Good morning, it’s August 13, 2024. After 8 long, collaborative years, the moment has come — NIST standards have arrived.

Today’s issue includes:

• NIST has finalized and released three encryption standards to protect both general encryption and digital signatures in the post-quantum era.

• QDisCoCirc models text as quantum circuits, representing word embeddings as quantum states and encoding linguistic structures within the circuit design for NLP tasks.

• NASA’s Cold Atom Lab becomes the first to use a quantum sensor for matter-wave interferometry in space.

And even more research, news, & events within quantum.

⚔️ NIST’s Long-Awaited PQC Standards Have Arrived  

QUICK BYTE: NIST has officially finalized and released three encryption standards designed to hold up against quantum computer-based cyberattacks. Developed over the course of eight years, these standards include algorithms to protect both general encryption and digital signatures. NIST encourages immediate implementation to secure sensitive information against potential quantum threats.

DETAILS: 

• NIST issued the first 3 of 4 expected PQC standards to counteract quantum computers capable of breaking current encryption systems. These standards are a result of a long-term collaborative effort to select algorithms less vulnerable to quantum attacks.

• The finalized PQC standards include ML-KEM for general encryption, ML-DSA for digital signatures, and SLH-DSA as a backup digital signature algorithm.

• The introduction of these standards is expected to drive proactive migration alongside the development of new tools and products to implement quantum-resistant encryption.

• NIST's ongoing work includes evaluating additional algorithms as future backup standards.

🤖 Quantinuum Scientists Propose QDisCoCirc for BQP-hard NLP Tasks

QUICK BYTE: DisCoCirc is a mathematical framework that models texts as circuit diagrams, where dynamic word meanings evolve through sentence interactions, with compositional structures capturing the overall information flow. Quantinuum scientists have now introduced QDisCoCirc, a quantum adaptation that models texts as quantum circuits, representing word embeddings as quantum states and encoding linguistic structures within the circuit design for NLP tasks. Given that question-answering within this model is BQP-hard, QDisCoCirc offers significant potential for quantum speedups in these complex tasks.

DETAILS: 

• The model constructs quantum circuits from text circuits, where word embeddings are encoded as parameterized quantum circuits, and these circuits are evaluated on quantum computers.

• QDisCoCirc offers potential advantages in terms of explainability and interpretability in AI, using compositional structures to understand how parts of a system (like words in sentences) contribute to the behavior of the whole.

• QDisCoCirc demonstrated a Grover-like quadratic speedup for tasks such as text similarity and question-answering.

• Future work could explore alternative mappings from text circuits to quantum circuits, potentially using classically simulable circuits or tensor networks to optimize performance, while emphasizing compositionality for better generalization in NLP models, and positioning QDisCoCirc as a benchmark for quantum natural language processing, addressing challenges like the barren plateau problem and demonstrating the power of quantum processors in complex, interpretable NLP tasks.

🛰️ NASA’s Cold Atom Lab First to Use Matter-Wave Interferometer Quantum Sensor

QUICK BYTE: Interferometry uses the wave-like properties of atoms to make precise measurements of gravitational fields, rotations, and accelerations. In NASA's Cold Atom Lab onboard the International Space Station, ultracold Rubidium atoms are cooled to form Bose-Einstein Condensates, which are then used in atom interferometers. Recently, the Cold Atom Lab became the first to use a quantum sensor for matter-wave interferometry in space.

DETAILS: 

• Atom interferometry in space offers significant advantages such as extended freefall time, which benefits precision measurement for gravitational, Earth, and planetary sciences.

• In Pathfinder experiments with atom interferometry in the Cold Atom Lab onboard the International Space Station, published today, researchers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the German Aerospace Center, Institut für Quantenphysik and Center for Integrated Quantum Science and Technology, and other institutions use ultracold Rubidium-87 atoms in a Mach–Zehnder interferometer to study the effects of ISS vibrations on atom interferometry and shear-wave interferometry to produce interference patterns observable for over 150 milliseconds of free expansion time.

• The successful deployment of the Cold Atom Lab’s atom interferometer as the first quantum sensor using matter-wave interferometry in space highlights its potential for future space missions requiring high-precision inertial sensing.

🔐 IBM-developed algorithms have been formalized within the first post-quantum cryptography standards published by NIST, including ML-KEM and ML-DSA, derived from IBM's CRYSTALS algorithms, and SLH-DSA, co-developed by an IBM researcher. IBM emphasizes the importance of a systematic approach to transitioning to these quantum-safe standards and has introduced tools such as the Cryptography Bill of Materials to help organizations assess and migrate their cryptographic assets.

🗺️ Stony Brook University is leading 1 of the 5 NSF-funded projects to develop a National Quantum Virtual Laboratory, building a 10-node distributed quantum network in collaboration with Columbia University, Yale University, and Brookhaven National Laboratory. The SCY-QNet facility will create a quantum network with end nodes equipped with QPUs and quantum frequency converters, while intermediate nodes will deploy entanglement sources and quantum memory banks, leaving quantum repeaters to entanglement swapping stations to generate long-distance entanglement.

💊 QuEra’s neutral-atom quantum computers and Quantum Intelligence Corp.’s QUEST platform are integrating quantum computation with AI, improving drug development efficiency. The QUEST platform’s analysis of molecular electronic charge distribution to predict in vivo drug behavior will seamlessly operate with QuEra’s room-temperature neutral-atom processors.

📡 Low Earth orbit satellites offer low-latency internet, particularly in underserved areas, but their growing network demands efficient clustering. Researchers from the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence and the University of Kaiserslautern-Landau addressed this by framing the problem as a QUBO problem and utilizing the D-Wave Advantage annealer, which significantly outperformed the classical Gurobi solver in runtime while maintaining high solution quality.

❄️ The European ARCTIC project is developing a European supply chain for cryogenic technologies to support the quantum computing industry and other cryo-enabled applications. ARCTIC unites industry experts and academics to innovate in materials, simulation, and packaging, as well as testing new designs for traveling-wave parametric amplifiers used in readout for superconducting quantum computers.

⛰️ IonQ delivered its IonQ Forte Enterprise, an ion trap quantum computer scalable to 35 algorithmic qubits, to Switzerland's QuantumBasel. This partnership allows QuantumBasel to offer direct access to the quantum system at uptownBasel, a hub for research institutes, startups, and other organizations.

🎒 Q-CTRL and Quantum AI Global have partnered to advance quantum workforce development in India, with Quantum AI Global supporting the expansion of Q-CTRL’s Black Opal educational platform, recently integrated into Tamil Nadu’s Naan Mudhalvan Upskilling Platform, and set to be introduced across India.

LISTEN

On the most recent edition of The New Quantum Era podcase, hosts Sebastian Hassinger and Kevin Rowe, interview Dr. Julien Camirand Lemyre, the CEO and co-founder of Nord Quantique. They discuss Nord Quantique’s innovative work in quantum error correction using Bosonic qubits and their recent advancements in autonomous quantum error correction, which could significantly reduce the overhead in quantum computing systems.

PONDER

• Waiting for NIST to release its PQC standards has become a milestone for those entering the quantum industry. Once you find yourself also anticipating these standards — you're in. Now that the standards are here, it’s shocking that Europe still lacks a proactive approach to establishing a formal consortium for PQC adoption. Leaders from IBM Research Europ and IBM Quantum Safe are urging Europe to take action. NIST’s efforts took eight years, and while the exact timeline for quantum advantage remains uncertain, just shy of a decade might be too little too late for adopting these essential standards.

WATCH

Everyone’s favorite skeptic is here to say — photonic quantum computing may not be so crazy after all.

• On Thursday, August 15th, QED-C is hosting Quantum Marketplace: Quantum Computing Systems III, a webinar featuring industry leaders from NVIDIA, Microsoft, Pasqal and more — virtual

• On Tuesday, August 20th, Infleqtion is hosting A Different Kind of Quantum Circuit: Exploring Atomtronics with Oqtant, an explanation and demonstration on creating atomtronic circuits —virtual

• On Thursday, August 22nd, D-Wave is hosting Deeper Dive into the new Fast Anneal Feature, a webinar on how Fast Anneal is assisting in scientific discovery —virtual

• On Saturday, August 24th, Washington DC Quantum Computing Meetup is hosting PiQture - A Quantum Machine Learning Library for Image Processing, a discussion of the open-source Python and Qiskit-based library for QML models —virtual

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