The Mysterious Majorana with Leo Kouwenhoven
07/24/23 • 61 min
Welcome to another episode of The New Quantum Era Podcast hosted by Kevin Rowney and Sebastian Hassinger. Today, they are joined by an outstanding European researcher: Professor Leo Kouwenhoven.
Leo is a professor in Applied Physics specialized in the field of Quantum NanoScience at TU Delft. Leo got his Ph.D. in Mesoscopic Physics at Delft. He was a postdoc researcher at the University of California at Berkeley and a visiting professor at Harvard. Highlights in Leo’s career include the discovery of conductance quantization in quantum point contacts, Coulomb blockade in quantum dots, artificial atoms, the Kondo effect in quantum dots, Spin qubits, induced superconductivity in nanowires and nanotubes, spin-orbit qubits in nanowires and nanotubes and Majoranas in nanowires. Leo and his group found evidence of Majoranas detailed in a paper from 2012. He lead the Microsoft hardware R&D effort, working on topological qubits using Majorana zero modes from 2016 to 2022. His current focus at Delft is on topological effects in solid-state devices, such as the emergence of Majoranas and topological qubits.
Key Takeaways:
[2:53] Kevin and Sebastian share their appreciation about how quantum computing was represented in the episode Joan is Awful of the TV show Black Mirror.
[6:04] Leo shares how he got interested in the field of quantum computing.
[9:40] Leo discusses how much he knew about the work done in theoretical quantum computing in the mid to late 90s.
[14:37] The advantage of superconducting qubits is that you have a large number of electrons in the circuit you are manipulating.
[15:34] Measurability can be easier but “it always comes with a price”.
[17:05] Leo admits the coherence was insufficient, and he shares how they tried to improve it.
[19:15] What is the feature of silicon that makes it valuable for Quantum Computing?
[22:12] Leo shares the benefits of a hybrid system (combining super connectivity and semi-connectors).
[23:10] Leo discusses how he became interested in Majoranas.
[27:30] Leo addresses the main research agenda destination regarding Majoranas.
[28:22] Was the Majoranas fundamental particle found?
[33:21] The potential for theory and application is so huge. What's Leo’s sense about the prospects for these avenues of inquiry research?
[36:25] Leo explains the non-abelian property that Majoranas zero modes have.
[40:18] Leo addresses the two groups of gate operations needed for universal computing.
[41:22] Leo gives his opinion regarding the timeframe for the appearance of commercially viable outcomes in this domain.
[47:16] Sebastian reflects on the maturation of the neutral atom systems, considering them as the first realization of Feynman's vision from 1981 regarding the fact that in order to simulate a natural system, there is a need for a quantum computer to do it.
[48:08] Can we build machines that can help us simulate the dynamics of quantum systems that might help us understand more what the challenges are in Majorana Qubit?
[51:01] Does Leo think there's any value in Majorana braiding simulations to try to understand the dynamics of the system or overcome the challenges?
[53:50] There is room for optimism in Quantum Computing.
[56:24] Leo talks about the dream of topological Majoranas qubit.
[58:16] Kevin and Sebastian share the highlights of an insightful conversation with Leo Kouwenhoven.
Mentioned in this episode:
Visit The New Quantum Era Podcast
Learn more about Leo Kouwenhoven
Signatures of Majorana fermions in hybrid superconductor-semiconductor nanowire devices
Tweetables and Quotes:
“The advantage of the superconducting qubits is that you have a large number of electrons in the circuit you are manipulating, which can make measurability easier, but it always comes with a price.”— Leo Kouwenhoven
“I read that making qubits was too much engineering when it should be something more fundamental... so now we think qubits are fundamental?!” — Leo Kouwenhoven
“Problems are there to be solved; they only exist to be solved. People in classical electronics also solved all their problems, so why can’t we? ” — Leo Kouwenhoven
Welcome to another episode of The New Quantum Era Podcast hosted by Kevin Rowney and Sebastian Hassinger. Today, they are joined by an outstanding European researcher: Professor Leo Kouwenhoven.
Leo is a professor in Applied Physics specialized in the field of Quantum NanoScience at TU Delft. Leo got his Ph.D. in Mesoscopic Physics at Delft. He was a postdoc researcher at the University of California at Berkeley and a visiting professor at Harvard. Highlights in Leo’s career include the discovery of conductance quantization in quantum point contacts, Coulomb blockade in quantum dots, artificial atoms, the Kondo effect in quantum dots, Spin qubits, induced superconductivity in nanowires and nanotubes, spin-orbit qubits in nanowires and nanotubes and Majoranas in nanowires. Leo and his group found evidence of Majoranas detailed in a paper from 2012. He lead the Microsoft hardware R&D effort, working on topological qubits using Majorana zero modes from 2016 to 2022. His current focus at Delft is on topological effects in solid-state devices, such as the emergence of Majoranas and topological qubits.
Key Takeaways:
[2:53] Kevin and Sebastian share their appreciation about how quantum computing was represented in the episode Joan is Awful of the TV show Black Mirror.
[6:04] Leo shares how he got interested in the field of quantum computing.
[9:40] Leo discusses how much he knew about the work done in theoretical quantum computing in the mid to late 90s.
[14:37] The advantage of superconducting qubits is that you have a large number of electrons in the circuit you are manipulating.
[15:34] Measurability can be easier but “it always comes with a price”.
[17:05] Leo admits the coherence was insufficient, and he shares how they tried to improve it.
[19:15] What is the feature of silicon that makes it valuable for Quantum Computing?
[22:12] Leo shares the benefits of a hybrid system (combining super connectivity and semi-connectors).
[23:10] Leo discusses how he became interested in Majoranas.
[27:30] Leo addresses the main research agenda destination regarding Majoranas.
[28:22] Was the Majoranas fundamental particle found?
[33:21] The potential for theory and application is so huge. What's Leo’s sense about the prospects for these avenues of inquiry research?
[36:25] Leo explains the non-abelian property that Majoranas zero modes have.
[40:18] Leo addresses the two groups of gate operations needed for universal computing.
[41:22] Leo gives his opinion regarding the timeframe for the appearance of commercially viable outcomes in this domain.
[47:16] Sebastian reflects on the maturation of the neutral atom systems, considering them as the first realization of Feynman's vision from 1981 regarding the fact that in order to simulate a natural system, there is a need for a quantum computer to do it.
[48:08] Can we build machines that can help us simulate the dynamics of quantum systems that might help us understand more what the challenges are in Majorana Qubit?
[51:01] Does Leo think there's any value in Majorana braiding simulations to try to understand the dynamics of the system or overcome the challenges?
[53:50] There is room for optimism in Quantum Computing.
[56:24] Leo talks about the dream of topological Majoranas qubit.
[58:16] Kevin and Sebastian share the highlights of an insightful conversation with Leo Kouwenhoven.
Mentioned in this episode:
Visit The New Quantum Era Podcast
Learn more about Leo Kouwenhoven
Signatures of Majorana fermions in hybrid superconductor-semiconductor nanowire devices
Tweetables and Quotes:
“The advantage of the superconducting qubits is that you have a large number of electrons in the circuit you are manipulating, which can make measurability easier, but it always comes with a price.”— Leo Kouwenhoven
“I read that making qubits was too much engineering when it should be something more fundamental... so now we think qubits are fundamental?!” — Leo Kouwenhoven
“Problems are there to be solved; they only exist to be solved. People in classical electronics also solved all their problems, so why can’t we? ” — Leo Kouwenhoven
Previous Episode
Quantum Supremacy to Generative AI and Back with Scott Aaronson
Description: Welcome to another episode of The New Quantum Era Podcast hosted by Kevin Rowney and Sebastian Hassinger. Today, they are joined by Scott Aaronson, who is a leading authority in the space of Quantum Computing, a fascinating person with a long list of relevant achievements. Scott is also the author of an outstanding blog called Shtetl-Optimize and a book named Quantum Computing Since Democritus.
Scott helped design Google Quantum Supremacy, but his work exceeds it; he is involved in Complexity Theory and Computer Science and is just extremely good at connecting, explaining, and digging deeper into concepts.
Key Takeaways:
[3:38] How did Scott get into quantum computing?
[11:35] Scott talks about the moment when the question arose: Does nature work this way?
[14:28] Scott shares when he realized he wanted to dig deeper into Quantum Computing.
[15:56] Scott remembers when he proved the limitation of quantum algorithms for a variation of Grover's search problem.
[18:43] Scott realized that his competitive advantage was the ability to explain how things work.
[20:01] Scott explains the collision problem.
[21:33] Scott defines the birthday paradox.
[23:24] Scott discusses the dividing line between serious and non-serious quantum computing research.
[24:11] What's Scott’s relative level of faith and optimism that the areas of topological quantum computing and measurement-based quantum computation are going to produce?
[28:33] Scott talks about what he thinks will be the source of the first practical quantum speed-up.
[31:55] Scott didn’t imagine that being a complexity theorist would become exponential.
[36:14] Is Scott optimistic about quantum walks?
[40:11] Has Scott returned to his machine learning and AI roots but is now trying to explain the concepts?
[42:03] Scott was asked: ‘What is it going to take to get you to stop wasting your life on quantum computing?’
[44:50] Scott talks about the future need to prevent AI misuse. and his role in Open AI
[47:41] Scott emphasizes the need for an external source that can point out your errors.
[50:13] Scott shares his thoughts about the possible risks and misuses of GPT.
[51:40] Scott made GPT to take a Quantum Computing exam; what did surprise him about the answers? It did much better on conceptual questions than on calculation questions
[55:55] What kind of validation will we be able to give GPT?
[56:22] Scott explains how RLHF (Reinforced Learning from Human Feedback) works.
[59:28] Does Scott feel that there's room for optimism that educators can have a decent tool to hunt down this kind of plagiarism?
[1:02:08] Is there anything that Scott is excited about seeing implemented on 1000 gate-based qubits with a decent amount of error mitigation?
[1:04:05] Scott shares his interest in designing better quantum supremacy experiments.
[1:07:43] Could these quantum supremacy experiments (based on random circuit sampling) already deliver a scalable advantage?
[1:10:58] Kevin and Sebastian share the highlights of a fun and enlightening conversation with Scott Aaronson.
Mentioned in this episode:
Visit The New Quantum Era Podcast
Check Shtetl-Optimize
Quantum Computing Since Democritus, Scott Aaronson
Learn more about the Adiabatic Algorithm result by Hastings and the Quantum Walk Algorithm result by Childs et Al.
Tweetables and Quotes:
“The dividing line between serious and nonserious quantum computing research is, are you asking the question of, ‘Can you actually be the best that a classical computer could do at the same desk? “ — Scott Aaronson
“My first big result in quantum computing that got me into the field was to prove that Prasad Hoyer tap algorithm for the collision problem was optimal.” — Scott Aaronson
“ Quantum Walks are a way of achieving Grover type speed ups at a wider range of problems than you would have expected.” — Scott Aaronson
“AI safety is now a subject where you can get feedback.” — Scott Aaronson
“We don't have any theorems that would explain the recent successes of deep learning, the best way we can explain why is that none of the theorems rule it out.” — Scott Aaronson
Next Episode
A Hybrid NISQ-Classical Solution Architecture with Harry Buhrman
Welcome to another episode of The New Quantum Era Podcast hosted by Kevin Rowney and Sebastian Hassinger. Today, they are joined by another distinguished researcher, Dr. Harry Buhrman. Dr. Buhrman is a professor at the University of Amsterdam, he's a director at the CWI, and he's the director at Qusoft as well. He's got a long and illustrious career in quantum information. Today, Dr. Buhrman takes us through some of his earlier work and some of his areas of interest, and he also discloses details of his recent paper which was going to be called Ultra Fast Quantum Circuits for Quantum State Preparation, but was posted to the arXiv as State preparation by shallow circuits using feed forward, which provides fascinating results with respect to the core architecture divided into four layers and time complexity around that framework.
Key Takeaways:
[4:45] Sebastian introduces Dr. Harry Buhrman.
[5:31] How did Dr. Buhrman become interested in Quantum Computing?
[9:31] Dr. Buhrman remembers the first time he heard about the complexity class known as fast quantum polynomial time, or BQP.
[11:35] Dr. Buhrman and Richard Cleve started working on communication complexity.
[14:14] Dr. Buhrman discusses the opportunity that arose after Shor’s algorithm.
[14:53] Dr. Buhrman has also written biology papers explaining how he became involved in this field.
[18:05] Is quantum computation and quantum algorithms the main focus now regarding Dr. Buhrman’s areas of study?
[20:06] Software and hardware are codependent, so codesigning is needed.
[20:58]. What are the big unsolved problems in the areas of time complexity and hierarchy for quantum?
[24:50] Does Dr. Buhrman think it's possible that there could be a future where some of the classical time complexity problems could be powerfully informed by quantum information science and Quantum Time complexity discovery?
[27:32] Does Dr. Buhrman think that, over time, the distinction between classical information theory and quantum information theory will erode?
[28:50] Dr. Burhman talks about his Team's most recent paper.
[33:55] Dr. Buhrman’s group is using tmid-circuit measurement and classical fan out to extend the amount of computation time
[35:04] How does this approach differ from VQE or QAOA?
[38:35] About Dr. Buhrman’s current paper, is he thinking through algorithms that may be able to be implemented in at least toy problems sort of scale to try this theory out and implementation?
{39:22] Sebastian talks about QubiC, an open-source Lawrence Berkeley National Lab project.
[41:14] Dr. Buhrman recognizes he is very much amazed by the fact that when he started in this field in the mid-late 90s, it was considered very esoteric and beautiful but probably wouldn't lead to anything practical.
[43:49] Dr. Buhrman assures that there is a chance that those intractable problems for classical computing also remain intractable for quantum computers.
[44:24] What's the next big frontier for Dr. Buhrman and his team?
[47:03] Dr. Buhrman explains Quantum Position Verification used for implementing secure communication protocols.
[50:56] Sebastian comments on the hilarious and interesting titles for papers Dr. Buhrman comes up with.
[53:10] Kevin and Sebastian share the highlights of an incredible conversation with Dr. Buhrman.
Mentioned in this episode:
Visit The New Quantum Era Podcast
Quantum entanglement and communication complexity
The first peptides: the evolutionary transition between prebiotic amino acids and early proteins
A Qubit, a Coin, and an Advice String Walk Into a Relational Problem
Six hypotheses in search of a theorem
Tweetables and Quotes:
“ Biological processes are quantum mechanical, and sometimes you need the quan...
If you like this episode you’ll love
Episode Comments
Generate a badge
Get a badge for your website that links back to this episode
<a href="https://goodpods.com/podcasts/the-new-quantum-era-246959/the-mysterious-majorana-with-leo-kouwenhoven-31852657"> <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/badges/generic-badge-1.svg" alt="listen to the mysterious majorana with leo kouwenhoven on goodpods" style="width: 225px" /> </a>
Copy