Events Calendar

"Computing with the D-Wave quantum processor: physics, challenges and applications"

Speaker: Dr. Federico Spedalieri, Computer Scientist/USC-ISI

Talk Title: "Computing with the D-Wave quantum processor: physics, challenges and applications"

Abstract: Quantum computing promises computational speedups for solving some important problems like the factoring of large integers. Although a general purpose, universal quantum computer is yet to be built, technology has matured enough to provide us with a programmable (although restricted) quantum device. The D-Wave processor currently housed at the USC-Lockheed Martin Quantum Computing Center is an example of this type of device. It exploits the controllable interaction between superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) to optimize binary quadratic functions.

I will present some of the work I have carried out aiming at understanding the physics of the device (in particular its quantum nature), its possible uses, and the main challenges that are still left to overcome to make it a practical computational tool.

Biography: Dr. Spedalieri obtained his degree of Licenciado en Ciencias Fisicas from the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina) in 1994, and his PhD in Physics from the California Institute of Technology in 2003. He worked as a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, and at the EE Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2010, he joined the Information Sciences Institute. He has worked on the characterization of entangled states, devising a numerical test that is widely used to decide whether a given state is entangled (these results, published in Physical Review Letters and Physical Review A has been cited more than 200 times). This work pioneered the application of semi-definite programming methods in quantum information that have since been applied on a wide range of problems. He has also worked on implementations of quantum computing using linear optics, devised a protocol that exploits orbital angular momentum states of photons to implement quantum key distribution, and has designed a low latency implementation of fault-tolerant quantum computing suited for planar architectures with local interactions. Currently at USC’s Information Sciences Institute (ISI), Dr. Spedalieri is working to bridge the gap between the adiabatic quantum computing model (and its incarnation in the form of the adiabatic quantum computer D-Wave Two) and applications to many different fields, such as model checking, natural language processing, scheduling and planning, complex system design, and many others. He is also actively studying the physics behind the operation of D-Wave Two, aiming at understanding the roles that quantum-ness and entanglement play in its operation, and designing experiments to validate these studies.

Host: Dr. Sandeep Gupta

Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Mayumi Thrasher