A new collaboration project has been awarded funding to analyse how radiation and cosmic rays impact quantum technologies, focusing on the occurrence of errors in qubits. Researchers from the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at the University of Waterloo, SNOLAB near Sudbury, Ontario, and Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have been awarded a new grant to analyse the impact of radiation and cosmic rays on quantum technologies. The research grant is sponsored by the Army Research Office, a directorate of the U.S. Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research Laboratory. Wilson said: “By partnering with the experts in dark matter and cosmic radiation at SNOLAB, we can bring together their expertise and strengths with the superconducting qubit skills we have at IQC and Chalmers.” The team plans to examine the link between cosmic rays and qubits – a fundamental part of quantum technologies. Experiments have shown that one source of errors in qubits is being hit by a high-energy particle, such as a cosmic ray. This causes an error hotspot, which spreads to neighbouring qubits. It has happened at a rate of around once every ten seconds, setting an upper limit on quantum calculation time. SNOLAB is the world’s deepest cleanroom, built two kilometres underground in Vale’s Creighton mine. The laboratory shields scientific experiments from high-energy particles from space, using the Canadian Shield to create a low background environment. High-quality superconducting qubits will be manufactured in the fabrication facilities at Chalmers University. They will then be tested at the surface in Sweden and Waterloo and underground at SNOLAB to explore the differences in each environment. “We are super excited about this project, since it addresses the very important issue of how cosmic radiation affects quantum bits and quantum processors. Getting access to the underground facility at SNOLAB is crucial to understanding how the effects of cosmic radiation can be mitigated,” concluded Delsing.

New collaboration awarded funding to investigate the impact of cosmic rays on quantum technologies

A new collaboration project has been awarded funding to analyze the impact of radiation and cosmic rays on quantum technologies, focusing on the occurrence of errors in qubits. Researchers from the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, SNOLAB near Sudbury, Ontario, and Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have been awarded a grant to examine the effects of cosmic rays on quantum technologies.