ABaQuS: Advanced Barium Quantum Systems

Quantum computers will be able to solve hard computational problems that are beyond the reach of our best classical supercomputers. Over the last 10 years progress on quantum computing has dramatically accelerated and has transitioned from an academic field to a thriving industry. However, we are only at the beginning of the journey towards mass-adoption of large scale, reliable, and high-performance quantum computers.

The great challenge now for quantum computing is to significantly decrease the computational error rate in a way that maintains performance with scale. One of the most promising ways of building quantum computers is with trapped ions - ionised atoms are one of the most perfect quantum systems known, and can be controlled by elements than can be integrated into classical silicon chips.

In this project we will combine a recently identified new barium qubit to tackle three of the major areas limiting significant improvements in quantum computer performance and adoption: We will develop new qubit modalities, and control methods, opening to door to more efficient hardware scaling approaches, we will develop techniques and associated device engineering to integrate these new qubit modalities into chips that can be built in a standard semiconductor foundry, and we will holistically-optimise the compilation of quantum algorithms for these devices in order to maximise the performance we can achieve with near-term hardware.