Physics World. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
has, this morning, decided
to award a 2022
Nobel Prize in Physics in equal share
to Allee Aspen, Universite
Paris a Clais,
and Ecole Polytechnique Palaisseux, France.
John F Klauser, J F Klauser and Associates,
Walnut Creek, California,
USA.
And to Anton Seilinger, University of Vienna,
Austria.
They received a prize
for experiments with entangled photons,
establishing the violation of Bell inequalities,
and pioneering quantum information science. Hello, and welcome
to the Physics World Stories podcast. I'm Andrew
Glester, and that was Hans Elegren,
the secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy
of Sciences,
announcing this year's winners of the Nobel Prize
in Physics.
And in this episode, we'll be exploring how
the science that won that Nobel Prize is
being applied
in real world technologies today.
We'll hear from Oscar Kennedy, a quantum engineer
at Oxford Quantum Circuits.
But first, his Max Seek,
his company AEGIQ,
that's a e g I q,
received the business startup aboard from the IOP
in 2021
for the development of a breakthrough quantum photonics
platform, which enabled new applications
in quantum communications,
computing,
and imaging
using high performance sources
of indistinguishable
single photons.
EJEC is
a quantum technology company.
So we are focused on
accelerating global adoption of quantum type
with the most scalable,
technologies,
for mass market applications, and we use photonics
for that.
As and as the main component,
and
our first product is already in the market.
It's a source true true source of,
quantum light, mostly with all those.
And there's more exciting stuff in a way.
We'll return to the tech very soon. But
first, just what did those scientists do to
win the Nobel Prize? They they proved
the inequalities
as they called.
And so I'm sure some of the listeners
know what it is, but,
for those who don't,
the North Irish physicist,
John Bell, he was very concerned about, like,
quantum,
and, like, is it real?
Is quantum mechanics correct?
And so
he designed a set of,
theoretical,
equations. Well, actually, they're inequalities,
that if they were correct, if they held,
to test, that would mean that the quantum
mechanics isn't correct.
And if they're violated,
that means the quantum mechanics is correct, and
we do not have something called hidden variables.
But, basically,
the classical
description,
doesn't hold on that level.
So so John Klusser,
Alan Aspect, and Anton
Zillinger. So they managed
to conduct a series of experiments that,
with ever increasing
accuracy,
foreign has proved that,
that is indeed the case, and they could
violate that inequality.
So quantum works,
bottom line.
Yeah.
And you
and your company
employ it? So the first thing we put
there is,
is a generator
of
identical
indistinguishable,
single photons
that are generated on demand. So you have
a very deterministic output.
And that is a derivative
or part of building entangled states.
So
in the same way, you can build a
bunch of photons.
And this is exactly the
the opportunity that opens up because whole of
the quantum technology, so quantum computing, quantum networking,
and communication
is based on the fact that entanglement exists,
and it's real.
And when we say quantum entanglement,
it's it's a little bit different to what
happens with your shoelaces or the cables that
you have on your desk.
It means that you can I mean, the
information is still, transferred with the speed of
light, but, nevertheless,
you can,
know
what the impact in 1 or the other
particle without directly measuring,
the first one, for example?
And that that gives that opportunity for,
you know, new types and new ways to
send information across.
Something called, say, quantum teleportation is just one
example.
And it means that you can send information
from a to b without ever
actually transferring it from a to b. Go
on.
That's the beauty. I mean, then we get
into the,
bit where I need to get pen and
paper out.
Okay. To to literally do the maths. Right?
Yeah. To show it. I I think,
when you try to describe quantum mechanics verbally,
it's,
the the one thing, that is more challenging
than actually doing quantum mechanics
is described in the verbal. The concept behind
quantum mechanics
are
quite a bit different from the,
mechanistic
or the sensory world that we're used to.
I think having the word mechanics in there
is,
it's a funny one because it's definitely not
mechanics,
but it is mechanics.
So quite often, when we try to understand
new concepts, new ideas,
we try to have some some relation to,
like, our our own perception,
our
sensory
experiences that we had before.
And with quantum, it's not possible. Like, you
know, you just came up with
a very imaginary,
ways to describe,
you know, nature.
You give it names, and you'd hear things
like wave functions,
spin, you know, all these things.
And for some people, it might be, oh,
yeah. That's a like, oh, yeah. That's really
spinning like this.
And there is a way to make that
analogy, but actually it doesn't.
It's just a way to name a property,
and you could have called it a, b,
c, d, but then you will forget what
it is.
It's like, you know, flavors in elementary particles.
I mean, they don't taste
anything. You can't taste them. It it's impossible.
But, nevertheless, they are there.
So
it's a way to, like,
bring some structure to that,
zoo of different properties that are otherwise
unrelated to, to anything.
And
this is saying micro world, so, basically,
a place where you have too many molecules
and atoms together, which,
are us.
This world behaves very differently,
if you if you go down to single,
single level.
So our all our sensory
experiences are based on
group effects of everything. So it's large numbers
averaged out, like, for example, temperature. That's probably
the simplest analogy here. We just know that
temperature
is the,
it's the amount of energy there isn't, so
kinetic energy in the molecules around us.
But we say it's temperature in degrees.
Like you know? And it's really
something that exists on on that level. There
is no such thing.
You can you can make it you can
translate that in some ways to say, okay.
This is temperature.
We're allowed to know the lattice or something,
but, actually, it's just the energy
and the and the, the back of it.
So you have to accept that level of
obstruction.
And, you know,
when you're playing a computer game and there
are dragons
and all the fairies
and all that stuff, and don't you don't
need them every day, but, you accept it.
Or if you believe in,
you know, like, back in the day, we
had the, you know, the pantheon of gods,
for example,
Greek mythology as an example.
Nobody have ever seen them. They still exist.
So there's a way for you to believe
in things,
and just accept it as a as an
imaginary concept,
and it works. I mean, that that's difficult.
And then then then Ben will came along,
then the others came along and said, well,
give it a go,
and it worked. So that's the difference. Right?
The this
there isn't maths that proves the gods, and
there isn't maths that proves the fairies and
the dragons.
Yeah. And that's the difference between our modern
society and, societies back in the day.
I know we have to
develop and believe in science and scientific method.
And I think that's the fundamental difference that
allowed the society to
have an incredible
development in the last 2 centuries
compared to everything that happened before, and that's
the, the main thing.
And so you use that scientific method,
quite vigorously
for testing quantum mechanics.
But does so does it,
bother you when the word quantum is used
in marketing speak or to make things sound
more exotic?
No.
I think it's fine.
It it leads to some confusion sometimes,
what it is.
Probably not everybody's gonna agree with me on
that,
approach,
but I think,
generally, quantum means something
very progressive
right now or people trying to use it
to bring in that progressive,
you know, cutting edge,
something.
And that's for a good reason.
When did you sort of say, oh, this
is this is the field for me I'm
gonna get into this? When I was doing
my undergrad,
I just chose quantum physics.
It was in the early 2000.
So
it was still, you know,
just just at the time when,
you know, Alan Aspect and, the final experiments
were just happening there. And
that that was the first time you start
hearing about, oh, the Bell inequality has been
violated.
And then you had to figure out what's
happened,
on that front. And we just knew that
quantum
I mean, it was just generic feeling. That
quantum is, is an exciting it's a new
area even though, you know, there's already textbook,
but at the same time, it didn't feel
like it's, it's established.
And so that that's how I started.
Well, then I did a PhD, then I
did the research fellowship,
in and around this field.
And then we observed how,
so quantum
science transformed into quantum technologies,
and into
sector
emerging sector in our economy.
So UK was
the first country in the world,
to put together,
quantum technology program.
And, you know, one of
the masterminds behind it is, sir Peter Knight.
And that started that was signed off in
7/13,
started in 7/14.
We just saw how,
you know, explosive development it was.
To give you a comparison, so the very
first quantum UK Quantum Technology Showcase,
I don't know exact number, but I was
there. It was 2014,
and there were probably 40, 50 people,
something like that. This year's
Quantum Technology Showcase,
the
show sold out
month and a half before
at the beginning,
and it hit the limits of the
Queen Elizabeth the second, the exhibition center. What
kind of technologies were we seeing? So the
QuantumTech has got, like, 3 key pillars
and in terms of applications.
So one is quantum computing
and probably the one that's most talked about.
The second,
is quantum communications,
and the third is quantum sensing metrology imaging.
I mean, they they they should go in
no particular order. I just named that like
that.
But in terms of importance,
they are
I mean,
you cannot derive one that is more important
than the other. That's that's impossible.
But I think you should really compare the
quantum technology
to how
Digitalk came to to us. So quantum is
there to,
be the next
technological
suite, if you want, the set of technologies
that's gonna come after digital.
So,
you know, back in the day when people
first rolled out transistors on, you know, Von
Neumann logic,
Did they think we're gonna be recording this
podcast on a digital device? Probably not.
Same applies to,
to quantum. I think we're at this, really,
really exciting stage where
it's it's full opportunity,
and you can it's gonna grow, incredible, and
we'll see some incredible applications coming out of
that. So we see, incredible applications. Right? But
will we see day to day
applications?
Of course.
Do you use digital day to day now?
Yeah.
So you will do quantum.
How is quantum going to improve
what we're doing on the day to day?
Well, it's gonna be faster,
better
computing,
better, more sensitive sensors,
better, more secure communication.
It's that that's what it's gonna be. So
you're gonna be able to solve the problems,
computationally
that were impossible with digital completely.
That includes anything from
drug simulation
discovery
to the large data,
processing and, you know, big data
machine learning and quantum computing and neural networks
are,
entangled,
triplets. You know? It's
just that quantum is something that has been
unknown and sitting in the dark,
for a really long time.
And then,
you know, quantum communications is gonna take us
into a different domain in terms of how
we
send data across,
how we share data.
You know, when digital came over, you stopped
writing as many letters by your hand. Right?
And that's completely changed how we share information.
Likewise, quantum is gonna change,
the way we share information as well. It's
gonna be everywhere. I think it's not doesn't
mean that you're gonna have a, you know,
a 100% quantum smartphone in your pocket.
It would have elements of everything
in it.
It's gonna touch in every aspect of life.
Maybe you won't know that it does it,
but it would. We'll come back to Max
later in the podcast.
But here's Oscar Kennedy. I'm a quantum engineer.
I work at Oxford Quantum Circuits, and we're
a start up from the University of Oxford,
Berkeley based in Reading,
and we're building quantum computers.
We're trying to build them so that we
can put them on the Internet and provide
access to them to the world to solve
some really interesting problems. What's a quantum
engineer? There's probably a lot of things that
are a quantum engineer. Specifically in our company,
the quantum engineers are the people who are
doing measurements
of our quantum systems
and
building them, I suppose. So
a little bit of background, we are a
company that builds superconducting quantum computers.
What that means is that we have a
chip much like a kind of like a
microelectronics
chip, but instead of being made of silicon,
we have
a post a chip that's got superconductors on
it. And we design these chips to
realize superconducting
cubits,
superconducting cubits. I realize I'm gonna have to
go down the hill of jargon.
A superconducting cubit is another thing that we've
engineered. So it's basically a system which has
2 different energy, 2 different states. So it
can be up or down, you can think
of
it as.
And our quantum computer
uses the fact that it can be in
these 2 different states, but it can also
be in a quantum superposition of these 2
states at the same time. So you can't
just take a chip and say, alright. Cool.
I've made it. So it's a quantum computer.
There's a lot of stuff that goes around
that.
So in order for
our chip to operate as the quantum regime,
it has to be at really low temperatures.
So we put it in a cryostat which
will reach kind of 10 millikelvin.
So that's,
a 100th of a degree above absolute 0.
So that's really cold.
And these are incredibly impressive pieces of kit.
They're beautiful.
One of my fun facts about them is
so
repeated without sourcing.
But, if you think of like extreme environments
in the universe, you've got the highest temperature,
the highest pressure, the lowest temperature, the lowest
pressure.
Most of these extreme environments are created by
the universe and nature. So, like, the the
inside of a sun is gonna be hotter
and higher pressure than anything we can dream
of. The coldest place in the universe that
we know of are things that humans have
created and that's the only like
human engineered extreme.
Unless, of course, I'm talking rubbish because I
don't have any source of that. Well, but
I think that's true.
So we put them inside these cryostats.
We cool them down to really low temperatures
and we have to do some clever,
we're gonna interact with these by sending pulses
of microwaves down.
We use these pulses of microwaves to control
the state of our qubit, but also to
read out the state of our qubit.
And so we've got to play this difficult
game where we've got to take our delicate
quantum chip and isolate it from the environment
and the world so that it stays, you
know, lovely in quantum,
but also connect it just enough so that
we can also send all these control signals
down so that we can actually do intentional
computation.
And so a quantum engineer, which was your
original question, is someone who sort
of bridges this gap between
our superconducting chip and the outside world. We
build,
build the microwave environments and send the microwave
pulses down,
interpret the data we're getting out, and use
this data to understand what's happening in our
chip so that we can optimize that for
the future. The superconducting
chip, the quantum chip, how do you make
that in the first place?
So there's a lot of
quite well established microfabrication
techniques.
So this is not really specifically the realms
of quantum. This is more the realm of
just microfabrication.
So you can deposit
thin you you take a planar substrate, which
will be a crystalline substrate, polished very flat,
and you can buy these off the shelf.
You'll clean it up so that it's not
got gunk all over it, and then you'll
deposit a superconducting
film,
and you can deposit superconducting films through lots
of different techniques. You can
typically, it will involve a vacuum chamber where
you
either evaporate a metal or you do something
called sputtering, where sputtering is basically you just
take your gas and you bombard
a metallic target to knock off bits of
it, which will go and eventually sit on
your substrate.
You've now got a a film and you
can do lithography, and lithography is sort of
like old school photography,
where you're using,
chemicals which are sensitive to types of radiation,
shining radiation on those chemicals, and then putting
them in a developer. And that developer chemical
will
selectively process
the bit of the chemical that's seen this
radiation
and leave the stuff that hasn't seen the
radiation untouched.
And this allows you to and so you
can use different,
fabrication techniques to build up layers of resist
and pattern your film that you've deposited.
We could spend maybe a few hours doing
a rundown of
techniques. But the the basic idea is it's
a bit like photography, but it obviously is
a much
finer feature process,
more precise, carefully calibrated,
and this allows you to build up a
device layer by layer. It's an awfully long
way from cryo chambers
and making sure that
your superconducting chip is is exactly the right
temperature to
quantum computers being part of our everyday. You're
absolutely right. So,
Optum Circuits,
we're a full hardware stack company. So we're
interested in basically doing everything from making the
chip, installing in a cryostat,
putting microwave lines down the cryostat, connecting that
up to classical computers and control systems, which
will send the right microwave pulses down,
and then building a software infrastructure that will
put this on the cloud so that end
user can
log in and say, I wanna do this
computation and, like, compile that computation and send
it into our
chip. So there's a but there's lots of
different stages there which span huge different technical
remits. Yeah. It's difficult.
Yeah. Yeah. But but how I mean, is
it a thing that's
happening?
So we have a quantum computer which is
currently online
based on the time. So I think it's
on from 10 till 4
GMT or UK time, and you can log
on to AWS
Bracket. So it's an Amazon
Quantum service, and that will
allow you to send compute directly to our
quantum chip, which is in our lab downstairs.
Our quantum computer is called Lucy, and so
we name all of our different quantum computing
generations after famous pioneering female scientists.
And this one is named after Lucy Mensing.
So you can currently access it.
The fact that you can access it doesn't
necessarily mean that it's a quantum computer that's
gonna give you a quantum advantage and a
speed up over a data center. That's a
really different thing
And conclusive demonstration of this is yet to
be done in the community, but it's that's
basically what we're all working towards. We're working
towards a a quantum computer, which
does all like, we we know is a
doing computations and we know is quantum mechanical.
We can show all these things, but is
also
then able to offer you a meaningful speed
up in real world algorithms or applications
because of its quantumness. And that's sort of
the holy grail of the field. Okay. So
So that's the holy grail of the field,
quicker processing. It's tricky. So every time you
say quicker, quantum people are really deep in
the quantum are gonna sort of wince and
go.
Because it's not exactly quicker.
It might be that your algorithm solves more
quickly
because
quantum computers are very powerful, but the
specific compute steps are not necessarily super fast.
This maybe gets a bit nitty gritty in
detailing.
But rather than faster,
I think I prefer personally to think of
more powerful in certain applications. So there are
some things
where
the fact that your when you get down
to your low level processor,
it's operating under the laws of quantum physics
rather than classical physics.
There are some algorithms where that fact offers
you a meaningful speed up for real world
algorithms, and that's really well proved out for
a few algorithms.
Peter Shaw's
factoring algorithm is one of the well known
ones where it's factoring prime numbers, which has
huge
value
internationally
for,
breaking to certain types of encryption.
That's really rigorously fleshed out,
but there's lots of kind of
ideas around
ways that it could be used for things
like drug discovery, and these are also becoming
more fleshed out and more real. Is that
where we'll see quantum computers or are they
going to be as
everywhere as mobile phones and laptops and things?
I think in the medium term,
quantum computers will be used for high value
computes that are hard to do. I'm a
nuts and bolts scientist. Right? So this is
my interpretation rather than my, like,
in the field. Yeah. So I am much
more hardware focused, but I think that it
will probably be
seen in a few classes of
problems. Some of the classes are probably gonna
be things like optimization problems, which you see,
you know, across industries. It spans everything, whether
your Amazon wanted to know how to send
out all your trucks efficiently or I don't
know. Like, there's
countless examples of optimizations which have huge value.
Other things are problems which have intrinsic quantum
mechanical parts to them. So, you know, I
wanna discover a new drug or synthesize a
molecule, and a molecule, and all of these
molecules are made up of atoms, which obey
the rules of quantum mechanics. And it turns
out that simulating quantum mechanics on a classical
processor is really expensive, especially when you throw
in a 100 molecules that are all interacting
and have many degrees of freedom. It's just
impossible to simulate
something like caffeine, which is a, you know,
a simple molecule.
You can't do it exactly on a classical
computer.
So there's lots of ideas that if you
can take the quantum mechanics that's hard to
simulate and literally just put it physically into
your chip, you might have a huge advantage
in terms of your
compute.
So that's one of the another big class
of algorithm, which might be drug discovery, might
be material science,
and there's lots of interesting stuff that will
hopefully happen there. That goal of creating quantum
computers that outperform classical computers at specific tasks
has been discussed regularly
on Physics World in the past few years.
Recently, the magazine published an interview with IBM's
Jay Gambetta,
who said that from 2025,
his company
is planning to develop modular processes
with 100,000 or more cubits.
These devices would achieve a so called general
quantum advantage.
They consistently outperform classical computers
and conduct complex computations beyond the means of
classical devices.
You can find that interview on the Physics
World website.
But let's get back to my conversation
with Oscar Kennedy. How is the Nobel Prize
win
relevant to your work? Day to day, it's
a similar field.
Big picture.
It probably without it, we wouldn't be where
we are doing it.
So you've got
in the sixties, you've got John Bell, I
think sixties sixties ish. You've got, a really
pioneering physicist who's
inter taking some of these ideas around quantum
mechanics and
codifying them in information theory. And that's essentially
what we're doing. Right? We're quantum computers, so
we're saying,
we've got this whole idea of information theory,
which is worked out really nicely for classical
computers. It's binary and we know how we
can add binary and or add bits and
do binary operations
and combine all of this and put it
inside a computer, which is gonna, you know,
allow us to talk over the Internet.
There's an analogous theory aside like, a a
sister theory, I guess you could call it,
of quantum information theory, where you're saying, okay.
The bits which are your physical,
like, bottom level of your compute,
now behave
according to quantum mechanics.
And so bits can rather than having a
well defined state, they have a quantum state,
which is saying I can be in a
superposition of 1 and 0 instead of 1
or 0
in a classical state.
And
they so they codified certain experiments according to
this quantum information theory.
And
that was and then when they so that's
what was happened in the Bell inequalities. They
were basically saying that, you know, we can
think about sending entangled photons
and we can measure them simultaneously a long
distance away. And the correlations between
the measurements we do
will
exceed a certain threshold, and we know that
if we exceed this threshold, there must be
some quantum entanglement and action because there's no
way that you could have these classical these
correlations if
a photon was either in 1 or in
0. It has to be in the superposition
of 1 and 0 at the same time.
And so these were
incredible experiments that first sort of used this
quantum information theory, really demonstrate that quantum information
approaches
were
were valid, were represented by physical reality.
They're they're incredible.
But day to day, it probably doesn't have,
you know, huge ramifications on what I'm doing
in the life. But and so how does
it feel when you're sort of, you know,
you're a quantum engineer
and the Nobel Prize is given to
quantum
physics. Yeah. I mean, it it it's wicked.
It's really cool.
It is my field, so my interest has
been peaked for, you know, the last decade.
But, yeah, it it it's it's incredible to
see it happening in the field.
I I think there's more Nobel prizes to
be won in quantum computing and quantum information
to be sure. One application of this quantum
entanglement
is quantum computers.
But there's also
quantum teleportation.
So quantum teleportation is about teleporting a quantum
state. So I use a resource of entangled,
systems. I've got 2 a system, and
I can then perform a measurement on one
system,
transmit the
result of that information
to someone else, a different
place,
they can then perform some control operations on
their other part of this entangled system
and recreate the quantum state that we initially
had.
That's probably wrong in details. I've not looked
at this in a decade, but it's about,
being able to physically send quantum states over
a long distance
without necessarily
transmitting
the physical objects which encoded those quantum states.
Maybe that's a good way of thinking about
it. So I could, you know, if I
have a photon that's got a polarization or
some like, there's a couple of photons, they've
got a quantum state. I could physically give
you those photons and that would transmit that
quantum state because matter had moved.
Instead of doing that, I can encode some
quantum state. I can do some measurements. I
can send you information
and allow you to prepare the same quantum
state
without
physically sending you the things that originally
had that quantum state in them so that
the state is being teleported.
Okay.
It's so it's slightly less exciting than
what my head does as someone who
used to watch Quantum Leap instead of do
my homework
and,
also like Star Trek a lot. Me yeah.
I'm not gonna
engage it thinking about how we're gonna build
a teleporter out of it. But yeah. It's
not gonna let you send things faster than
light even information, because you need to transmit
classical information. It would probably be very hard
to work out how you make a matter
transporter from it.
Probably not possible. People are very clever. Maybe
someone can work it out. Returning to Max
now. I asked him about this distance between
where we are now in quantum computing and
where
these
technologies might take us in the future?
Does it
you know, being a long way from something,
does it make that something less exciting?
That's that's number 1. Right? Okay.
Secondly,
you don't necessarily need to have everything on
your phone, and that's why,
I think direct comparison to digital
doesn't hold,
exactly because we you try to say that
it's gonna work, in the same way as
digital works, and it won't.
You know, you could have as well said,
like, how am I gonna use my mobile
phone if all the ink I mean, I
need a pen to write with ink. How
would that thing is gonna sit in my
pocket? I mean, my pocket is gonna be
dirty with ink. It's gonna spill.
But actually, it turns out you don't need
to because you have a screen with a
keyboard on it,
instead of ink and and and pen.
That's that's that comparison.
So I I don't think it holds valid,
in that front.
Max's company is also looking to space applications.
There's a number of them. So firstly,
space is gonna be one of the first
enabling applications to build global communication networks with
Quantum,
primarily
because of the
certain aspects with losses
associated in, say, fiber quants,
and and the speed at which you can
deploy global networks.
Secondly, quantum
sensors, quantum
gravitational sensors,
are going to be,
an essential element for high precision positioning systems
and navigation. So that's exclusively
or needed for space and any anything that
flies, basically.
You're gonna see how it supplements and then,
extend it to, say, standard GPS capability,
which you won't require, in fact,
the actual signal to be transferred. You'll just
know where you are anyway,
because of the high precision
that, like, pseudo inertial sensor, if you want.
So and the the results are going to
be potentially
distributed computing capability in space as well.
So we can have an onboard,
simple information processing.
So I I know this is a silly
question, but when?
Soon.
That's the short answer.
I guess depends on the time horizon. I
think space is pro if you're talking specifically
about space.
You know, you get to give it a
couple of years,
primarily because if you wanna put that in
space, it needs to go through quite rigorous,
testing,
and, you know, qualification.
So
we're probably
2, 3, 4 years away from,
depending on what application you're talking about.
So applications
in
our everyday life such as optimization problems can
be run on computing.
That's something that's already happening, and we're just
seeing that it's being scaled.
Quantum
safety,
quantum communication,
it is happening already.
Moreover, the first standards,
requirements,
to be quantum safe,
they come in force
around 7 24.
So we are a year and a half
away from that point.
So that is less that's sooner than than
in fact. Sooner than I thought you meant
when you said soon.
I mean, I'm not gonna give you a
number when a 1,000,000 cubit computer is gonna
come live,
but it doesn't have to. Yeah. Okay. So
what's what's next off your production line then?
So we'll expand the portfolio
primarily to help
people and academics who are doing research
and quantum
science.
So you're gonna see,
entanglement sources from us.
You're gonna see additional,
chips that
help you manipulate
the state of the photons.
And that creates, like, a very silent toolkit
for people to advance significantly advance their research
in quantum information or quantum
anything,
even imaging.
So our our our first
focus is to,
to bring back,
to the research community, to the ecosystem,
that high efficiency,
that you can achieve with with the sources.
And if you think,
about, like, what do you need when you're
trying to do something in any domain, like
a measurement, a data transmission,
you need to have a source,
or generator of that data or something,
then you go to transfer it, manipulate it,
and then you're good to measure it.
So what we do is supply that first
component,
the first component in the in that
food chain of,
of doing things.
And up until now,
there were nothing
really efficient,
on the market to to do this. So,
it's, it's a simple thing. Sounds quite,
you know, complicated,
if you give it a full name.
That is basically
a generator of 2 quantum light, and that
that unlocks,
unlimited possibilities in fact. These real world applications
of quantum mechanics
are born out of
these concepts like
spooky action at a distance.
Here's Oscar Kennedy again.
I hate the term spooky action at a
distance. I might even have used it as
well.
But I hate it. I think it's like
this real disservice to quantum physics where we
talk about like things being spooky.
I think it's a really good way to
make like, if you introduce a new topic
by telling everyone, yeah, it's impossible to understand.
Your chances of getting people like thinking like,
oh, yeah. I understand that. That makes sense.
Is quite low.
So it's that's a personal problem. I it
it is it's a challenging thing to understand.
I think sometimes it you can state it
as just
facts. So, you know, like,
a when we look down to basic physics,
we find that things are quantum mechanical. And
what quantum mechanics says is that
systems have discrete states and you can think
of that as 1 or 0, but typically
things are not just 1 or 0. It's
102
012345,
you know. There's many states or ways the
the state, physical system can be, and they
are discrete. So it's not a continuous thing
like, you know, if you've got a piece
of elastic, you can stretch that and you
can continuously go from one length to a
much longer length, and it can be every
length in between that.
It would be like the elastic band could
only be length 1, and then it will
stretch to another length, then it'll stretch to
another length. Like maybe think of a chain,
like you're adding discrete links to the chain.
So that so that's one part quantum mechanics
is saying that systems are discrete.
Another weird part is saying that discrete systems
can be the same it can be in
multiple states at the same time.
That's also
counterintuitive
to what we see in our everyday life.
You know, like,
my hair will be sticking up or flat
to my head. I I say that because
I can see myself on screen.
But, you know, like, that that's also not
the way that we experience everyday life. But,
you know, fine quantum mechanics, it's not a
theory of like the macroscopic every day. It's
a theory of
the very small, like, you know, when I
think of air, I don't think of the
fact that it's made up of molecules and
atoms.
When I experienced that on a macroscopic level,
that's not how it interacts with me. But
we we don't think of the fact that's
made up of atoms as super scary. It's
just the fact that when you zoom in
really far,
things are not exactly the same as they
are on the macroscopic level. So I think
that that's it's different, that things are quantized
and that they can be in many states
at once.
And then you have entanglement, which is another
bit of
tricky physics.
But once you've accepted that, you know, a
system is in a quantum state, which is
a discrete state and it can be in
multiple discrete states,
then we say that, okay, we know that
2 quantum systems can be entangled and that
their states
are correlated in some way.
So
it it's tricky. It's tricky to understand. I
think quite often you have to work through
the maths.
But I think that it it it's one
of those things like that. That is just
how the universe is.
And
it happens to not really align with our
everyday macroscopic
experience of the universe. Both Oscar and Max
were keen to express
just how exciting it is to be involved
in this area of physics. OTC, of course,
are hiring in all sorts of roles that
transcend quantum information because we're building a world
class company, and we need people of all
roles. So if anyone wants to join the
quantum revolution, we're always looking.
I think the thing I'd like to mention
is,
is firstly invite people to join the,
the quantum technology community,
enroll into courses. So
if you're considering what are you gonna do
with physics,
I'd say go into quantum, learn a little
bit about quantum mechanics, learn quantum computing,
learn those concepts.
It is the future
of the,
you know, workplace, basically.
That's the
that's that's the very forward looking,
thing to do.
And, of course, we are always happy, you
know, to help people,
you know, drive that research, drive more knowledge.
So we're happy to,
do some custom, you know, you know, do
joint grants. Let's let's do joint research. We're
we're happy to help.
And we'd absolutely love to see, new results
coming out in the community.
And our whole, say,
product services,
everything that we do is designed to make
that happen.
And we're about driving the efficiency and and
the speed of that. And how do people
get in touch with you?
Just reach out on LinkedIn.
Go on our website, say hello,
anywhere. We'll post links to Max
and Oscar's work on the Physics World website,
physics world dot com. You can discover much
more about some of the themes discussed today
within the quantum section of that website, physicsworld.comforward/cforward/quantum.
At that link, you can sign up to
our quantum bimonthly
newsletter.
As a podcast, we'll be back next month
and it's December, so it's time to dust
off those Christmas lists as we look back
at some of the best physics books released
this year.
And thank you very much for listening.
Physics World.