How Oak Ridge National Laboratory could advance the new quantum revolution is one topic of a talk that Warren Grice, a distinguished research scientist at ORNL, will give Tuesday, Jan. 14, to Friends of ORNL and the interested public.
The free lecture, titled “Quantum Information Science and the Quantum Revolution,” will be held at noon at the UT Resource Center, 1201 Oak Ridge Turnpike. Grice is a member of the Quantum Communications and Networking Group in the Quantum Information Science Section, which is part of the Computational Sciences and Engineering Division at ORNL.
Warren Grice
ORNL leads one of the five National Quantum Information Science Research Centers funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
“With more than 20 years of research in quantum information science, as well as its broad scientific capabilities, ORNL is well-positioned to be a leading contributor in the effort to achieve the promises of QIS,” Grice said.
The first quantum revolution was based on the application of quantum mechanics (a mathematical description of the motion and interaction of atoms, photons of light and subatomic particles such as electrons), which led to the development of lasers, transistors and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the 20th century.
Grice said that ORNL is positioned to help advance the second quantum revolution in the 21st century, which focuses on increasing understanding and devising applications in three areas of QIS: quantum computing, quantum communication and quantum sensing. He will provide an overview of QIS and the three areas.
Sandwiches, chips, cookies and drinks will be available at 11:15 a.m. at the UT Resource Center for a donation of $10 on a first-come, first-served basis. To view the virtual presentation, click on the talk title on the www.fornl.org website homepage and then click on the Zoom link near the bottom of the page describing the lecture. You can view it the next day by clicking on “Past Talks” on the left side of the website’s navigation bar.
“Quantum computing entails the manipulation of quantum states to perform computations,” Grice noted. Quantum computers will be able to carry out certain types of computations more quickly than even the most powerful digital supercomputers like Frontier at ORNL, as was demonstrated recently by an American company’s new quantum computer, one of the best innovations of 2024.
Quantum computing could revolutionize fields such as drug discovery, materials science and artificial intelligence. Its fundamental unit of information is the qubit, which is analogous to the bit in classical computing but able to represent both 0 and 1 simultaneously.
Speaking about quantum communication, Grice said, “The quantum characteristics of light can be leveraged to facilitate communication links that are resistant to eavesdropping attempts. This is accomplished by encoding information in single photons or other quantum states. Eavesdropping attempts on these fragile states leave evidence that can be detected by the legitimate parties.
“Quantum sensing uses quantum physics to measure physical quantities with higher sensitivity and accuracy than conventional techniques,” Grice said. Highly sensitive devices based on quantum sensing could be used to improve navigation and medical imaging.
Grice received a Ph.D. in optics in 1998 from the University of Rochester and, after a postdoctoral appointment at ORNL, joined the research staff in 2002. He served as the QIS group leader at ORNL for nearly six years.
In addition, from 2018 to 2021, Grice participated in ORNL’s entrepreneurial leave program. Before coming to ORNL, he was a member of the physics faculty at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville.
This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Hear how Oak Ridge National Lab could advance the new quantum revolution