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June 15, 2023 Glance around Jason Orcutts office at IBMQuantum, and youll see circuit boards, hiking trail maps, qubit probes and his kids artwork. Part office, part lab, part gallery: Its a cross section of a life of rigorous research and vigorous recreation.

The scene also captures the kind of activity balancing that characterizes his work as a quantum information researcher, switching between hands-on investigation and high-level research strategy. He uses these wide-ranging skills in his role as a co-design engineer forQ-NEXT, the National Quantum Information Science Research Center led by the U.S. Department of Energys (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory.

A principal research scientist atIBMQuantum, Orcutt provides an industry perspective on one of the pillars of Q-NEXT research: developing simulations to better designquantum information systems.

Q-NEXT collaborators use quantum computers and classical supercomputers to simulate the behaviors of materials used for quantum applications, which are expected to be revolutionary. In the decades ahead, scientists will deploy quantum sensors that can detect an earthquake from space and run powerfulquantum computersthat can rapidly suss out solutions to intractable problems.

Were using simulations to better design materials and adapting those simulations to an interconnected quantum system, Orcutt said.IBMbrings a future-looking perspective on the problems we need to solve to develop a really useful quantum computer. And Q-NEXT really aligns with our vision on creating new types of quantum interconnects to scale quantum computers into the future.

Quantum interconnect is a fancy way of referring to the components that link quantum devices. It could be the instruments connecting a sensor to a computer, or it could be a line on a printed circuit board. Without interconnects, quantum devices cant talk to each other, and quantum information cant be shared.

AtIBMQuantum, Orcutt coordinates the development of long-range quantum interconnects, which link devices separated by meters to kilometers, such as the nodes in a future quantum data center.

How do we extend quantum information or connect quantum systems over physical distance? he said.Right now, ourIBMquantum systems are really restricted to a single chip. I and the people I work with, as well as the academic researchers such as those at Q-NEXT, are looking to develop connections between qubits that will extend beyond more than one chip.

Sending quantum information over longer distances is an obstacle course of physics challenges. For starters, quantum information is fragile. Qubits the fundamental units of quantum information fall apart at the smallest disturbance. Distance complicates matters. How do you provide qubits with safe, noise-free passage over a kilometer or more? The proposition is like asking a soap bubble not to pop as it travels down a galley of knives.

You cant use the same tools to pattern a centimeter size chip as you would a meter-scale cable, Orcutt said.

Qubits must also be continually converted and reconverted to the right frequencies to be read by the devices they encounter on their journey. The most fundamental frequency conversion requirements arise from the different levels of thermal noise at different frequencies. For example:IBMQuantum focuses on a type of qubit that lives in the microwave frequency range. In this range, the quantum information must be cooled to a few hundredths of a degree from absolute zero to be protected from thermal noise. To be transported in room temperature materials a requirement for long distancecommunication the quantum information must be converted to the optical-wave range, a whopping 10,000 times the frequency of microwaves.

The way that materials respond to the two frequency ranges is massively different. How do you engineer materials to successfully conduct information that starts as a murmur and ends in a trill?

Such challenges are part of the growing pains of the field of quantum information science, which is working to tap the potential of information that, until recently, was kept cozily inside tiny instruments such as microchips.

Were taking quantum information into places it traditionally doesnt live, Orcutt said. Instead of moving through chips built in clean rooms, qubits are having to find their way throughthe messy world of macroscopic objects, he said, such as meter-long coaxial cables or fiber optic cables that connect nodes that are miles apart.

The scientific community is working to build quantum systems that will eventually connect the globe. Simulating them from soup to nuts is key to ensuring that the interconnected systems of the future will be successful. Orcutt draws on his experience atIBMto inform Q-NEXTs quantum simulations work.

We have to reengineer our systems, and to do that, we have to simulate them, he said.But how do we reengineer our systems around quantum interconnects instead of a monolithic computing device? Systems where there are different levels of connectivity? We have to rethink not just how we build the systems, but also how we adapt our algorithms to best use them.

Orcutt began his journey into quantum information science at Columbia University, planning initially to be a patent lawyer, combining interests in debate and technology.

What I quickly realized was that there are many other ways to pursue science and have a fulfilling career that was closer to creating new technical ideas, he said.

He pivoted to a bachelors in electrical engineering, with no intention of attending graduate school. But, again, he changed his mind after a couple of happy lab experiences working on electronics and photonics. For his Ph.D. research atMIT, Orcutt built the first optical interconnects in the commercial manufacturing processes used for microprocessor and memory chips.

This was a wonderful project because it wasnt just about the devices it was connected to the systems, which is something that has always been a key draw for me throughout my life, he said.

In 2013, Orcutt joinedIBM. It was a major shift for someone who started his career asthe one soldering the circuit, the one simulating the physics or coding the program, he said. And while he continues to work directly with the technology, 10 years later, hes also the one asking how quantum computers should be wired, what components are required to connect the qubits and what directionIBMshould take to tackle these strategic and technology questions.

Orcutts experience both at the bench and at the center of operations made him a valuable contributor to Q-NEXTs 2022 quantum technology reportA Roadmap for Quantum Interconnects, which outlines the discoveries needed to build practical quantum information technologies in one or two decades.

It was a useful exercise to define the important challenges and potential solutions that are emerging within the community and define it so it could be addressed by the center on a 10-year scale, he said.

Producing the roadmap is just one example ofIBMs collaborative effort with Q-NEXT.

The next phase of quantum information science will involve creating new materials and refined products that have superior quantum information performance. And to address that, we need a whole bunch of forces coming together, which is another reason why the shared infrastructure at centers like Q-NEXT are critical, Orcutt said.Trying to tackle these really hard problems is one of the main reasons we like to work with other industrial players, national labs and a broad consortium of academic groups. To us to me and toIBMin general that is a paramount reason to get involved in Q-NEXT: to be able to tackle the really hard problems together with the best people in the field.

Building the quantum workforce through education and outreach is another goal forIBMQuantum.IBMcreates connections to the students, postdocs and other early-career scientists conducting research at centers like Q-NEXT, widening opportunities to grow its own quantum workforce.

For those thinking of entering the field, Orcutt notes the excitement of quantum research.

When I have a new task or project, I initially have absolutely no idea how were going to solve it. The wonderful thing is, weve been able to make significant progress against our goals, he said.Its been a wonderful journey of figuring out ways to contribute to the quantum effort and trying to solve problems along the way.

This work was supported by theDOEOffice of Science National Quantum Information Science Research Centers as part of the Q-NEXT center.

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IBM's Jason Orcutt Moves the World Toward an Interconnected ... - HPCwire

FRANCE, June 14, 09:45 CET - The first enterprise in France to join the IBM (NYSE: IBM) Quantum Network, Crdit Mutuel Alliance Fdrale, its technology subsidiary Euro-Information, and IBM today announced their continued investment in quantum computing. After a successful initial phase, the organizations have identified specific use cases, among many areas of interest in financial services, for the collaborations next scaling phase, including: research into customer experience, fraud management and risk management. This phase also intends to explore possibilities for how quantum computing could lead to future improvements in Crdit Mutuel Alliance Fdrales customer and employee experience.

Because banking and insurance are technological industries, it is essential to constantly innovate to master the technologies of the future, and to ensure that they help guarantee sovereignty. Our historic collaboration with IBM is part of this dynamic. Back in 2016, we were among the first financial institutions to apply artificial intelligence and its industrialization. Our ambition for quantum computing is similar: to explore, then industrialize, in order to further transform the banking and insurance businesses, all with the underlying goal of also keeping our customers information secure, said Nicolas Thry, President of Crdit Mutuel Alliance Fdrale, and Frantz Rubl, President of Euro-Information.

Crdit Mutuel is making rapid progress in how to apply quantum technology to enhance financial services. Were excited to collaborate with them on the scaling phase as they expand their activities with an aim toward developing concrete applications that could improve their customers experience and transform how the industry manages risk and fraud, said Sebastian Krause, Senior Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer, IBM.

During this phase of the collaboration, Euro-Information, Crdit Mutuel Alliance Fdrale and IBM will now begin work on prototyping use cases for fraud management, risk management and improving customer experience. During these activities, Euro-Information will have access to IBMs latest quantum technologies, including systems with 433-qubit IBM Osprey and 127-qubit IBM Eagle processors, as well as IBM Qiskit Runtime* Primitives functions, error mitigation techniques and the first circuit knitting capabilities.

Innovation at the core of Crdit Mutuel Alliance Fdrale and Euro-Informations technological journey

In 2016, Crdit Mutuel Alliance Fdrale began working with IBM to use artificial intelligence to help its employees. A year and a half later, 25,000 advisors at Crdit Mutuel Alliance Fdrale (Crdit Mutuel branches and CIC agencies), were using the toolon a daily basis to reduce the time spent on administrative tasks, such as data entry, signatures, and search. As a result, in 2022, the equivalent work hours of nearly 1,600 full-time employees were freed up for the benefit of customers and members who want a closer relationship with their local adviser.

This successful exploration and integration of AI technologies between Crdit Mutuel Alliance Fdrale and IBM is an example of the progress the companies hope to achieve in the future with quantum computing.

The companies joint aim is to combine the performance of current processes that use classical and AI solutions in fraud management, risk management and customer experience, with that of the latest quantum technology, with a future goal of developing applications that deliver a quantum advantage, where a computational task of business or scientific relevance can be performed more efficiently, cost-effectively, or accurately using a quantum computer than with classical computations alone.

Euro-Information is also considering the modalities and advantages of hosting a quantum computer in one of their datacenters in France.

A Quantum Academy to Train Experts to Work in the Quantum Factory

When the initial phase with IBM launched in 2022, Crdit Mutuel Alliance Fdrale and Euro-Information involved and trained their employees so that they could understand the subject and the associated opportunities.

The teams are now able to apply what they have learned about quantum computing toward the challenges in banking and insurance, particularly with regard to the use of the IBM-developed Qiskit open-source software suite, and the development of quantum algorithms.

Crdit Mutuel Alliance Fdrale employee skills development will continue to be supported throughout this scaling phase of the project by Euro-Informations Quantum Academy, which will train technical and business profiles to retain and attract the talent CrditMutuel Alliance Fdrale and Euro-Information will need to successfully industrialize the use cases identified in their roadmap.

To support this next phase, Crdit Mutuel Alliance Fdrale, Euro-Information and IBM will also establish a Quantum Factory, based on the same organizational model as Euro-Informations Cognitive Factory, which is an on-site collaborative for AI research. Made up of multi-disciplinary teams of experts with business and technical skills, the Quantum Factory will define the scaling phases roadmap, continue to develop use cases in order to prepare for quantums industrialization for the financial services and insurance industries.

About Euro-Information

Euro-Information is the technology subsidiary of Crdit Mutuel. Euro-Information manages the IT systems of 16 federations of the Crdit Mutuel group as well as those of CIC and of all the financial, insurance, property, consumer credit, private banking, financing, telephony and technological subsidiaries.

With a headcount of almost 4 000, Euro-Information offers cutting-edge technology to employees and banking customers alike, backed up by a high level of security and personal data protection. Euro-Information has in-house expertise in all technologies and carries out the developments necessary for the entities of the Crdit Mutuel group.

More information can be found on e-i.com

About Crdit Mutuel Alliance Fdrale

One of Frances leading bankinsurers, with 77,000 employees serving more than 30 million customers, Crdit Mutuel Alliance Fdrale offers a diversified range of services to private individuals, local professionals and companies of all sizes, through its 4,500 branches. Ranking among Europes strongest banking groups, its equity totaled 56.7 billion euros and its CET1 ratio was 18.2% as of December 31, 2022.

Crdit Mutuel Alliance Fdrale is made up of the following Crdit Mutuel federations: Centre Est Europe (Strasbourg), Sud-Est (Lyon), le-de-France (Paris), Savoie-Mont Blanc (Annecy), Midi-Atlantique (Toulouse), Loire-Atlantique et Centre-Ouest (Nantes), Centre (Orlans), Normandie (Caen), Dauphin-Vivarais (Valence), Mditerranen (Marseille), Anjou (Angers), Massif Central (Clermont-Ferrand), Antilles-Guyane (Fort-de-France) and Nord Europe (Lille).

Crdit Mutuel Alliance Fdrale also includes Caisse Fdrale de Crdit Mutuel, Banque Fdrative du Crdit Mutuel (BFCM) and all its subsidiaries, in particular CIC, Euro-Information, Assurances du Crdit Mutuel (ACM), Targobank in Germany, Cofidis, Beobank, Banque Europenne du Crdit Mutuel (BECM), Banque de Luxembourg, Banque Transatlantique and Homiris.

Find more information at creditmutuelalliancefederale.fr

About IBM

IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider, helping clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 4,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service. For more information, visit http://www.ibm.com

*Qiskit Runtime is a quantum computing service and programming model that enables users to optimize applications and run them efficiently on quantum systems at scale.

Statements regarding IBMs future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice and represent goals and objectives only.

Qiskit is a registered trademark of IBM Corporation.

Press Contacts:

Crdit Mutuel Alliance Fdrale:Aziz Ridouan+33 (0)6 01 10 31 69aziz.ridouan@creditmutuel.fr

IBM:Galle Dussutour+33 (0)6 74 98 26 92dusga@fr.ibm.com

Weber Shandwick for IBM:ibmfrance@webershandwick.com

Louise Weber+33 (0)6 89 59 12 54

Jennifer Tshidibi+33 (0)6 13 94 26 58

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Crdit Mutuel Alliance Fdrale and Euro-Information Collaborating ... - IBM Newsroom

Common sense is useless in the world of the extremely tiny, where the rules of quantum mechanics apply. One of the most amazing differences is that two particles like two photons of light can be entangled in such a way that what happens to one determines what happens to the other, even though they are very far apart. It is what Einstein, skeptical, called spooky action at a distance. The 78-year-old physicist Anton Zeilinger, born in the small Austrian town of Ried im Innkreis, has spent a quarter of a century proving that the most absurd predictions of quantum physics are correct. A little over a decade ago, his team succeeded in teleporting a quantum state between two entangled photons of light. One photon was in La Palma and the other in Tenerife, both part of Spains Canary Islands. There were 89 miles (143 kilometers) between them.

Zeilinger, of the University of Vienna, won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for teleporting information and paving the way for exponentially faster and more secure quantum computers. The Austrian physicist sat down for an interview over coffee on the terrace of a hotel in Valencia overlooking the Mediterranean, during a break in his activity as a member of the jury for the Rey Jaime I Awards, which recognize achievements in research and entrepreneurship.

Question. You first heard about quantum entanglement at a conference in 1976. What did you think?

Answer. I didnt understand what was going on. I just realized that it must be interesting.

Q. How do you explain entanglement to people with no prior background in this field?

A. No one is completely without prior background. The entanglement of two particles is like you have a pair of dice. Three is rolled on one die and three is also rolled on the other. If one die shows six, the other also shows six. And the same number always comes up on both dice.

Q. Einstein said that God does not play dice.

A. I believe that God puts the numbers so that we believe that he plays dice, but he does not play dice. God says: now it is three, now it is two, now it is six. And we believe that God plays dice.

Q. In your Nobel lecture, you stated that not even God knows what information is in the particle.

A. Maybe he knows. Or maybe not. We cannot know.

Q. Do you use God as a metaphor or do you believe in God?

A. Yes. Why not believe? The famous Isaac Newton published books on many subjects, but he wrote much more about religion than physics. He was a religious person.

Q. Two entangled particles can be imagined as twin brothers who behave similarly at a distance because they share the same DNA, but that's not how it works.

A. In entanglement, the two quantum siblings behave the same, but without DNA.

Q. Its more than counterintuitive. Its crazy.

A. It's crazy, yes.

Q. Einstein defined entanglement as a spooky action at a distance. Does it seem spooky to you?

A. Einstein used the German word geisterhaft, which means something like spiritual. It is a phantasmagorical phenomenon if you try to explain it with the usual rules. But in quantum physics, you know how it works.

Q. In your Nobel lecture, you projected a question on the screen: Is the Moon there when no one is looking at it? What is your answer?

A. The important thing is that to prove that the Moon is there, you have to look at it. If you dont look at it, you can only use your experience and your logic to say that it is there. But, with quantum particles, you cant tell the system is there if no one is looking. Einstein asked: Do you really believe that the Moon is not there when no one is looking? And [Danish physicist Niels] Bohr replied: Can you prove otherwise? Can you prove that the Moon is there when no one is looking? And no, you cant.

Q. Niels Bohr stated: It is a mistake to think that the task of physics is to find out what nature is like. Physics is concerned with what we can say about nature.

A. I would go one step further and say: What can be said about nature, in principle, also defines what can exist. So nothing can exist without the possibility of saying something about it.

Q. What is reality then?

A. In physics, we have always made great progress without answering the question of what this is. We only answer the question of what can be measured and how can we observe something. We can observe reality, we can make measurements, but I dont think we can say anything about the essence of reality.

Q. Are you a Christian?

A. Yes, I was raised Catholic, but my mother was a Protestant, so I learned from both. Sometimes I went to the Protestant church with my mother and sometimes to the Catholic mass with my father. It was interesting.

Q. When you see this world of particles doing crazy things, how does that craziness fit in with the idea of an organized God?

A. The Jesuit theologian and philosopher Karl Rahner said: The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all. I agree. It cannot be said that God is organized or is like this or like that. God is not subject to our definitions.

Q. Perhaps God does not exist without the gaze of the observer.

A. It is a different type of observation: it is not with the eyes, it is an observation with the soul.

Q. After your experiment in the Canary Islands, you stated that the teleportation of information plays a vital role in the vision of a global quantum internet, since it provides secure communication without restrictions [...] and an increase in exponential of computing speed. When will we see those promises delivered?

A. Good question. As to when we will have full quantum computing, we dont know. In fact, today I would be more cautious with my statements, because the challenge is enormous. In small quantum computing systems there is a lot of work underway, but for big computers there is still a lot to do.

Q. Google is already making big announcements about imminent quantum computers.

A. They have a quantum computer, but it is small and can only be used for very specialized problems, not more general problems. To have a complete quantum computer, you need about 1,000 quantum bits. And now we are talking about systems with 30 or 50 quantum bits.

Q. You predicted in an interview in 2010 that in 15 or 20 years we would have an interesting quantum computer.

A. Yes, I would say the same today [laughs]. It is impossible to speak about 20 years from now.

Q. You also said, perhaps provocatively, that in the future we will have quantum computers on cell phones.

A. That will be in 50 or 100 years. I didnt say it to provoke, but as a challenge. When the first computers were built, they were huge, taking up an entire room. And then nobody thought that you could have it on a mobile phone.

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Nobel winner Anton Zeilinger: Physicists can make measurements, but cannot say anything about the essence of reality - EL PAS USA