From Quantum Systems to Instruments

A century after quantum mechanics was first written down, it is becoming an engineering discipline. Quantum sensors, once confined to research laboratories, are now deployed on aircraft, ships, and drones across aerospace, defense, and commercial settings, providing timing and sensing data at precision that was out of reach a decade ago. Quantum systems are also being used commercially for computing, addressing optimization problems that are impractical for classical machines.

In this talk, we'll start with the fundamental unit of quantum systems - a quantum bit, or qubit - and review several physical systems used to realize it. We'll then discuss how the qubit evolves in time, interacts with other qubits and with the environment, and how these interactions can be used for timekeeping, sensing, and computing. No prior exposure to quantum mechanics is assumed. The discussion builds on undergraduate mathematics and electromagnetics.

To make these ideas concrete, we'll build up the atomic magnetometer as a quantum sensor that uses atoms as qubits. Using this example, we'll see how interactions with electromagnetic radiation can be used to engineer the qubit's quantum states to achieve the sensitivity that enables applications ranging from geophysics to medical imaging.

Finally, we'll turn to the frontiers of timekeeping. Quantum clocks are now precise enough to detect the effects of general relativity at the centimeter scale, and they are already at work in applications ranging from timing financial transactions to searches for dark matter. By the end, you should see the qubit not as an abstraction from a physics course but as a device you can design, build, and put to work.

Speaker: Rahul Mhaskar, Keysignt Technologies

Attend in person or click here to watch online