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Instead of relying on the electronic transistors in standard computer chips, quantum computers calculate using atoms and subatomic particles dubbed quantum bits or qubits. The approach could make computers and networks vastly more powerful, at least in principle. But the particles can be affected by many factors in the environment, introducing errors. Keeping the qubits photons in the case of the Amazon lab super-chilled limits potential interference.

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Once you start to explore this kind of fundamentally quantum phenomenon, you have to cool it down to suppress all the sources of thermal noise, Nicholas Mondrik, one of the scientists working at the center, explained on Tuesday during a media tour of the facility.

Amazons local research effort, which launched quietly a year ago, is called the AWS Center for Quantum Networking and follows the companys older quantum computing center, which opened in Pasadena, Calif, in 2021. The new center was located in Brighton to encourage collaboration with scientists at Harvard and the growing number of startups in the area, including quantum computer developer QuEra, which is located in the same building.

The promise of quantum computers is attracting not just tech companies but institutions in finance, pharmaceuticals, and other industries. Boston investment giant Fidelity has worked with Amazon on its quantum projects and helped beta-test an Amazon service called Braket that allows researchers to access a variety of experimental quantum computers remotely.

While researchers at Amazons Pasadena facility and other companies such as Google, Microsoft, and IBM are trying to build working quantum computers, the focus in Brighton is on a separate challenge. As quantum computers grow more reliable, users may want to move qubits around for doing calculations on other equipment, for storage, or for other applications such as sending unhackable messages. But moving qubits long distances over 100 miles, say without losing their quantum data is impossible with current networks.

Harvard professor Mikhail Lukin, co-director of the Harvard Quantum Initiative, and his team attracted Amazons attention with their research into a quantum repeater, a device to help send qubits farther without data loss. They used a synthetic diamond constructed with microscopic defects and cooled close to absolute zero to transfer a qubit over a fiber optic cable and trapped it in the defect while preserving the data.

The goal of Amazons center is to move such breakthroughs closer to real-world deployment. A lot of these technologies that have been partially demonstrated in academic labs still need quite a lot of development to get what we would call a fully fledged quantum network, Antia Lamas-Linares, head of the center, said. (Lamas-Linares is based in Austin and oversees the effort remotely.)

A working quantum network could be used to securely distribute encryption keys for encoded data, broadcast untraceable information, or link quantum computers together to create a quantum supercomputer, Lamas-Linares said. Still, the networking technology is likely years away from being deployed in Amazons vast cloud-computing service, AWS.

Customers like Fidelity are already experimenting with the Braket quantum service.

We tried to pick a name that didnt have q in it, Bill Vass, vice president for engineering at AWS, joked. Many things throughout history have been used for computing sticks and stones, initially, clay tablets, abacuses, slide rules and gears, transistors and vacuum tubes, and integrated circuits. And now were looking at molecular machines.

Fidelitys money management and retirement advisory units frequently run complex computer simulations that could be greatly accelerated using quantum computing in the future, Elton Zhu, who is leading quantum research at Fidelity, said.

With the quantum computers today, its still a little bit early to put that into production use, Zhu said.

The local quantum computing community is growing quickly, according to venture capitalist Rudina Seseri, founder and managing partner at Boston-based Glasswing Ventures. Amazons work with Harvard comes alongside MITs major efforts and a planned $10 million quantum center at Northeasterns Burlington campus in partnership with the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative.

The region is well-positioned to capitalize on and advance the development in this emerging field, said Seseri, whose firm has backed Boston startup Atlantic Quantum. As with any new technology, an educated workforce is vital to successful development, and Boston is second to none.

Aaron Pressman can be reached at aaron.pressman@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @ampressman.

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Why is Amazon super-chilling quantum particles in Brighton? - The Boston Globe