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JST FUNDS NEW MIT PROGRAM LED BY ISAAC CHUANG IN ION
TRAP QUANTUM COMPUTING
International collaboration to foster progress toward
creating the first large-scale quantum computer
For Immediate Release
THURSDAY, 8 December 2005
Contact: William Smith, Assistant Director for Finance
and Sponsor Relations
Phone: +1.617.253.5621
Email: whs@mit.edu
Cambridge, MA: Creating fresh opportunities for progress
in the world-wide race to realize the first large-scale
quantum computer, the Japan Science and Technology
Agency (JST) has funded a new project at the Research
Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), fostering collaborative
research in novel approaches that could enable dramatic
advances in quantum computing. The RLE team, lead by
Professor Isaac
Chuang, will work closely with groups
at Osaka University, led by Professor Shinji Urabe,
and at NICT/Kansai Advanced Research Center, led by
Dr. Kazuhiro Hayasaka, to achieve success in realizing
microfabricated systems for trapped ion quantum computation.
A quantum computer is a machine that exploits the
quantum-mechanical behavior of systems at nanometer
length scales to process and communicate information
in ways that are impossible for traditional computers
based on classical laws of physics. One of the most
intriguing possibilities of quantum computers is that
if large-scale quantum computers can be built, these
devices could solve certain computational problems
far faster and more efficiently than current silicon
transistor based machines. For example, quantum computers
may allow the quick factorization of large numbers,
which would have a profound impact on cryptography.
Said Jeffrey
H. Shapiro, Director of RLE and Julius
A. Stratton Professor of Electrical Engineering, "This
new JST-RLE collaboration builds on the Laboratory's
expanding strengths in quantum computation and communication.
RLE is the home to a growing presence of world-leading
researchers in these important topics, exemplified
by Professor Chuang joining us last year, and I am
confident that his colleagues in Japan and he will
work together to achieve remarkable results that will
help us all reach the goal of creating the first large-scale
quantum computer."
Chuang, Associate Professor in both MIT's Department
of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and
Department of Physics, has been at the forefront of
this fast-developing research field. He earned widespread
acclaim for demonstrating the world's first 2-qubit
quantum computer in 1998 while at the University of
California, Berkeley, the first 3-qubit computer in
1999 while at IBM's Almaden Research Center, and for
leading the team that experimentally realized Shor's
quantum factoring algorithm on a 7-qubit system in
2001. Professor Chuang joined RLE in 2005, and RLE
is currently in the process of building and completing
extensive new research facilities for his research
in quantum information science.
The new JST-funded effort--the first of its kind at
MIT--is part of JST's Core Research for Evolutional
Science and Technology (CREST) program, which in this
area aims for enabling the technological infrastructure
to realize quantum information processing as an innovating
influence in communications technologies.
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