Session K61: Teaching Quantum Information at All Levels I

Education in Quantum Science at the Master's Degree Level

Quantum science and technology is becoming a significant growth area in our national economy.  As the science continues to engender marketable technology, workers will be needed from all educational levels.  For this reason, educational innovation from the elementary to the PhD level in quantum science and technology has been identified as a national priority.  This talk will focus on this type of education at the Master’s Degree (MS) level.  I will survey the development of such efforts in the US from 2019 to the present.  Since this type of education is at an early stage of development, it is useful to compare and contrast the various approaches to MS-level education that are currently being tried at different institutions.  Particular attention needs to aligning educatonal program goals to the needs of potential employers in the area.  I will give a detailed description of our experience with the MS program in Physics-Quantum Computing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Some things worked and some didn’t, and this has informed the evolution of the program.  There should be some useful lessons here for others that wish to start new programs.  I will conclude by giving some thoughts about the future of MS education in quantum science.            

Womanium Global Quantum Program: Building a Diverse Quantum Workforce

Quantum computing, sensing and communication are rapidly making the leap from academic labs to industry. To fill the talent gap and build a skilled quantum workforce, it is crucial to upskill the current STEM workforce and introduce the next generation to quantum information science and technology early on.

The DC-based Womanium foundation collaborates with scientists from NIST, LBNL, UCL etc alongside 50+ partners across the quantum ecosystem to organize the yearly Womanium Global Quantum Program. This intensive, 2-month virtual program brings together 70+ industry and academic leaders to train 1500+ students and industry professionals annually in Quantum Computing, Sensing and Communication. To connect industry and national labs with quantum talent, the Womanium Quantum Solutions Launchpad provides collaborative quantum research projects with companies and labs.

The program distinguishes itself through its comprehensive curriculum, the diverse field of participants (45% women) and speakers, innovative virtual teaching tools (including lab tours, gamified learning, quantum programming bootcamps and career training), real-world projects and an educational ripple effect, in which students become educators. We will present highlights, strategies and best practices.   

Developing a structured training and further education program in quantum technologies - an overview of the Quantum LifeLong Learning course program

Quantum technologies have the potential to disrupt various industries. As these technologies mature and transition from university research labs to real-world industry applications, it thus becomes increasingly important for professionals across different disciplines to acquire a comprehensive understanding of their capabilities and applications. Acknowledging this need, the Quantum LifeLong Learning (QL3) project, an initiative from the Munich universities, has been established. The QL3 project is a training and further education program tailored for diverse target groups within the industry. It caters to professionals ranging from managers and leaders without a technical background who seek an overview of quantum technologies over engineers looking for a thorough understanding of the field to quantum experts seeking a detailed introduction to fault-tolerant quantum computing. We outline our course program and share insights from the lessons we learned during its development.   

The Quantum Abacus: A Break-Even Point

In 2017 Terry Rudolph proposed a method of teaching quantum mechanics and quantum computing using only the simple rules of arithmetic to students as early as sixth grade. The method is incredibly effective and in a series of papers we showed how we use it to introduce superposition, phase, interference and entanglement with virtually no mathematical overhead. Furthermore we showed that a complete eight week introductory course (for computer science sophomores) has been built around this approach with the following milestones: quantum gates and circuits, phase kickback, the Deutsch-Josza algorithm, Bernstein-Vazirani and the extended Church-Turing thesis, the GHZ game and quantum teleportation. There is general consensus that the actual mathematics behind quantum computation is an inevitable and desirable destination for our students. But for those students that lack an adequate mathematical background (HS and younger students) one can reliably use Terry's method (i.e., computing with misty states, also referred to as The Quantum Abacus) to communicate a visual and entirely operational understanding of key quantum computing concepts without resorting to complex numbers or matrix multiplication. Here we present concrete evidence that the approach can create a genuine bridge to the actual mathematics behind quantum computation. We start with superdense coding and Grover's algorithm (to illustrate how effective the system is) then we identify an elementary break-even point when creating a W entangled state. Terry's Abacus is based on a paper by Shih that Toffoli plus Hadamard gates are universal. When trying to create the W entangled state we need to accommodate rotations and we must use controlled-Hadamard gates. And this is what allows for a break-even point: a Hadamard gate controlled by the output of another Hadamard gate breaks the ubiquitous symmetry in Terry's system, and from then on one has to carry around (i.e., specify) the actual probability amplitudes in misty states.This means that students can proceed to developing, in parallel, with (extended) misty states and Dirac notation. And after crossing that bridge we have an entirely conventional Quantum Computation course, but the intuition we acquired while computing with misty states remains with us.   

Computational Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) on 2D Quantum Materials

Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) are a way of bringing the excitement of research into the classroom, reaching more students, and reaching them earlier in their studies than the typical summer research experience or senior project. Key aspects are of a CURE are: students learn and use research methods, give input into the project, generate new research data, and analyze it to draw conclusions that are not known beforehand. I will show a paradigm for a computational CURE in a sophomore-level modern physics class, which has been run two years so far. It explores 2D quantum materials as a realization of the particle-in-a-box model. In a lab exercise, the students perform computational studies with density functional theory (DFT), provided by a convenient GUI tool on nanoHUB (https://nanohub.org/tools/ucb_compnano) that I co-developed which requires minimal computational skills. They each study a different in-plane heterostructure of a pair of monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides. They examine the wavefunctions around the gap and interpret them in terms of the envelope function approximation and the particle in a box model, to identify quantum-confined states. Interesting quantum-well structures will be investigated further. Studies have shown that CUREs improve learning, foster a sense of belonging in the field, increase retention of students in science (including going on to do summer research), and are especially beneficial for minoritized/underrepresented students.   

Commercially available, modular superconducting quantum computers

Maturing of the commercial quantum computing market is leading to increased specialization, signified by an increase in specialization of component-developing companies. The advent of commercially available superconducting quantum processing units (QPUs), FPGA-based microwave synthesis electronics, ultra-low-temperature (ULT) refrigerators, and quantum test services has resulted in the development of so-called "open-architecture" full stack quantum systems. Such full-stack systems can be operated with ease by the end user and enable rapid testing and characterization of qubit systems, significantly reducing the cost and time involved in such measurements and allowing for further advancements in quantum computing technology. In this talk, we show the results of an industry collaboration between Tabor Quantum Systems, QuantWare, and FormFactor, Inc. A 5-qubit QuantWare Soprano QPU was cooled down in a Formfactor LF 600 dilution refrigerator and was measured with a compact direct digital synthesis (DDS) system (Proteus P9484) provided by Tabor. Finally, we show how this solution can be upgraded to 25 qubits or more. The work illustrates the power of the open-architecture approach, providing a quantum computing entry that allows users to scale as they develop their skills.   

The 1925 revolution of matrix mechanics and how to celebrate it in quantum mechanics classes

In 1925, Heisenberg, Born, and Jordan developed matrix mechanics as a strategy to solve quantum-mechanical problems. While finite-sized matrix formulations are commonly taught in quantum instruction, the logic and approach of the original matrix mechanics is a lost art. In preparation for the 100th anniversary of the discovery of quantum mechanics, we present a historical and logical discussion of how matrix mechanics was discovered, and how it was used to solve quantum-mechanical problems. We focus on the harmonic oscillator to describe how quantum mechanics advanced from the Bohr-Sommerfeld quantization condition to matrix mechanics. While keeping to the spirit of the original work, we express results using modern ideas and notation, so they are easier to follow. We end with a discussion of why knowing this history and approach is useful for quantum information science.