Fraunhofer IAO | Digital BusinessWhere possibility becomes reality
QuantumBW Colloquium
The innovation initiative QuantumBW launches the new "QuantumBW Colloquium" on the campus of the Fraunhofer Institute Center Stuttgart. The aim of the colloquium is to promote scientific exchange on hardware and algorithmic topics in the field of quantum computing, to present the latest developments in this research area and to promote the idea of co-development of quantum solutions.
In addition to the question of how the next generation of computers will be realized, it is also exciting to see what next-generation computers can be used for. They have promising applications in cryptography, machine learning and optimization. Due to the currently still noisy, small systems of the NISQ era (Noisy Intermediate Scale), the class of variational quantum algorithms is particularly interesting. These and other topics such as quantum error correction, barren plateaus and quantum advantage will be discussed in the colloquium on the following dates:
Upcoming colloquium dates
September 25: Dequantizing the Quantum Singular Value Transformation:
Hardness and Applications to Quantum Chemistry and the Quantum PCP Conjecture
Speaker: Prof. Sevag Gharibian (Universität Paderborn)
The Quantum Singular Value Transformation (QSVT) is a recent technique that gives a unified framework to describe most quantum algorithms discovered so far, and may lead to the development of novel quantum algorithms. In this work, we investigate the hardness of classically simulating the QSVT. A recent result by Chia, Gilyén, Li, Lin, Tang and Wang (STOC 2020) showed that the QSVT can be efficiently "dequantized" for low-rank matrices, and discussed its implication to quantum machine learning. In this talk, motivated by establishing the superiority of quantum algorithms for quantum chemistry and making progress on the quantum PCP conjecture, we focus on the other main class of matrices considered in applications of the QSVT, sparse matrices.
We first show how to efficiently "dequantize", with arbitrarily small constant precision, the QSVT associated with a low-degree polynomial. We apply this technique to design classical algorithms that estimate, with constant precision, the singular values of a sparse matrix. We show in particular that a central computational problem considered by quantum algorithms for quantum chemistry (estimating the ground state energy of a local Hamiltonian when given, as an additional input, a state sufficiently close to the ground state) can be solved efficiently with constant precision on a classical computer. As a complementary result, we prove that with inverse-polynomial precision, the same problem becomes BQP-complete. This gives theoretical evidence for the superiority of quantum algorithms for chemistry, and strongly suggests that said superiority stems from the improved precision achievable in the quantum setting. We also discuss how this dequantization technique may help make progress on the central quantum PCP conjecture.
Past events
2025
July 10, Prof. Achim Kempf (University of Waterloo)
The dynamics of entanglement in adiabatic quantum computing
Privacy warning
With the click on the play button an external video from www.youtube.com is loaded and started. Your data is possible transferred and stored to third party. Do not start the video if you disagree. Find more about the youtube privacy statement under the following link: https://policies.google.com/privacyProf. Kempf will address the question of how the level of difficulty of a problem of combinatorial optimization translates into the hardness of the corresponding adiabatic quantum computation, by analyzing the adiabatic dynamics of entanglement.
May 08, Dr. Michael Marthaler (HQS Quantum Simulations)
Quantum Computing Use Cases: Optimization and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
Privacy warning
With the click on the play button an external video from www.youtube.com is loaded and started. Your data is possible transferred and stored to third party. Do not start the video if you disagree. Find more about the youtube privacy statement under the following link: https://policies.google.com/privacyIn this talk, we will explore use cases for quantum computers and fundamentally how we even identify use cases to begin with. We will examine, why a large part of use case research is guided by complexity theory and how this effects popular use case topics like combinatorial optimization. Additionally, we will discuss the role of quantum computing in improving the interpretation of NMR data, aiding in the characterization of molecular structures. This presentation will provide insights into the practical applications of quantum computing in these fields.
April 10, Speaker: Prof. Marko Rancic (University of Luxembourg)
Quantum Computing in Physics, Chemistry and Optimization
Privacy warning
With the click on the play button an external video from www.youtube.com is loaded and started. Your data is possible transferred and stored to third party. Do not start the video if you disagree. Find more about the youtube privacy statement under the following link: https://policies.google.com/privacyQuantum computers are predicted to solve problems with a computational complexity which is unachievable for their classical counterparts. However, quantum error correction is still an unreached dream and a lot of attention is given to algorithms on current day noisy quantum computers. In this talk I will give recent advances in quantum computing in chemistry, physics and for industry scale optimization problems. The focus of my talk would be industry scale use cases on current day hardware. Some attention will be given to a synergy between high performance and quantum computing.
March 20, Dr. Lukas Burgholzer (Technical University of Munich)
Design Automation Tools and Software for Quantum Computing
Privacy warning
With the click on the play button an external video from www.youtube.com is loaded and started. Your data is possible transferred and stored to third party. Do not start the video if you disagree. Find more about the youtube privacy statement under the following link: https://policies.google.com/privacyDesigning and realizing quantum computing applications in a scalable fashion requires automated, efficient, and user-friendly software tools that cater to the needs of end users, engineers, and physicists. Many of the problems to be tackled are similar to design problems from the classical realm for which sophisticated design automation tools have been developed in the last decades. The Munich Quantum Toolkit (MQT) is a collection of open-source software tools for quantum computing developed by the Chair for Design Automation at TUM, which uses this design automation expertise to provide solutions for design tasks across the entire quantum software stack. This entails high-level support for end users, efficient methods for the classical simulation, compilation, and verification of quantum circuits, tools for quantum error correction, and more. This talk will cover selected highlights across the broad spectrum of the MQT and its history.
2024
December 19, Prof. Enrique Solano (Kipu Quantum)
Useful quantum computing in the NISQ Era
Privacy warning
With the click on the play button an external video from www.youtube.com is loaded and started. Your data is possible transferred and stored to third party. Do not start the video if you disagree. Find more about the youtube privacy statement under the following link: https://policies.google.com/privacyWe will describe digital, analog, and digital-analog quantum computing paradigms. Furthermore, we will discuss the possibility of reaching quantum advantage for industry use cases with current quantum computers in trapped ions, superconducting circuits, neutral atoms, and photonic systems.
December 5, Prof. Barbara Kraus (TU München)
Is your quantum computer working?
Current quantum devises are faulty and one needs to be able to assess the errors which occur during quantum information processing. I will discuss several methods to gain confidence about the correct functioning of quantum devices and to test quantum computations and quantum simulations.
November 21, Prof. Ioan Pop (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology KIT/ University of Stuttgart)
Mesoscopic physics challenges (in) superconducting quantum devices
Privacy warning
With the click on the play button an external video from www.youtube.com is loaded and started. Your data is possible transferred and stored to third party. Do not start the video if you disagree. Find more about the youtube privacy statement under the following link: https://policies.google.com/privacyNovember 7, Prof. Markus Müller (RWTH Aachen University/ FZ Jülich)
The dawn of quantum fault-tolerance
Privacy warning
With the click on the play button an external video from www.youtube.com is loaded and started. Your data is possible transferred and stored to third party. Do not start the video if you disagree. Find more about the youtube privacy statement under the following link: https://policies.google.com/privacyOctober 17, Prof. Joris van Slageren (University of Stuttgart)
Molecules for Quantum Technologies
Privacy warning
With the click on the play button an external video from www.youtube.com is loaded and started. Your data is possible transferred and stored to third party. Do not start the video if you disagree. Find more about the youtube privacy statement under the following link: https://policies.google.com/privacySeptember 26, Dr. Werner Dobrautz (Chalmers University of Technology Gothemburg)
Quantum Computing Meets Quantum Chemistry: A Potential New Era of Simulation and Study
Privacy warning
With the click on the play button an external video from www.youtube.com is loaded and started. Your data is possible transferred and stored to third party. Do not start the video if you disagree. Find more about the youtube privacy statement under the following link: https://policies.google.com/privacy
September 12, Dr. Christian Marciniak (Universität Innsbruck)
Quantum information processing with trapped ions – state of the art, perspectives, and recent applications
Privacy warning
With the click on the play button an external video from www.youtube.com is loaded and started. Your data is possible transferred and stored to third party. Do not start the video if you disagree. Find more about the youtube privacy statement under the following link: https://policies.google.com/privacyJuly 25, Prof. Jens Eisert (FU Berlin)
Do quantum computers have applications in optimization and machine learning?
Quantum computing promises advantages for a number of structured computational problems. While the idea of quantum computing is not new, only within the last a bit more than five years protagonists have set out to actually build such devices to a reasonable scale. The quantum computers we have today are still somewhat noisy and not huge - but then, such devices seemed inconceivable not very long ago, creating an exciting state of affairs. This also comes along with lots of expectations and some hype. This talk will go on a journey deciphering what we can reasonably expect from such machines in the near future. It will present some exciting perspectives concerning achieving industrially relevant applications in machine learning and optimization. It will also debunk some of the most unreasonable of expectations and provide a reality check of what can be achieved for noisy devices. Overall, this will give rise to a ride through the landscape of one of the most exciting and promising future technologies.
July 11, Prof. Zoë Holmes (EPFL)
Does provable absence of barren plateaus imply classical simulability?
Privacy warning
With the click on the play button an external video from www.youtube.com is loaded and started. Your data is possible transferred and stored to third party. Do not start the video if you disagree. Find more about the youtube privacy statement under the following link: https://policies.google.com/privacyJune 27, Dr. Christa Zoufal (IBM Quantum)
The potentials and bottlenecks of state-of-the-art quantum machine learning algorithms
Privacy warning
With the click on the play button an external video from www.youtube.com is loaded and started. Your data is possible transferred and stored to third party. Do not start the video if you disagree. Find more about the youtube privacy statement under the following link: https://policies.google.com/privacyMay 2, Dr. Michele Grossi (CERN)
Variational quantum algorithms: training and expressivity considerations from CERN
Privacy warning
With the click on the play button an external video from www.youtube.com is loaded and started. Your data is possible transferred and stored to third party. Do not start the video if you disagree. Find more about the youtube privacy statement under the following link: https://policies.google.com/privacyApril 18, Prof. Dr. Tilman Pfau (University of Stuttgart)
THE QUANTUM LÄND: Quantum computing with trapped neutral atoms - made in Stuttgart
