currently access it.

22:51

The fact that you can access it doesn't

22:53

necessarily mean that it's a quantum computer that's

22:55

gonna give you a quantum advantage and a speed up over a data center. That's a

22:59

really different thing And conclusive demonstration of this is yet to

23:03

be done in the community, but it's that's

23:05

basically what we're all working towards. We're working towards a a quantum computer, which

23:10

does all like, we we know is a doing computations and we know is quantum mechanical.

23:15

We can show all these things, but is also then able to offer you a meaningful speed

23:20

up in real world algorithms or applications

23:23

because of its quantumness. And that's sort of

23:25

the holy grail of the field. Okay. So

23:27

So that's the holy grail of the field, quicker processing. It's tricky. So every time you

23:32

say quicker, quantum people are really deep in

23:34

the quantum are gonna sort of wince and go.

23:37

Because it's not exactly quicker.

23:40

It might be that your algorithm solves more

23:42

quickly because quantum computers are very powerful, but the

23:47

specific compute steps are not necessarily super fast.

23:51

This maybe gets a bit nitty gritty in detailing.

23:53

But rather than faster, I think I prefer personally to think of

23:57

more powerful in certain applications. So there are

24:00

some things where the fact that your when you get down

24:05

to your low level processor,

24:08

it's operating under the laws of quantum physics

24:11

rather than classical physics. There are some algorithms where that fact offers

24:16

you a meaningful speed up for real world algorithms, and that's really well proved out for

24:21

a few algorithms. Peter Shaw's

24:24

factoring algorithm is one of the well known

24:26

ones where it's factoring prime numbers, which has

24:28

huge value internationally

24:32

for, breaking to certain types of encryption.

24:35

That's really rigorously fleshed out, but there's lots of kind of

24:40

ideas around ways that it could be used for things

24:43

like drug discovery, and these are also becoming

24:45

more fleshed out and more real. Is that

24:47

where we'll see quantum computers or are they

24:50

going to be as everywhere as mobile phones and laptops and things?

24:55

I think in the medium term,

24:58

quantum computers will be used for high value

25:00

computes that are hard to do. I'm a

25:02

nuts and bolts scientist. Right? So this is my interpretation rather than my, like,

25:08

in the field. Yeah. So I am much

25:10

more hardware focused, but I think that it will probably be

25:14

seen in a few classes of

25:17

problems. Some of the classes are probably gonna be things like optimization problems, which you see,

25:21

you know, across industries. It spans everything, whether

25:23

your Amazon wanted to know how to send out all your trucks efficiently or I don't

25:27

know. Like, there's countless examples of optimizations which have huge value.

25:33

Other things are problems which have intrinsic quantum

25:35

mechanical parts to them. So, you know, I

25:38

wanna discover a new drug or synthesize a

25:40

molecule, and a molecule, and all of these molecules are made up of atoms, which obey

25:42

the rules of quantum mechanics. And it turns out that simulating quantum mechanics on a classical

25:45

processor is really expensive, especially when you throw in a 100 molecules that are all interacting and have many degrees of freedom. It's just

25:50

impossible to simulate something like caffeine, which is a, you know,

25:58

a simple molecule. You can't do it exactly on a classical

26:02

computer. So there's lots of ideas that if you

26:05

can take the quantum mechanics that's hard to simulate and literally just put it physically into

26:08

your chip, you might have a huge advantage in terms of your

26:12

compute. So that's one of the another big class

26:16

of algorithm, which might be drug discovery, might

26:19

be material science, and there's lots of interesting stuff that will

26:23

hopefully happen there. That goal of creating quantum

26:26

computers that outperform classical computers at specific tasks

26:31

has been discussed regularly on Physics World in the past few years.

26:35

Recently, the magazine published an interview with IBM's

26:37

Jay Gambetta, who said that from 2025,

26:41

his company is planning to develop modular processes

26:44

with 100,000 or more cubits.

26:47

These devices would achieve a so called general

26:50

quantum advantage. They consistently outperform classical computers

26:54

and conduct complex computations beyond the means of

26:57

classical devices. You can find that interview on the Physics

27:01

World website. But let's get back to my conversation

27:05

with Oscar Kennedy. How is the Nobel Prize

27:08

win relevant to your work? Day to day, it's

27:12

a similar field. Big picture.

27:16

It probably without it, we wouldn't be where

27:18

we are doing it. So you've got

27:23

in the sixties, you've got John Bell, I think sixties sixties ish. You've got, a really

27:29

pioneering physicist who's inter taking some of these ideas around quantum

27:33

mechanics and codifying them in information theory. And that's essentially

27:38

what we're doing. Right? We're quantum computers, so we're saying,

27:42

we've got this whole idea of information theory,

27:44

which is worked out really nicely for classical

27:47

computers. It's binary and we know how we

27:49

can add binary and or add bits and

27:51

do binary operations and combine all of this and put it

27:55

inside a computer, which is gonna, you know,

27:57

allow us to talk over the Internet. There's an analogous theory aside like, a a

28:05

sister theory, I guess you could call it, of quantum information theory, where you're saying, okay.

28:10

The bits which are your physical, like, bottom level of your compute,

28:15

now behave according to quantum mechanics.

28:18

And so bits can rather than having a

28:21

well defined state, they have a quantum state,

28:24

which is saying I can be in a superposition of 1 and 0 instead of 1

28:27

or 0 in a classical state.

28:30

And they so they codified certain experiments according to

28:35

this quantum information theory. And

28:39

that was and then when they so that's

28:42

what was happened in the Bell inequalities. They were basically saying that, you know, we can

28:46

think about sending entangled photons

28:48

and we can measure them simultaneously a long

28:51

distance away. And the correlations between

28:53

the measurements we do will

28:57

exceed a certain threshold, and we know that

28:59

if we exceed this threshold, there must be

29:01

some quantum entanglement and action because there's no

29:04

way that you could have these classical these correlations if

29:07

a photon was either in 1 or in

29:10

0. It has to be in the superposition

29:12

of 1 and 0 at the same time. And so these were

29:16

incredible experiments that first sort of used this

29:19

quantum information theory, really demonstrate that quantum information

29:23

approaches were were valid, were represented by physical reality.

29:30

They're they're incredible. But day to day, it probably doesn't have,

29:33

you know, huge ramifications on what I'm doing

29:35

in the life. But and so how does it feel when you're sort of, you know,

29:38

you're a quantum engineer and the Nobel Prize is given to

29:43

quantum physics. Yeah. I mean, it it it's wicked.

29:46

It's really cool. It is my field, so my interest has

29:50

been peaked for, you know, the last decade. But, yeah, it it it's it's incredible to

29:56

see it happening in the field. I I think there's more Nobel prizes to

30:00

be won in quantum computing and quantum information

30:02

to be sure. One application of this quantum

30:05

entanglement is quantum computers.

30:08

But there's also quantum teleportation.

30:11

So quantum teleportation is about teleporting a quantum

30:14

state. So I use a resource of entangled,

30:18

systems. I've got 2 a system, and

30:21

I can then perform a measurement on one

30:23

system, transmit the

30:29

result of that information to someone else, a different

30:34

place, they can then perform some control operations on

30:38

their other part of this entangled system and recreate the quantum state that we initially

30:44

had. That's probably wrong in details. I've not looked

30:48

at this in a decade, but it's about,

30:51

being able to physically send quantum states over

30:54

a long distance without necessarily

30:57

transmitting the physical objects which encoded those quantum states.

31:01

Maybe that's a good way of thinking about it. So I could, you know, if I

31:04

have a photon that's got a polarization or

31:06

some like, there's a couple of photons, they've got a quantum state. I could physically give

31:09

you those photons and that would transmit that

31:11

quantum state because matter had moved.

31:14

Instead of doing that, I can encode some

31:16

quantum state. I can do some measurements. I can send you information

31:20

and allow you to prepare the same quantum

31:22

state without physically sending you the things that originally

31:26

had that quantum state in them so that the state is being teleported.

31:31

Okay. It's so it's slightly less exciting than

31:35

what my head does as someone who

31:37

used to watch Quantum Leap instead of do

31:40

my homework and, also like Star Trek a lot. Me yeah.

31:45

I'm not gonna engage it thinking about how we're gonna build

31:50

a teleporter out of it. But yeah. It's

31:52

not gonna let you send things faster than

31:54

light even information, because you need to transmit

31:57

classical information. It would probably be very hard

31:59

to work out how you make a matter

32:02

transporter from it. Probably not possible. People are very clever. Maybe

32:06

someone can work it out. Returning to Max now. I asked him about this distance between

32:12

where we are now in quantum computing and

32:14

where these technologies might take us in the future?

32:20

Does it you know, being a long way from something,

32:23

does it make that something less exciting?

32:26

That's that's number 1. Right? Okay.

32:30

Secondly, you don't necessarily need to have everything on

32:33

your phone, and that's why, I think direct comparison to digital

32:38

doesn't hold, exactly because we you try to say that

32:42

it's gonna work, in the same way as digital works, and it won't.

32:47

You know, you could have as well said, like, how am I gonna use my mobile

32:51

phone if all the ink I mean, I need a pen to write with ink. How

32:55

would that thing is gonna sit in my pocket? I mean, my pocket is gonna be

32:58

dirty with ink. It's gonna spill.

33:01

But actually, it turns out you don't need to because you have a screen with a

33:04

keyboard on it, instead of ink and and and pen.

33:09

That's that's that comparison. So I I don't think it holds valid,

33:15

in that front. Max's company is also looking to space applications.

33:21

There's a number of them. So firstly,

33:25

space is gonna be one of the first

33:27

enabling applications to build global communication networks with

33:31

Quantum, primarily

33:34

because of the certain aspects with losses

33:38

associated in, say, fiber quants,

33:41

and and the speed at which you can deploy global networks.

33:46

Secondly, quantum sensors, quantum

33:50

gravitational sensors, are going to be,

33:54

an essential element for high precision positioning systems

33:58

and navigation. So that's exclusively

34:01

or needed for space and any anything that

34:05

flies, basically. You're gonna see how it supplements and then,

34:12

extend it to, say, standard GPS capability,

34:16

which you won't require, in fact, the actual signal to be transferred. You'll just

34:21

know where you are anyway, because of the high precision

34:26

that, like, pseudo inertial sensor, if you want.

34:31

So and the the results are going to

34:33

be potentially distributed computing capability in space as well.

34:37

So we can have an onboard, simple information processing.

34:42

So I I know this is a silly question, but when?

34:46

Soon. That's the short answer.

34:50

I guess depends on the time horizon. I

34:52

think space is pro if you're talking specifically

34:55

about space. You know, you get to give it a

34:59

couple of years, primarily because if you wanna put that in

35:03

space, it needs to go through quite rigorous, testing,

35:06

and, you know, qualification. So

35:10

we're probably 2, 3, 4 years away from,

35:15

depending on what application you're talking about.

35:19

So applications in our everyday life such as optimization problems can

35:24

be run on computing. That's something that's already happening, and we're just

35:28

seeing that it's being scaled. Quantum

35:31

safety, quantum communication,

35:35

it is happening already. Moreover, the first standards,

35:39

requirements, to be quantum safe,

35:42

they come in force around 7 24.

35:46

So we are a year and a half away from that point.

35:49

So that is less that's sooner than than

35:51

in fact. Sooner than I thought you meant when you said soon.

35:55

I mean, I'm not gonna give you a number when a 1,000,000 cubit computer is gonna

35:58

come live, but it doesn't have to. Yeah. Okay. So

36:03

what's what's next off your production line then?

36:06

So we'll expand the portfolio primarily to help

36:10

people and academics who are doing research

36:14

and quantum science. So you're gonna see,

36:18

entanglement sources from us. You're gonna see additional,

36:24

chips that help you manipulate

36:27

the state of the photons. And that creates, like, a very silent toolkit

36:32

for people to advance significantly advance their research

36:36

in quantum information or quantum

36:39

anything, even imaging. So our our our first

36:45

focus is to, to bring back,

36:49

to the research community, to the ecosystem,

36:52

that high efficiency, that you can achieve with with the sources.

36:58

And if you think, about, like, what do you need when you're

37:02

trying to do something in any domain, like

37:04

a measurement, a data transmission, you need to have a source,

37:08

or generator of that data or something,

37:11

then you go to transfer it, manipulate it,

37:13

and then you're good to measure it. So what we do is supply that first

37:18

component, the first component in the in that

37:22

food chain of, of doing things.

37:25

And up until now, there were nothing

37:28

really efficient, on the market to to do this. So,

37:34

it's, it's a simple thing. Sounds quite,

37:39

you know, complicated, if you give it a full name.

37:43

That is basically a generator of 2 quantum light, and that

37:47

that unlocks, unlimited possibilities in fact. These real world applications

37:55

of quantum mechanics are born out of

37:58

these concepts like spooky action at a distance.

38:02

Here's Oscar Kennedy again. I hate the term spooky action at a

38:05

distance. I might even have used it as well.

38:08

But I hate it. I think it's like

38:11

this real disservice to quantum physics where we

38:14

talk about like things being spooky. I think it's a really good way to

38:17

make like, if you introduce a new topic by telling everyone, yeah, it's impossible to understand.

38:22

Your chances of getting people like thinking like, oh, yeah. I understand that. That makes sense.

38:27

Is quite low. So it's that's a personal problem. I it

38:32

it is it's a challenging thing to understand.

38:36

I think sometimes it you can state it

38:38

as just facts. So, you know, like,

38:43

a when we look down to basic physics,

38:45

we find that things are quantum mechanical. And

38:47

what quantum mechanics says is that systems have discrete states and you can think

38:53

of that as 1 or 0, but typically things are not just 1 or 0. It's

38:57

102 012345, you know. There's many states or ways the

39:02

the state, physical system can be, and they

39:05

are discrete. So it's not a continuous thing like, you know, if you've got a piece

39:08

of elastic, you can stretch that and you

39:10

can continuously go from one length to a much longer length, and it can be every

39:13

length in between that. It would be like the elastic band could

39:17

only be length 1, and then it will stretch to another length, then it'll stretch to

39:20

another length. Like maybe think of a chain,

39:23

like you're adding discrete links to the chain.

39:25

So that so that's one part quantum mechanics

39:27

is saying that systems are discrete. Another weird part is saying that discrete systems

39:34

can be the same it can be in

39:36

multiple states at the same time. That's also

39:40

counterintuitive to what we see in our everyday life.

39:44

You know, like, my hair will be sticking up or flat

39:48

to my head. I I say that because I can see myself on screen.

39:52

But, you know, like, that that's also not

39:54

the way that we experience everyday life. But,

39:56

you know, fine quantum mechanics, it's not a

39:59

theory of like the macroscopic every day. It's a theory of

40:02

the very small, like, you know, when I

40:05

think of air, I don't think of the fact that it's made up of molecules and

40:08

atoms. When I experienced that on a macroscopic level,

40:12

that's not how it interacts with me. But

40:14

we we don't think of the fact that's made up of atoms as super scary. It's

40:17

just the fact that when you zoom in really far,

40:20

things are not exactly the same as they are on the macroscopic level. So I think

40:23

that that's it's different, that things are quantized

40:26

and that they can be in many states at once.

40:29

And then you have entanglement, which is another

40:31

bit of tricky physics.

40:35

But once you've accepted that, you know, a system is in a quantum state, which is

40:39

a discrete state and it can be in multiple discrete states,

40:42

then we say that, okay, we know that 2 quantum systems can be entangled and that

40:47

their states are correlated in some way.

40:51

So it it's tricky. It's tricky to understand. I

40:56

think quite often you have to work through the maths.

41:00

But I think that it it it's one of those things like that. That is just

41:03

how the universe is. And

41:06

it happens to not really align with our

41:09

everyday macroscopic experience of the universe. Both Oscar and Max

41:13

were keen to express just how exciting it is to be involved

41:17

in this area of physics. OTC, of course,

41:20

are hiring in all sorts of roles that transcend quantum information because we're building a world

41:24

class company, and we need people of all

41:26

roles. So if anyone wants to join the quantum revolution, we're always looking.

41:30

I think the thing I'd like to mention is,

41:33

is firstly invite people to join the,

41:37

the quantum technology community, enroll into courses. So

41:42

if you're considering what are you gonna do

41:44

with physics, I'd say go into quantum, learn a little

41:48

bit about quantum mechanics, learn quantum computing,

41:50

learn those concepts. It is the future

41:54

of the, you know, workplace, basically.

41:58

That's the that's that's the very forward looking,

42:02

thing to do. And, of course, we are always happy, you

42:07

know, to help people, you know, drive that research, drive more knowledge.

42:12

So we're happy to, do some custom, you know, you know, do

42:17

joint grants. Let's let's do joint research. We're

42:20

we're happy to help. And we'd absolutely love to see, new results

42:25

coming out in the community. And our whole, say,

42:29

product services, everything that we do is designed to make

42:33

that happen. And we're about driving the efficiency and and

42:37

the speed of that. And how do people

42:40

get in touch with you? Just reach out on LinkedIn.

42:45

Go on our website, say hello, anywhere. We'll post links to Max

42:50

and Oscar's work on the Physics World website,

42:53

physics world dot com. You can discover much

42:55

more about some of the themes discussed today

42:57

within the quantum section of that website, physicsworld.comforward/cforward/quantum.

43:05

At that link, you can sign up to

43:07

our quantum bimonthly newsletter.

43:10

As a podcast, we'll be back next month

43:12

and it's December, so it's time to dust

43:14

off those Christmas lists as we look back

43:17

at some of the best physics books released

43:20

this year. And thank you very much for listening.