| Project Detail |
Resisting noise in advanced quantum processors
We are in the midst of a technological revolution thanks to advances in noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices. These powerful quantum processors have transformed our understanding of quantum dynamics despite their imperfections. They highlight how dissipation – typically seen as a negative factor – can actually enable useful quantum behaviours like synchronisation. However, challenges such as environmental disturbances can disrupt this synchronicity. Funded by the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions programme, the BoFTISync project aims to overcome these challenges by using topological phases of matter, which resist impurities, to protect and enhance quantum synchronisation. This innovative approach promises to improve the robustness of quantum systems and paves the way for new applications in quantum technologies, benefiting NISQ platforms from trapped ions to optomechanics.
We are currently witnessing a technological revolution driven by the recent achievements in NISQ devices, which despite their imperfect controllability have already revolutionized our understanding of many-body dynamics and quantum information science. While a lot of effort is spent to minimize the undesirable consequences of dissipation, interactions with the environment can also generate useful quantum behavior. The phenomenon of synchronization is a prototypical example where dissipation is a key enabling mechanism and it only recently started to emerge in the quantum domain due to advancements in quantum technology to exquisitely adjust both the system and environmental properties. Still, inevitable imperfections -- local deformations caused by ambient conditions and long-term degradation -- may significantly alter or even destroy the desired synchronicity altogether, which ultimately constraints its pertinence for future quantum devices. Consequently, we are in the need of universal principles to promote the robustness of synchronization and facilitate its technological leap. The proposed project BoFTISync addresses this task by exploiting the power of topological phases of matter, which exhibit an unusual protection from the adverse effects of impurities. With a unique interdisciplinary approach of integrating topological concepts with dynamical symmetries of interacting bosonic modes and open quantum systems, the project aims to establish topology as an innovative way to protect quantum signatures of synchronization, and at the same time opens the avenue for unexplored phenomena at the interface of these seemingly distinct research areas. This investigation is not only fundamentally interesting, but will also spark new applications in quantum technologies and information processing in NISQ platforms ranging from trapped ions to optomechanics. Thus, BoFTISync will prepare the ground for a deeper understanding on topology in open nonlinear systems. |
