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Quantum Computers Could Change Everything · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin.
0:21
Speaker 2: In a world where you can put billions of transistors
0:24
Speaker 2: on a single chip, and where anybody can access trillions
0:28
Speaker 2: of transistors in the cloud, it feels like we can
0:32
Speaker 2: use computers for for, you know, anything that can be computed.
0:37
Speaker 2: Kind of amazingly, this is not true. There are lots
0:41
Speaker 2: of things that could theoretically be computed, but that in
0:44
Speaker 2: fact are just too complex, too hard to compute for
0:48
Speaker 2: even a cloud full of computers. Things like predicting how
0:52
Speaker 2: prospective drugs will work in the body, or modeling really
0:56
Speaker 2: complex financial scenarios, even figuring out the factors of very
1:00
Speaker 2: large numbers. There are all kinds of computations that people
1:04
Speaker 2: just don't do because computers are not nearly powerful enough
1:08
Speaker 2: to do them. But but there is an entirely new
1:15
Speaker 2: kind of computer people are trying to build. It's called
1:18
Speaker 2: a quantum computer. You've probably heard of this. Quantum computers.
1:22
Speaker 2: If they work like people hope, they will, will be
1:25
Speaker 2: profoundly more powerful than any cloud full of computers that
1:29
Speaker 2: has ever existed. They could allow for new breakthroughs in
1:32
Speaker 2: everything from drug design to energy storage. Also, a big
1:37
Speaker 2: quantum computer could factor very large numbers, which would allow
1:41
Speaker 2: it to crack the encryption codes that secure most of
1:44
Speaker 2: the data that flows across the Internet. I'm Jacob Goldstein
1:53
Speaker 2: and this is What's Your Problem, the show where I
1:55
Speaker 2: talk to people who are trying to make technological progress.
1:58
Speaker 2: My guest today is Chris Munro. He's the co founder
2:02
Speaker 2: and chief scientist at IONQ, one of several companies that
2:06
Speaker 2: is trying to figure out how to build a big, power,
2:09
Speaker 2: powerful quantum computer. Chris is also a physics professor at Duke,
2:14
Speaker 2: which was good news for me because a big part
2:16
Speaker 2: of what I wanted to talk to him about was
2:18
Speaker 2: quantum physics, which is of course amazing and weird and
2:22
Speaker 2: essential for understanding how quantum computers work. We started off
2:29
Speaker 2: by discussing the fundamental difference between quantum computers and regular computers.
2:34
Speaker 2: It comes down to the bit, the basic building block
2:37
Speaker 2: of computing. The essential thing to know about a bit
2:40
Speaker 2: is that it can be in one of two states,
2:43
Speaker 2: on or off zero or one. At least that's the
2:46
Speaker 2: case for traditional computers. Quantum computers use bits called quantum
2:51
Speaker 2: bits or cubits, and they're different than traditional bits in
2:54
Speaker 2: a really strange, really profound way.
2:58
Speaker 3: A quantum bit can be in both zero and one
3:04
Speaker 3: at the same time. So this is totally new. We
3:07
Speaker 3: never experience, you know, a coffee cup being in two places.
3:11
Speaker 3: I'm looking at a.
3:12
Speaker 2: Coffee cup here, yes, or more simply a light switch
3:15
Speaker 2: that is both on and off. Right, plainly, the light
3:17
Speaker 2: is either on or.
3:18
Speaker 3: You don't experience those things in everyday life. So here's
3:21
Speaker 3: my physics, my two minute description of quantum. Okay, there
3:25
Speaker 3: are exactly two rules, no more, no less. There are
3:28
Speaker 3: two rules, and they have almost nothing to do with
3:31
Speaker 3: each other. Here are the two rules. Okay. The first
3:33
Speaker 3: rule is that a quantum system can exist in multiple
3:36
Speaker 3: states two. It could be more, but let's just say
3:39
Speaker 3: two a cubit it's in both states at the same time.
3:43
Speaker 3: And this is not this rule by itself. If you
3:46
Speaker 3: think about what's going on, it's not such a big deal.
3:49
Speaker 3: And the reason is a quantum system follows a wave
3:53
Speaker 3: equation sort of like water waves. That if I throw
3:56
Speaker 3: a pebble in the pond, it's going to emanate these
4:00
Speaker 3: circular waves that occupy the entire pond.
4:03
Speaker 2: So you throw a rock or a ball into the
4:05
Speaker 2: pond a minute later wears the waves like the whole
4:07
Speaker 2: pond is way.
4:08
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, that's right, it's not you know, the
4:10
Speaker 3: wave is not localized is kind of technically how we
4:12
Speaker 3: say something, So it's in many places. Now, that's rule
4:17
Speaker 3: number one. So here's rule number two, which is the
4:19
Speaker 3: weird one. Rule number two basically says that that wave,
4:22
Speaker 3: like that wavelike superposition that all quantum systems can can
4:27
Speaker 3: exist in, only works when you're not looking.
4:32
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's the part that seems like dumb is
4:36
Speaker 2: not quite the right word, but lengthy, implausible, little goofy,
4:40
Speaker 2: like surely the world can't give a shit whether I'm
4:43
Speaker 2: looking at it or not.
4:44
Speaker 3: Yeah, because what I mean, and what happens when you
4:46
Speaker 3: do look, and quantum says that when you do look
4:50
Speaker 3: the superposition, it pops, It latches onto a definite state,
4:56
Speaker 3: so it localizes, and it does it at random. You
4:58
Speaker 3: can't predict where it's going to localize. All you can
5:01
Speaker 3: say is, well, is supposed to be in these two positions,
5:03
Speaker 3: and I looked at it it was in one position.
5:06
Speaker 2: More to the point, I mean, are like more to
5:08
Speaker 2: the point, as people are first thinking about this, are
5:10
Speaker 2: they they're thinking of an electron. So the electron is
5:13
Speaker 2: like a wave it kind of exists in all these
5:16
Speaker 2: different places around the nucleus. But then they figure out
5:22
Speaker 2: if you look at an electron what happens.
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Speaker 3: It pops into one state that almost has no space.
5:30
Speaker 3: I mean, it pops into a point like particle, like
5:32
Speaker 3: a little tiny baseball.
5:34
Speaker 2: And if you're not looking at it, is it literally not? There?
5:37
Speaker 2: Is that?
5:38
Speaker 3: Now you're getting philosophical on me.
5:40
Speaker 2: Here, you did it. You're the one telling me these things.
5:45
Speaker 3: That's right, Well, it's these two rules. We have to
5:47
Speaker 3: add that rule because.
5:49
Speaker 2: So so yeah, so state the rules again, just to
5:52
Speaker 2: keep us on the rails here.
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Speaker 3: Rule number one, any quantum system like a cubit or
5:55
Speaker 3: an electron, can be in a superposition of states. It
5:59
Speaker 3: can be in this fuzzy existence.
6:01
Speaker 2: It can be in two places at once. It can
6:03
Speaker 2: be on and off.
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Speaker 3: Rule number two is that that first rule only works
6:09
Speaker 3: when you don't look, and when you do look, it
6:11
Speaker 3: will randomly localize pop out into a singular place.
6:16
Speaker 2: It will cease being on and off. It will become
6:19
Speaker 2: either on or off. Famously, the cat will stop being
6:23
Speaker 2: both dead and alive, and will either be dead or alive.
6:27
Speaker 2: And just to be clear, observed, doesn't just mean us
6:30
Speaker 2: looking at it, right, that's the kind of caricaturish version.
6:33
Speaker 2: But in fact it means like no particle can touch
6:36
Speaker 2: it or something like that. Right, So observed doesn't just
6:40
Speaker 2: mean seen by a person. It means interacted with by
6:43
Speaker 2: any part of it, by anything, even a single molecule
6:45
Speaker 2: of air or a photon. One. All of that ruins
6:49
Speaker 2: our beautiful superposition and forces the thing to resolve. So
6:54
Speaker 2: there's two pieces of jargon that I always come across
6:56
Speaker 2: when I'm reading about quantum computers. One, I think you've
7:00
Speaker 2: just described one, this idea that quantum things can be
7:05
Speaker 2: both one and zero if we're not looking at them,
7:09
Speaker 2: is it right, that's called superpositions.
7:11
Speaker 3: Yes, that's called That's a I would call it a
7:14
Speaker 3: plain old superposition. And you'll see what I.
7:16
Speaker 2: Meanilla superposition, no sprints, right, Okay, good, So we've talked
7:22
Speaker 2: about superposition. There is this other piece of jargon that
7:26
Speaker 2: people always use when they are talking about quantum computing,
7:29
Speaker 2: and that is entanglement. So just like we'll get to
7:34
Speaker 2: what it means for the computer, but just like, in
7:36
Speaker 2: a basic way, what is entanglement.
7:39
Speaker 3: What's interesting is that we're bringing Einstein in here. All
7:42
Speaker 3: the time. He had a famous paper in nineteen thirty
7:45
Speaker 3: five that he thought finally put the end to quantum mechanics.
7:50
Speaker 3: He said, and this is ridiculous because these two cubits,
7:54
Speaker 3: and I'm gonna, I'm going to use cubits are so simple.
7:57
Speaker 3: Here you have two cubits prepared in zero zero and
8:00
Speaker 3: one one. Then you separate them. They could be really
8:03
Speaker 3: far apart. Nevertheless, when one person measures their cubit, they
8:09
Speaker 3: know immediately even before the even before light could traverse
8:13
Speaker 3: the distance between them, they know immediately the state of
8:16
Speaker 3: the other one. And that violates relativity. Another of Einstein said, right.
8:21
Speaker 2: So Einstein has this paper if I as I understand it,
8:25
Speaker 2: where he basically says, look, if quantum mechanics is true,
8:28
Speaker 2: there will be these particles, whatever very small particles that
8:33
Speaker 2: behave in quantum ways, that become connected to each other
8:37
Speaker 2: in some strange way. They're not physically connected. You can
8:40
Speaker 2: put them as far apart as you want, you can
8:41
Speaker 2: put them a million miles away. And if you look
8:45
Speaker 2: at one of the particles and it resolves itself into
8:48
Speaker 2: some position whatever, call it zero or one instantly, instantly,
8:53
Speaker 2: at that same instant, the other particle will resolve itself
8:57
Speaker 2: the same way, and surely that can't be true because
9:00
Speaker 2: that doesn't make any sense. The universe doesn't work that way,
9:03
Speaker 2: and therefore quantum physics is wrong. Question spooky action at
9:07
Speaker 2: a distance, he said, mocking list.
9:08
Speaker 3: Yes, indeed, the title of the paper was a question
9:11
Speaker 3: can quantum mechanics be considered complete? In other words, is
9:13
Speaker 3: it right? There's something else there?
9:15
Speaker 2: And he's saying, surely, if this could be true, the
9:17
Speaker 2: theory must not make any sense because this obviously can't
9:19
Speaker 2: be true.
9:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he was wrong. He was famously wrong. It
9:22
Speaker 3: spent tested time and time again that this is exact.
9:25
Speaker 3: This is actually how nature works. We have to think
9:28
Speaker 3: of it this way.
9:29
Speaker 2: And people in China did one recently right where they
9:33
Speaker 2: had one particle on the ground and an entangled particle
9:36
Speaker 2: on a satellite, and they looked at the particle on
9:39
Speaker 2: the ground and it resolved itself in whatever way, and
9:41
Speaker 2: at the same moment the particle on this I mean,
9:43
Speaker 2: I know that's the party trick version of it, but
9:45
Speaker 2: it's a good party trick.
9:46
Speaker 3: Yeah. So entanglement is I like to think of it.
9:49
Speaker 3: You know, if we move on to quantum computing. I
9:51
Speaker 3: like to think of entanglement as sort of like a
9:53
Speaker 3: wire without any wires. Yeah, and when you're talking about computing,
9:58
Speaker 3: that's in fact what gives quantum computers its power, the
10:01
Speaker 3: ability to wire things together without having wires.
10:05
Speaker 2: Yeah. So okay, so we've got these two idea, right.
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Speaker 2: Superposition a thing can be in two states at once
10:11
Speaker 2: until you look at it, and entanglement meaning particles, and
10:15
Speaker 2: it's not just two, right, it can be multiple particles
10:17
Speaker 2: can be entangled such that when you look at one
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Speaker 2: and it resolves into some state, you will immediately know
10:23
Speaker 2: what state all the others are resulting into. Right, These
10:25
Speaker 2: are the two intellectual tools we've got. Can we build
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Speaker 2: a computer in our minds from these two tools?
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Speaker 3: Well, the good news is that there's a cool scaling
10:35
Speaker 3: law because when we go to three cubits, now there's
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Speaker 3: eight states, it's zero one, yes, all three cube, all
10:43
Speaker 3: three bit numbers, there's eight of them. With four, there's sixteen,
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Speaker 3: thirty two, and so on and so forth. So every
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Speaker 3: time you add one cubit, you've just doubled the possibilities.
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Speaker 2: Yes, exponentially is an overused word, but this is an
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Speaker 2: actual exponential thing.
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Speaker 3: And this is the structure of quantum computing that gives
11:01
Speaker 3: it its power to calculate things that we could never
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Speaker 3: do using classical computer. It's this fundamental exponential gain.
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Speaker 2: I get more or less the theory of a quantum computer.
11:10
Speaker 2: It's also clear that quantum computers don't exist in a
11:13
Speaker 2: useful way yet, right So what do you and everybody
11:18
Speaker 2: in the field have to figure out to get from
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Speaker 2: where we are now to having amazing quantum.
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Speaker 3: Well, in our case using these atoms, it's a simple
11:27
Speaker 3: matter of scaling. We routinely work with twenty to thirty
11:31
Speaker 3: right now. As soon as we get up to about
11:33
Speaker 3: one hundred, we're going to start to challenge will be
11:37
Speaker 3: well beyond what challenges supercomputers, and that's where the opportunities
11:41
Speaker 3: will happen. And the trick is, with one hundred cubits,
11:44
Speaker 3: you need to do a lot of stuff with them.
11:46
Speaker 3: You need to do many more operations. They have to
11:48
Speaker 3: live longer, they have to be even more isolated as
11:51
Speaker 3: you add more. So it's a tricky scaling problem. Our
11:56
Speaker 3: technology we sort of we sort of know how to
11:59
Speaker 3: do this. Other technologies are still in the lab. I
12:02
Speaker 3: think they don't know the underlying physics of materials to
12:05
Speaker 3: make them clean enough to do. That doesn't mean we're
12:08
Speaker 3: out of the woods. The challenge here is what you said,
12:11
Speaker 3: is trying to isolate it the control. But these challenges
12:14
Speaker 3: have nothing to do with quantum. It has to do
12:16
Speaker 3: with how good of a vacuum, how goods your chip,
12:18
Speaker 3: how good are your laser beams. These are all things
12:20
Speaker 3: that can be engineered.
12:21
Speaker 2: So it's it's very you're like a construction guy, like
12:24
Speaker 2: your core problem is just building whatever a box to
12:28
Speaker 2: put an atom in so that the atom will be
12:31
Speaker 2: left alone to exist in its unobserved quantum stamp.
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Speaker 3: Yep, exactly. Quantum systems only exist that way rule number one,
12:42
Speaker 3: you know, without looking that meaning that they're nearly perfectly isolated. Yeah,
12:47
Speaker 3: so that's the hard part of building a big quantum computer.
12:52
Speaker 2: So that's the theory. After the break the practice how
12:56
Speaker 2: to build a small.
12:57
Speaker 1: Quantum computer form real. Now back to the show.
13:09
Speaker 2: A bunch of companies are building quantum computers, big companies
13:12
Speaker 2: like IBM and Google and Microsoft, as well as a
13:15
Speaker 2: few smaller companies like ion Q. The different companies are
13:19
Speaker 2: trying different approaches. Some require super cold temperatures, in your
13:23
Speaker 2: absolute zero. Some use photons. Ion Q uses ions charged particles.
13:30
Speaker 2: I asked Chris to walk me through how ion Q
13:33
Speaker 2: builds a quantum computer and so what so lest I
13:37
Speaker 2: mean your company is called ion Q, right, and so
13:39
Speaker 2: let's like tell me about tell me about your qubits?
13:43
Speaker 2: What what kind of atom? What kind of ion? Like
13:45
Speaker 2: what is it that you're using.
13:47
Speaker 3: The first few generations were uturbium one seventy one. It's
13:50
Speaker 3: a very heavy yes, a heavy atom, the lower right
13:53
Speaker 3: part of the periodic table. And it turns out that
13:55
Speaker 3: it interacts with the lasers in a very simple way,
13:58
Speaker 3: I believe it or not. Okay, so that's what we use.
14:00
Speaker 3: It's a metal. So we have a little wire of uturbuum.
14:03
Speaker 2: So you have a little piece of metal that's U turbium.
14:05
Speaker 2: I would if I were you, I would sell visors
14:07
Speaker 2: that said uturbuum.
14:09
Speaker 3: That's not sure. Oh yeah, okay, all kinds of swag.
14:13
Speaker 2: So okay, so you take this element, this metal U turbium.
14:17
Speaker 2: Go it is.
14:18
Speaker 3: We have a little vacuum chamber. It's small. They're getting
14:21
Speaker 3: those are getting smaller. It's all at room temperature. By
14:24
Speaker 3: the way, we don't have to cool things as aggressive o.
14:27
Speaker 3: This little wire is inside that vacuum chamber, and there's
14:30
Speaker 3: a few black magic things that happen. It's nothing, nothing
14:34
Speaker 3: super fancy here. We blast a piece of that metal
14:37
Speaker 3: with a laser beam and what happens is we get
14:39
Speaker 3: a puff of metal in gas in vapor form. Its sublimates.
14:44
Speaker 2: It goes straight from solid to gas without being a liquid.
14:48
Speaker 3: In a vacuum chamber. So there's nothing else there, and
14:50
Speaker 3: so we get this puff of neutral atoms. Now we
14:53
Speaker 3: have these electric fields from chips that again, nothing really
14:57
Speaker 3: fancy there. The atoms don't see the electric field because
15:01
Speaker 3: the atoms are not charged electrically yet they're neutral. Now,
15:05
Speaker 3: when they float above the region where we want to
15:07
Speaker 3: hold them as ion, we send another laser beam that
15:10
Speaker 3: removes an electron from each atom. We know exactly how
15:14
Speaker 3: to do that, very efficient and bam, it's now an
15:16
Speaker 3: ion and it says, hey, wait a minute, I'm now stuck.
15:19
Speaker 3: So they just sit there and we do something called
15:22
Speaker 3: laser cooling to bring them to rest.
15:25
Speaker 2: Sogerat to be clear now that so it's an ion
15:29
Speaker 2: of uterbium and it's held because by electrical charge. That's
15:35
Speaker 2: your Cubit you got a cubit.
15:36
Speaker 3: Now that's it.
15:38
Speaker 2: Okay, So that part you've solved, right, Yeah.
15:41
Speaker 3: And when you put many turbium mindes next to each other,
15:44
Speaker 3: they form a little crystal, an atomically perfect crystal. And
15:47
Speaker 3: you can see that when you shine a different laser on,
15:49
Speaker 3: they glow and you can see like stars in the sky,
15:51
Speaker 3: there's they're not randomly oriented there.
15:53
Speaker 2: So now you've created a bunch of cubits. You've got them,
15:56
Speaker 2: as you say, like stars in the sky. They're sitting there.
15:59
Speaker 2: They're held in place by electrical charge. What has to
16:02
Speaker 2: happen next.
16:03
Speaker 3: What people might not know is that an atomic clock
16:05
Speaker 3: is actually based on two levels inside of the caesium atom.
16:09
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter what the atom is.
16:10
Speaker 2: Oh shit, I was already on uturbium.
16:12
Speaker 3: And we have very similar levels in utbium that behave
16:16
Speaker 3: as our cubit. It's a pretty good atomic clock, very
16:19
Speaker 3: well defined states. And each each atom has its own cubit. Okay,
16:25
Speaker 3: so we can prepare them all in the state zero.
16:27
Speaker 2: So what is it? I mean? I know an atomic
16:30
Speaker 2: clock is just a clock that's super accurate, But why
16:32
Speaker 2: does that matter here? I don't even know what it means.
16:34
Speaker 3: On. Ah, Well, it has to do with the fact
16:36
Speaker 3: that two states in an atom, they have they generally
16:40
Speaker 3: have different energies, sort of like different orbits planets around
16:43
Speaker 3: the sun.
16:44
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's like what level, what energy level is
16:48
Speaker 2: the electron at it's going between one.
16:49
Speaker 3: And you can think of that, and those energy levels
16:52
Speaker 3: are incredibly well defined and they're exactly the same for
16:55
Speaker 3: two different atoms.
16:57
Speaker 2: Okay, and so is this our zero in one? Tell
17:00
Speaker 2: me this is our zero and one.
17:01
Speaker 3: That's it.
17:02
Speaker 2: Okay. Uh So now we have our and if we're
17:06
Speaker 2: not looking, they're in superposition. It's always some probability were
17:10
Speaker 2: zero and one.
17:11
Speaker 3: We start by preparing them all in a very boring state,
17:13
Speaker 3: all in the state zero. That's like initializing the systems,
17:17
Speaker 3: like clearing out your computer. It's putting all the registries
17:20
Speaker 3: into zero. Reboot rebooter, that's rebooting. Okay. After we prepare
17:24
Speaker 3: in zero, now we're going to make superpositions. We're going
17:27
Speaker 3: to different laser beams, going to drive the system halfway
17:32
Speaker 3: to the other level. That's sort of making a fifty
17:35
Speaker 3: to fifty superposition. You can make as you can also
17:37
Speaker 3: entangle them, and the entanglement is based on the fact
17:40
Speaker 3: that these are ions, and they're like masses connected by springs.
17:44
Speaker 3: They vibrate together. So when you push on one, literally
17:47
Speaker 3: we push them in space. We push them around, and
17:51
Speaker 3: they interact with their neighbors, and they're very well defined
17:54
Speaker 3: ways to do this. Those are called gates.
17:55
Speaker 2: Like I'm with you. When you've got your ions, I
17:58
Speaker 2: understand you're resetting them and they have their zero in
18:01
Speaker 2: one and then you do something with them, you mess
18:04
Speaker 2: with them in such a way that they become entangled exactly.
18:07
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, shine lasers that shun these atoms just a
18:10
Speaker 3: little bit.
18:10
Speaker 2: Love it. I love it that it's another laser. And
18:12
Speaker 2: so now do you have a quantum computer? Have you now?
18:15
Speaker 2: In this?
18:16
Speaker 3: No? One? Last step? Okay, it's an easy one. It's
18:19
Speaker 3: very similar to remember the initialization step. We prepare everything
18:22
Speaker 3: in the state zero. The final step is to make
18:26
Speaker 3: a measurement. Well, that's the beauty of atoms in a
18:29
Speaker 3: vacuum is that we can send yet another laser beam,
18:33
Speaker 3: very similar to the other ones. And this laser beam,
18:36
Speaker 3: if the atom is in the state one, it will
18:38
Speaker 3: glow and we can collect that. It's like a star.
18:40
Speaker 3: It's really bright. You can see a single atom with
18:43
Speaker 3: your naked eye in my laboratory. If it's in the
18:46
Speaker 3: state zero, it's dark. So we basically look for bright
18:49
Speaker 3: dark bright dark, and that's what we read. That's it.
18:52
Speaker 3: That's a quantum computer.
18:54
Speaker 2: And so you have built one of those, built.
18:57
Speaker 3: Several of them, Duke, We have six of them at
19:00
Speaker 3: I and Q. We've built nine different generations.
19:02
Speaker 2: And the issue is they're just not big enough. They're
19:05
Speaker 2: not enough cubits to be that.
19:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're at twenty to thirty right now. We need
19:09
Speaker 3: to get to sixty two hundred.
19:11
Speaker 2: So as you've described it sounds easy. I get it, Like,
19:17
Speaker 2: if you can do twenty, why can't you do sixty?
19:20
Speaker 3: Okay, I'll make it very short. Remember the vibration I
19:24
Speaker 3: talked about, like when you move one atom, the other
19:27
Speaker 3: one moves. If you put five hundred of these atoms
19:30
Speaker 3: in a chain, that motion becomes very sloppy and noisy.
19:36
Speaker 3: So you want to limit the number you have in
19:38
Speaker 3: a chain. We know we can put twenty or thirty,
19:41
Speaker 3: maybe forty in a chain, but we need to we
19:43
Speaker 3: need to have a modular way to connect to another
19:46
Speaker 3: group of twenty or forty using optical fibers. We know
19:49
Speaker 3: how to do that too.
19:51
Speaker 2: We have done it, but you haven't quite worked out
19:53
Speaker 2: all the bugs yet. Okay, so it's not there. Doesn't
19:55
Speaker 2: need to be some big breakthrough or some step functions in.
19:58
Speaker 3: The engineer just have to want it's engine a lot
20:00
Speaker 3: of engineering, and we don't need breakthroughs. We don't need breakthroughs.
20:07
Speaker 2: We'll be back in a minute with the lighting ground.
20:19
Speaker 2: Back to the show. I know you got to go soon.
20:22
Speaker 2: I want to finish with a lightning round and we
20:23
Speaker 2: can truly make it a lightning round a lot of
20:25
Speaker 2: questions and you can answer them fast so you could
20:27
Speaker 2: go to your next meeting. I understand you're a percussionist
20:31
Speaker 2: in an orchestra and that you play like the weird instruments.
20:34
Speaker 3: Right.
20:35
Speaker 2: I watched a YouTube video. I'm curious, what is your
20:38
Speaker 2: favorite weird percussion instrument.
20:41
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have to say, alephone.
20:44
Speaker 2: What's the aleophone?
20:46
Speaker 3: It's a wind machine?
20:49
Speaker 2: How does it sound? What sound does it make?
20:51
Speaker 3: Actually, some orchestras serve pieces called for it. It's basically
20:55
Speaker 3: a big piece of burlap on a spindle that has
20:57
Speaker 3: slats and it's like I made one of those for
21:03
Speaker 3: our orchestra those fun.
21:06
Speaker 2: So how long have you been working on quantum computer?
21:10
Speaker 3: Thirty years a long time?
21:16
Speaker 2: Did you think there would be a useful quantum computer
21:19
Speaker 2: sooner than there has been? Like? How is it relative
21:22
Speaker 2: to your initial expectations.
21:23
Speaker 3: What I've learned is the love that you know. Physics
21:27
Speaker 3: in the laboratory is one thing. Engineering is yet another thing,
21:31
Speaker 3: and then product is a third thing, and they're all different.
21:35
Speaker 3: And when I started in the field, I had no
21:37
Speaker 3: knowledge of product and a little bit of knowledge of engineering.
21:41
Speaker 3: I think given engineering and product nature of this of
21:45
Speaker 3: this evolution, it's actually been faster than I thought it
21:50
Speaker 3: would be.
21:52
Speaker 2: I'm curious just in terms of your work in quantum physics, right,
21:55
Speaker 2: this is you as physics professor. Now, when you're deep
22:00
Speaker 2: in quantum physics work, does it ever freak you out
22:03
Speaker 2: that quantum physics suggests that the world is so different
22:07
Speaker 2: than the world we experience in our daily.
22:10
Speaker 3: I should be losing more sleep over it, But I
22:12
Speaker 3: think I've been able to be kind of successful by
22:16
Speaker 3: not thinking, at least during the day of those things.
22:19
Speaker 2: You're too busy trying to build a computer to think
22:21
Speaker 2: about that stuff.
22:22
Speaker 3: We know the law I'm more of a mechanic. I've
22:24
Speaker 3: always been very good at applying math, and to me,
22:27
Speaker 3: that's sort of what quantum is. Just it works. We
22:29
Speaker 3: know the laws, don't think too much.
22:32
Speaker 2: You mentioned when you go home you think about it,
22:34
Speaker 2: Like when you wake up at four in the morning,
22:36
Speaker 2: is there a particular aspect of the quantum universe that
22:40
Speaker 2: you returned to.
22:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's certainly entanglement that it's sort of space seems
22:47
Speaker 3: to wind upon itself. I guess that's one way to
22:50
Speaker 3: think about it.
22:51
Speaker 2: Entanglement shouldn't that shouldn't happen, right, Like that's basically what
22:54
Speaker 2: Einstein said, and like he seems right, or there's some
22:59
Speaker 2: huge thing about the universe that we obviously don't understand.
23:01
Speaker 2: I guess that's the other thing.
23:02
Speaker 3: It's so fundamental too, you know that. I mean, what
23:05
Speaker 3: is gravity. There's no microscopic model for gravity. It's just
23:09
Speaker 3: space is distorted so that things sort of fall toward
23:13
Speaker 3: each other. So and entanglement. It's really tantalizing to link
23:17
Speaker 3: those two. Entanglement to gravity. It hasn't happened yet, but
23:21
Speaker 3: that you know, that's an outstanding question. A lot of
23:24
Speaker 3: really smart people are thinking about this. Yeah, that keep
23:27
Speaker 3: I think about that sometimes it's fun.
23:34
Speaker 2: Chris Munroe is the co founder and chief scientist at
23:38
Speaker 2: ion Q. Today's show was produced by Edith Russello and
23:42
Speaker 2: Gabriel Hunter Chang. It was edited by Sarah Nix, and
23:45
Speaker 2: it was engineered by Amanda ka Wong. You can email
23:48
Speaker 2: us at problem at pushkin dot fm, or you can
23:51
Speaker 2: find me on Twitter at Jacob Boldstein. I'm Jacob Boldstein,
23:54
Speaker 2: and we'll be back next week with another episode of
23:57
Speaker 2: What's Your Problem.