分子科学研究所　研究棟201

Following in the footsteps of the transistor and the laser, quantum technology is on a path to change the landscape of modern technology. We should expect in 20 or so years that quantum technology will be as familiar to us as smartphone technology is today. Governments and businesses around the world have acknowledged the economic and national security importance of quantum information science. The US alone has invested $1.2 Billion in its National Quantum Initiative, a recent White House Executive Order reflects a strong commitment to quantum information science by the President, and further significant funding is currently being considered by the US Congress. What is the reason for such great interest? It is that the laws of physics dictate how well any task can be performed given a finite set of resources. Whether the task is information processing, stock market predictions, radio-frequency sensing, timekeeping, etc., performance limits are dictated by quantum mechanics. Today, technology allows us to operate at the quantum limit for an increasingly broad set of tasks. In the future, if one is not operating at the quantum limit, one will not be competitive.

For many people, the word “quantum” is followed in their mind by the word “computing”; you may know there are several approaches to building a quantum computer such as with superconductors, atoms, ions, photons, and quantum dots. Yet the applications of quantum are far broader than computing alone. The history of today’s talk on quantum technology goes back to 1995 when my colleagues Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman, along with Wolfgang Ketterle from MIT, demonstrated Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of an atomic ensemble, an achievement for which they were awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics.  It was the first time anyone had produced an ensemble of atoms that occupied a single quantum wavefunction – indeed, it was the first quantum matter.  By now the BEC is recognized as one of many useful forms of quantum matter. The Nobel-recognized achievement caused a scientific revolution; it also laid a foundation for quantum technology based on atoms that are laser-cooled to near absolute zero temperature.  I and my colleagues believed even then that quantum matter was as important to modern technology as the laser has proved to be.  We founded the company ColdQuanta in 2007 as a spinoff from the University of Colorado at Boulder, intending to make components, instruments, and systems that greatly simplify the production and application of quantum matter.  By now it is routine to produce quantum matter comprised of atoms having a temperature of less than 100 billionths of degree of absolute zero, all achieved using lasers and related electromagnetic technology.   We are about to celebrate the fourth anniversary of our BEC systems operating in orbit on the International Space Station, and today ColdQuanta offers  cloud-based access to quantum matter machines that allow anyone to create and utilize ultracold matter.  Quantum matter has many uses, spanning applications from timekeeping to navigation to radio-frequency detection, to quantum computing and to quantum networks.  I will provide an overview of this remarkably useful technology, give you a view on where things stand today, and provide a look at where they are going in the future.

PDFはこちらからダウンロードしてください。

南谷 英美、倉持 光 （2022年度コロキウム委員）