Quantum in the Crowd

TU Delft and KTH's Val Zwiller opens day three of BQIT Bristol awoke in a thick fog on Friday morning, but by the time the first session was in full swing, we were back under the glorious BQIT sunshine, looking down on the harbourside from our venue, MShed. Kicking off the day was Val Zwiller of TU Delft & KTH Stockholm, giving a history and outlook for superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDS), with an emphasis on the importance of time resolution - photon purity will appear much reduced if measured without appropriate time resolution! QET Labs' Dondu Sahin followed up with Bristol's plans for near unity efficiency, ring-coupled SNSPDs, which have the added bonus of precise wavelength tunability, and Anthony Laing (also from QET Labs), with his talk on photonic simulations of molecular quantum dynamics. In the next session, "Quantum Communications and Networks", Xiao Yuan presented University of Oxford's latest quantum algorithm...

QTEC's Andy Collins opens the second day of BQIT with his industry session talk The second day of the Bristol Quantum Information Technologies Workshop was yet another day of golden sunshine and intriguing discussions. Talks ranged from industry perspectives and future funding to solid state systems and quantum dots, as well as a poster session generously sponsored by KETS covering broad directions of academic research. The morning proceedings began with talks on industry activity over the past year. Andrew Collins from the University of Bristol's Quantum Technology and Enterprise Centre (QTEC) spoke about some of the highs and lows of quantum startups, busting some myths and ending with a call for people to take part in the upcoming Quantum Start Up Week this July. Next was Zurich Instruments' Jelena Trbovic, highlighting how their amplifiers and arbitrary waveform generators can be used for fast characterising and control of superconducting qubits. And before brea...

QET Labs' director John Rarity opens the 2018 BQIT workshop In accordance with the precedent set last year, the Bristol Quantum Information Technologies Workshop kicked off today at the M Shed with the start of what is forecast to be three days of glorious sunshine. The weather was matched by optimism in the days talks, which were spread over sessions in quantum communications, quantum theory, quantum photonics and quantum enhanced measurement and control. QET Labs director John Rarity opened the conference and gave the first talk "next generation communication networks", summarising QET Labs’ activity in the area. Chip scale QKD pioneered by KETS - a recent Bristol spin-out - was a highlight, as well as plans for a sub £1M QKD satellite mission. Next up, Christoph Marquardt of the Max Planck Institute of the Science of Light reviewed the state of QKD around the world, and outlined their plans to build global hybrid QKD networks, utilising satellites, drones, and f...

New students means new opportunities to get out of the lab and teaching the public about the weird world of quantum technology. But first, we need to show everyone what demos we have available. This afternoon, we invited the whole group to see what our engagement cupboard has to offer. Euan Allen showing some of our new(ish) CDT students how to use our Galton Box. Seasoned veterans through to those new to public engagement joined us to get hands on with our demos. Everything from hand held busking demos to more technical demos was on offer to have a play with. Everyone pitched in to find out what is on offer. Sam Morley-Short and Stasja   Stanisic building some origami microscopes With everyone well trained in how to operate our kit, watch out for us at the next science festival and join us to learn more about quantum mechanics! What's that up there? Some of our CDT students getting hands on with our spectrometers.

Researchers from CQP and QE-CDT manning the stand for the first half of the week The Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition is one of the largest events in the outreach calendar and is attended by thousands. Scientists from all over the UK are invited to display their cutting-edge research during the week-long event. After a competitive application process, the Centre for Quantum Photonics was invited to explain the weird and wonderful world of quantum computing, as one of only 22 exhibits. Team from the second half of the week enjoying the soirée Our exhibit took the public on journey to discover how we control light, why we want to use it to create more powerful computers and how the strange world of quantum mechanics will get us there. The first part of the display illustrated how our technology relies on the same physical processes as superfast broadband, confining light using total internal reflection. A simulation of the "quantum Christmas tree" produced ...

QETLabs researchers and PhD students showed the public demonstrations of optics and its use in encrypted communication systems (pictured above: Lawrence Rosenfeld). Cheltenham Science Festival is one of the UKs largest public engagement science exhibitions, which has had attendance of 45,000 visitors at previous events. This year’s festival saw researchers from QETLabs showcasing a variety of demonstrations. Organiser and researcher Henry Semenenko engaging a young scientist in message encryption Researcher Jake Kennard (left) and organiser and researcher Alasdair Price (right) ready to decode! QET Labs students and researchers Henry Semenenko and Alasdair Price organised demonstrations ranging from explaining the fundamental properties of light such as polarisation, and how we use it in sunglasses and 3D cinema glasses, to addressing current affairs of hacking encrypted messages and securing communications against malicious adversaries. Pictured: PhD student Be...

Students from the Quantum Engineering CDT taught the public about light and colour at Bristol’s Festival of Nature this weekend. The CDT’s 3rd cohort, led by Cohort 1 student Euan Allen (pictured above), attended the event on Saturday and Sunday to demonstrate the effects of microstructures on colour in nature using butterfly wings, beetle shells, and several other naturally iridescent substances. The event, which attracts thousands to Bristol harbourside annually, aims to educate the public about nature, conservation, and the environment. Cohort 3 students (from left to right) João Diniz, Giorgos Eftaxias, Rachel Chadwick, George Atkinson, Jorge Ruz, and Ross Wakefield pose in front of their demonstration. Festival of Nature demo

Almut Beige (University of Leeds) and her talk "from optical cavities to cavity-fibre networks" BQIT:17's third and final day saw the workshop draw to a close with another sunny day of talks on detectors, hybrid platforms and integrated photonics. Kicking things off was Sae Woo Nam from NIST. Sae Woo explained two projects around the subject of superconducting nanowire single photon detectors (SNSPDs): one which showed a detection efficiency when used in practice of over 93%, and another on SNSPDs integrated into waveguides. He finished talking about some work with Dave Wineland integrating these detectors with ion traps. University of Münster's Wolfram Pernice followed this by speaking about developing SNSPDs which are capable of detecting single photons in plane, making them suitable for waveguides. The first solid state & hybrid systems session began with Almut Beige from the University of Leeds, who explained how we can better understand how to couple...

Our BQIT student helpers (left to right) Jorge Monroy Ruz, Caterina Vigliar and Ben Slater Day 2 of QET Labs' fourth annual Bristol Quantum Information Technologies (BQIT) saw another sunny day of talks related to quantum technologies. The quantum information theory stream kicked off with the University of Bristol's Ashley Montanaro, detailing two recent algorithms to provide quadratic speedups for backtracking and Monte Carlo methods. This was followed by Ulm University's Martin Plenio, who talked about efficient ways of performing quantum state tomography, resulting in being able to experimentally demonstrate efficient state tomography for 20 trapped ions. Laura Mancinska, also of the University of Bristol, concluded this topic with a talk on how to verify that a state you are given is entangled. A coffee break precluded Winfried Hensinger of the University of Sussex, who began the scaling up theme by explaining the background of ion trap quantum computing, befor...

This year's BQIT workshop was hosted at the M Shed on Bristol's harbourside. The first day of QET Labs' fourth annual Bristol Quantum Information Technologies (BQIT) Workshop kicked off with a whistle-stop tour of quantum technologies, ranging from the foundations of entanglement to the quantum industry. For entanglement foundations, first to speak was University of Toronto's Aephraim Steinberg, highlighting two recent results: how quantum-enhanced sensing can beat "Rayleigh's curse" and strongly increase nonlinear optical effects. He was followed by Marek Żukowski from the University of Gdańsk, who explained how redefining Stokes parameters can lead to better entanglement observations. The devices segment began with Josh Nunn from the University of Oxford unveiling a long awaited result: A noise free quantum memory! University of Pavia's Marco Liscidini followed this with his proposal for a ring resonator with 99.9% purity. Our first inform...

In preparation for QETLabs' upcoming exhibit at the Royal Society Summer Showcase , CQP PhD students Ben Slater and Sam Morley-Short were invited to a professional outreach training session hosted by Royal Society and Science Museum engagement experts. The event was also attended by members from many other exhibits, ranging from climate scientists modelling our complex ecosystem to engineers showcasing "mixed reality" with the new Microsoft Hololens ( https://www.microsoft.com/ microsoft-hololens/en-gb ), with attendees encouraged to learn from each other's strengths and weaknesses. The morning session focused on understanding your target audience: What scientific experiences, biases and assumptions might audience members already have before coming to your exhibit? What do they want out of the interaction and how can you give it to them? How can you design your exhibit to engage the audience in a way they enjoy, rather than how you might do so to other scientists...

 “The Future Brunels programme aims to inspire and enthuse young people with science and engineering throughout their time at secondary school. By introducing young people to the impacts science and engineering have already on their own and other’s lives, and to the range of career options available to them through studying STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects, the programme encourages the Future Brunels to consider careers in the broadest set of STEM fields.” - Future Brunels Website On Thursday 9 th March, twelve Future Brunels students aged 13 and 14 visited the QET Labs team to investigate the wave nature of light, and how this can be used to measure minute distances such as the width of a single animal hair. The group began with a talk from PhD student Sam Morley-Short, who described the long-standing 17 th Century feud between scientists trying to determine whether light is made of waves or particles. After learning how the wave na...

Bristol Optical Students Society makes first industry visit to Gooch & Housego, Torquay. On Tuesday 29 th November, Bristol Optical Student’s Society, a.k.a BOSS, held its first ever industry excursion, bussing a mix of 11 students and post-docs down to Gooch & Housego’s Torquay site. Leading the world in high-quality optics manufacturing, the UK-based G&H has supplied the technology that underpins the foundations of our modern networked world. Having recently expanded their Torquay facility as well as being awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise for their highly successful Fiber-Q device, BOSS was keen to head down to the Devonshire coast to find out the secret to their success. The visit started with an overview of the historical and current state of the company, before a tour of the company’s manufacturing facilities. From the hand-fabrication of precision fused-fibre waveguides, to the assembly of bespoke optics modules, the tour visite...