USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center
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The USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center (QCC) is a joint scientific research effort between
Lockheed Martin The Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American Arms industry, defense and aerospace manufacturer with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta on March 15, 1995. It is headquartered in North ...
Corporation and the
University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...
(USC). The QCC is housed at the
Information Sciences Institute The USC Information Sciences Institute (ISI) is a component of the University of Southern California (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering, and specializes in research and development in information processing, computing, and communications techn ...
(ISI), a computer science and engineering research unit of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, and is jointly operated by ISI and Lockheed Martin. USC faculty, ISI researchers and students are performing basic and applied research into quantum computing, and are collaborating with researchers around the world. The QCC uses a D-Wave Two quantum annealing system, manufactured by
D-Wave Systems D-Wave Quantum Inc. is a quantum computing company with locations in Palo Alto, California and Burnaby, British Columbia. D-Wave claims to be the world's first company to sell computers that exploit quantum effects in their operation. D-Wa ...
, Inc. The QCC is the first organization outside of D-Wave to operate the system. The second system is installed at
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...
Ames Research Center The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laborat ...
, and is operated jointly by NASA and
Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
. The systems must be kept extremely cold and electromagnetically shielded to operate with the longest possible coherence time.


Purpose

Quantum information processing, also called
quantum computing A quantum computer is a computer that exploits quantum mechanical phenomena. On small scales, physical matter exhibits properties of wave-particle duality, both particles and waves, and quantum computing takes advantage of this behavior using s ...
, theoretically is known to offer dramatic speed-ups and more complete answers for some combinatorial computing problems.
Quantum annealing Quantum annealing (QA) is an optimization process for finding the global minimum of a given objective function over a given set of candidate solutions (candidate states), by a process using quantum fluctuations. Quantum annealing is used mainly ...
is a branch of quantum computing whose advantages over classical computing are being investigated. In quantum annealing, problems are encoded into the lowest
energy state A quantum mechanical system or particle that is bound—that is, confined spatially—can only take on certain discrete values of energy, called energy levels. This contrasts with classical particles, which can have any amount of energy. The ...
of a physical quantum system. Applications currently under study at the QCC include
big data Big data primarily refers to data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data processing, data-processing application software, software. Data with many entries (rows) offer greater statistical power, while data with ...
analysis, verification and validation of cyber-physical systems, pattern identification and classification, and optimization and
machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...
, any of which may support breakthroughs in multiple industries and government. USC and ISI researchers, as well as Lockheed Martin engineers, seek to develop methods to benchmark quantum annealers, and perform tests of 'quantumness'. These include the study of
quantum entanglement Quantum entanglement is the phenomenon where the quantum state of each Subatomic particle, particle in a group cannot be described independently of the state of the others, even when the particles are separated by a large distance. The topic o ...
and, more generally, the performance of quantum annealing experiments. Researchers also are working to manage
quantum decoherence Quantum decoherence is the loss of quantum coherence. It involves generally a loss of information of a system to its environment. Quantum decoherence has been studied to understand how quantum systems convert to systems that can be expla ...
, the phenomenon that degrades the performance of quantum information processors when quantum states are forced out of
quantum superposition Quantum superposition is a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics that states that linear combinations of solutions to the Schrödinger equation are also solutions of the Schrödinger equation. This follows from the fact that the Schrödi ...
. Decoherence can reduce quantum functionality to that of a classical computer, and can be counteracted using
quantum error correction Quantum error correction (QEC) is a set of techniques used in quantum computing to protect quantum information from errors due to decoherence and other quantum noise. Quantum error correction is theorised as essential to achieve fault tolerant ...
. QCC researchers and their collaborators have developed methods to counteract decoherence in quantum annealers by combining quantum error correction with energy penalties that suppress decoherence into a single quantum annealing correction method.


History

The QCC was launched in November, 2011 under the leadership of Scientific and Technical Director Daniel Lidar, a USC professor of electrical engineering, chemistry and physics; Operational Director Robert F. Lucas, director of ISI's Computational Systems and Technology division; and Ned Allen and Greg Tallant of Lockheed Martin. The QCC began with a 128-qubit D-Wave One, which was replaced in March 2013 with the 512-qubit D-Wave Two.


Research

Research initially focused on testing whether the D-Wave is in fact a quantum system, and has expanded to benchmarking the D-Wave against classical algorithms, and various applications, including
quantum machine learning Quantum machine learning is the integration of quantum algorithms within machine learning programs. The most common use of the term refers to machine learning algorithms for the analysis of classical data executed on a quantum computer, i.e. qu ...
. Lockheed Martin researchers have focused on the application of adiabatic quantum computing to the problem of verification and validation of control systems and other tasks with similar mathematical structure, such as the design of special wave forms for RF applications with minimal side-lobes.


People

The team includes more than a dozen USC faculty members, ISI researchers, postdoctoral and graduate students, and more than 100 Lockheed Martin users.


Location

USC is located in
downtown Los Angeles Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) is the central business district of the city of Los Angeles. It is part of the Central Los Angeles region and covers a area. As of 2020, it contains over 500,000 jobs and has a population of roughly 85,000 residents ...
. ISI is located in
Marina del Rey, California Marina del Rey ( Spanish for "Marina of the King") is an unincorporated seaside community in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The eponymous harbor is a major boating and water recreation destination of the Greater Los Angeles ar ...
. Lockheed Martin headquarters is located in
Bethesda, Maryland Bethesda () is an unincorporated, census-designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. Located just northwest of Washington, D.C., it is a major business and government center of the Washington metropolitan region ...
. D-Wave is located in Burnaby,
British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...
,
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...
.


References


External links

* * * {{authority control Centers of the University of Southern California Computer science institutes in the United States Lockheed Martin Quantum information science Research institutes in California Research institutes established in 2011 2011 establishments in California Science and technology in Greater Los Angeles