April 14, 2026 • 39 mins
In Episode 138, Patrick and Ciprian explore how MIT’s new photonic chip approach promises to pave the way for more scalable, energy-efficient trapped ion quantum computers. The team discuss why controlling ions with integrated photonics could dramatically lower costs, boost qubit stability, and solve long-standing scalability hurdles. They also break down how these tiny antennas routing light directly to the trapped ions remove the need for bulky external lasers, opening the door to compact, room-temperature quantum systems, potentially revolutionizing everything from nanotech to medicine.
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SPEAKER_01 (00:40):
Hey Ciprian, how are you doing?
Hey, Patrick.
I'm doing great, looking forwardfor another great episode of
Entangled Things.
SPEAKER_03 (00:47):
Well we're lonely today.
It's just you and I, but uh it'sit's kind of a significant
milestone.
So we're five years and a littlebit of doing this.
So every two weeks for fiveyears, we've released an
episode.
Consistency is key, uh, andwe've talked about so much.
I I don't want to do a fullretrospective because we do have
something to talk about today.
Uh, but it's been amazing tounderstand things that we
(01:11):
weren't talking about five yearsago, you and I.
We I really wasn't talking aboutquantum sensing.
I really wasn't getting intoannealing.
Um, so it's it's been very uhrevealing the because of our
guests mostly.
SPEAKER_00 (01:25):
Yeah, absolutely.
I I think every time I'm likelooking back at the unbelievable
length of of our um of ourpodcast, I I think we were
really fortunate to have an anincredible line of uh of guests.
And uh uh It's true what theysay, right?
(01:48):
If you really want to learnabout something, uh do a
podcast.
SPEAKER_03 (01:53):
Yeah, that's helped a lot.
So we're gonna have a lot ofgreat guests the rest of this
year, uh, a lot of recurringpeople who've come back, a lot
of new people who um you knowwe've met along the way.
Uh, but we have something totalk about today.
We don't have a guest to talkabout it, but uh MIT News has an
article that you point youbrought to my attention.
You want to talk about what whatthey're saying and why we're
(02:13):
surprised?
SPEAKER_00 (02:14):
It's it's an interesting thing because it's
another, yet another um ideathat could dramatically change
things in this time in themodalities um of building
quantum computers.
And remember, many, many timeswe are talking about the
(02:34):
modalities, and we say, look,there is no clear winner here.
Right.
It could be that it's somethingcompletely different from what
we are talking about these days.
Um this is an interesting uh uhresearch and and result that was
um uh was published.
Uh and it refers to a modalitythat we often refer to and we
(03:01):
often mention, we haven't reallykind of discussed in depth,
right?
Uh despite the fact that it'sone of the first ones that was
attempted.
And I'm talking here about uh uhabout trapped ions, right?
SPEAKER_01 (03:14):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (03:15):
And um trapped ions have been uh in in many, many
applications, even before wecall them quantum computers,
right?
Remember, things like atomicclocks and and other things are
are actually using this thisphenomenon.
And the the interesting thingabout building a quantum
(03:37):
computer with trapped ions isthe temperature.
Uh and the kind of keyword hereis trapped, right?
In order to keep the iontrapped, uh, which essentially
means control it properly, youneed to go uh down a lot in
terms of temperature.
You need to cool down that chipto very, very low temperatures.
(04:00):
Um, and um then you have theproblem of controlling the ion.
And and the the standardapproach, the uh would I dare to
say traditional approach is touse lasers.
SPEAKER_03 (04:13):
Right.
Um laser tweezers, basically, iswhat when we had Yval Boger on
uh from QRA, he talked aboutlaser tweezers.
Now they use neutral atoms, notions.
I I think that's a a matter ofhow big you want the biggest
atomic structure you can getwithout being a multiple at
(04:34):
atomic molecule.
So so they want ions that areyou know really big or neutral
atoms that are really big sothat they can, you know, so it's
it's easier to to grab somethingif it's bigger at these scales.
SPEAKER_00 (04:47):
Yeah, yeah.
And also neutral atoms requireuh significantly uh less
cooling, right?
SPEAKER_03 (04:55):
They well doesn't the doesn't I so maybe I'm
misunderstanding.
My understanding was the factthat you're holding an atom or
an ion in place cools it becauseheat is just moving around.
SPEAKER_00 (05:07):
Heat is it's it's yes, exactly.
It's it's kind of like a sideeffect, right, of the of the
control.
Um what caught my attention, andI think is is a very interesting
idea, is uh the the team at MITis proposing a radically
(05:28):
different approach toessentially control, right, and
and and ultimately also coolthose those ions.
Traditionally, the lasers werebig bulky things that were
coming from the outside, right?
So you were concentrating thoselasers um on the uh on the ions
(05:50):
and attempting to uh uh tocontrol them, right?
So um this was one of thelimiting factors, and it still
is obviously one of the limitingfactors for uh uh trapped ions.
And the announcement that waspublished by the MIT research
team is that they are working ona significantly more efficient
(06:14):
way to cool these um uh ions.
Instead of coming with thelasers from the outside, they're
actually building photonic chipsthat would provide the same
capability of those lasers, butvery, very close or
significantly closer to um uh tothe trapped uh eye, right?
(06:38):
So basically what they they theyclaim they can achieve is an
order of magnitude, meaning 10times, right?
Getting 10 times below the limitof like standard laser cooling
by doing it with photonic chips.
And that in itself, the idea,right, is uh one of the things
(07:00):
that that I believe could be asignificant uh game changer, at
least for the trapped ions.
SPEAKER_03 (07:06):
So to paraphrase an old horror movie, the lasers are
coming from inside the chip.
SPEAKER_00 (07:11):
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (07:14):
Well, yeah, I mean, I I guess I never thought of
this.
And and the this so this is fun,this is the funny thing, is that
you get enlightenment by, youknow, I never thought of it, but
of course the lasers you'd you'denvision maybe there's a uh a
trapped ion computer, uh quantumcomputer with a hundred qubits,
and maybe there's only a dozenlasers that control and move
(07:38):
things around.
Well, it's kind of like cranesat a at a at a shipyard.
You know, you've seen thosecranes like at you know Long
Beach and other shipyards in inHong Kong where you've got a few
cranes and they move the things.
Well, you can't you can't doanything unless you've got a
crane available.
So this might also mean that youcan do more um moving and
(08:01):
controlling of individualqubits, because I doubt those
older systems had lasersdedicated to each qubit, but it
sounds like they might in thiscase.
SPEAKER_00 (08:11):
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, let's just quicklyremind our audience, right, uh
uh what is the the trapped ironapproach, essentially, right?
The the way you do it um isessentially you peel off an
electron from an atom, and thatgives you an ion, right?
(08:34):
And then basically, you trapthat ion, which is an atom that
is is is missing an electron, uhusing frequency.
Yeah, it would have a positivepositive frequency signals,
yeah, uh, and you manipulate itusing optical signals.
That's kind of the gist of thetrapped ion uh approach, and has
(08:55):
significantly improved withinthese confinements uh in in
years uh to the point where nowessentially it happens uh in a
plane, right?
So you don't need to buildlittle things, little towers
that control, right, and trapthe iron as you you have uh uh
you had to do it maybe 10 yearsago, right?
(09:16):
It's it's significantly uh uhefficient, right?
But still um it is uh verydifficult to uh uh to control,
um, especially when you talkabout scalability, because the
scalability is the the bigproblem of every single quantum
computer uh quantum computerbuilder, right?
(09:39):
And because you need to preventcollisions between that uh ion,
right, and gas molecules in theair, it's it's like that low,
right?
It it becomes a game of how do Iprevent my ion from colliding
(09:59):
with gas molecules in the air.
What you have to do, right, isyou need to keep those ions in
an almost perfect vacuum so thatyou you limit every type of
interference there.
And uh what you do in thetraditional approach is
(10:20):
essentially you have these bulkylasers that sit outside, and you
attempt to achieve that uh withthose uh uh bulk.
SPEAKER_03 (10:29):
So you're probably looking at more powerful lasers,
which means more heat, moreenergy with the old approach.
With the new approach, thenthey're they're closer.
You probably have more of them.
So they're you know, they'remore dedicated to you know a
fewer number of qubits, if noteven one to one or five to one
or whatever the ratios are.
(10:50):
There's not a lot of detail inthe article about that.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (10:53):
Uh there's a there's a research, uh the article
refers to two research papers umthat are published.
So the research papersthemselves contain like the
super specific scientificdetails.
But the the principle I think isvery interesting because the one
problem that was hurting a lot,these trapped ion structures,
(11:16):
uh, were vibrations.
Even the the slightest vibrationin the structure of those
outside lasers woulddramatically affect their
accuracy and ultimately thequality of the qubits that were
built to this this wave.
So it's not only that you haveto build those things, it's not
(11:38):
only that you have to ensurelike the perfect vacuum.
You also need to ensure a roomthat is completely free of
vibration, um, even vibrationscoming from the outside.
And you would technically saysure, but when I'm sitting on my
chair, right in my room at mydesk, we're sitting both of us
(12:02):
at a desk right now, right?
We don't feel vibration.
Well, it's not that kind ofvibration.
It's it's the kind of vibration,right, that you would not even
feel, like even the slightestthing uh uh would would provoke.
SPEAKER_03 (12:17):
If I think about this, I mean you're dealing with
a trapped ion.
I I don't know off the top of myhead what um what element
they're using for this.
Um, but it's it's probably thelarge you know, a larger element
so that they can do it.
But even if you took thesmallest metals, the smallest
(12:39):
materials you can build a laserwith, you would have to think
that that laser would be biggerby orders of magnitude than the
than the atom that that you'retrying to control, the the ion
that you're trying to control.
And so I think this has reallybig um consequences down the
line, this kind of research fornanobot nanobots, uh, you know,
(13:04):
nanotechnologies, um, things ofthat nature.
Because if you can control asingle atom, then you probably
can control molecules andmedicines and and other things
like that.
Uh so I'd be very curious.
I mean, there's not a lot ofdetail.
I don't I don't think it theythere's no pictures, of course,
but um there's not a lot ofdescription uh in how uh this is
(13:26):
achieved.
It's not like you could havethis a traditional laser.
It's not like you shrink alittle laser down because
there's just so few atoms thatcan be used before you get to a
macro scale.
And that's why the approach wasused that you describe where the
lasers came from the outside,because then the laser can be
whatever size it needs to be.
(13:46):
And as long as the beam isconfined.
SPEAKER_00 (13:48):
Um what they what they apparently use is obviously
significantly lower power.
Um, I wouldn't even call themlasers anymore, right?
Uh probably it's better to callthem like optical fields, but
their approach is to actuallyuse um two distinct beams of
(14:13):
light, right?
And uh because of theinteractions of those two
distinct beams of light, thereis a a phenomenon that that
happens there, uh which is uhcalled uh polarized gradient
cooling, which essentiallylimits the degrees of freedom of
that particular ion, right?
(14:35):
And the more you limit thedegrees of freedom, the cooler
it it gets.
So it's not really building.
I uh the way I read into this,it's not really building mini
lasers, right?
It's actually using photonics,so generating beams of uh of
light, in these two cases, twobeams of light, that would have
(14:56):
this effect of essentiallyreducing the kinetic energy of
the of the ion.
So that's why I think it's it'sreally, really um uh
interesting, and we will um haveto like like um keep an eye on
this because uh I think this wasattempted multiple times in the
past, but it's the first timesomeone really publishes uh um
(15:23):
information right about uhachieving the possibility of
efficient uh uh efficientcooling.
SPEAKER_03 (15:31):
So I wonder and this is me thinking a lot, I guess.
I wonder if the way you'd dothis is you'd have a a source of
coherent light.
So a laser, if you will.
Source of coherent light, andyou'd have an aperture at each
qubit so that you could turn itoff or on.
(15:51):
And when it's on, it's it's it'sdoing its thing.
And maybe it's always on.
Maybe there isn't need to be anaperture that closes and opens,
and that it's manipulating thestate of the are these lasers
used to manipulate the state ofthe qubits, do we know?
SPEAKER_00 (16:08):
As as far as my understanding is, this is mostly
focused on the cooling side.
SPEAKER_03 (16:13):
Okay, so then therefore you wouldn't need an
aperture, you'd just need asource.
So you could literally have aconventional laser device
creating coherent photonicstreams, and you could channel
them through fiber optics to thechip, and then basically have
them basically be the thingthat's holding it in place.
(16:33):
Think of like the um, you eversee the the bell, the bell that
goes over the cheese plate?
Yeah, the glass bell.
It I imagine it being like thatmade of photons.
Yeah, right.
And it's holding that eye onwhere you want it.
And by being more efficient andbeing more focused, it can hold
it in place ten times moreefficiently, which it translates
(16:55):
to ten times the cooling.
So we might literally move fromthree Kelvin to 0.3 Kelvin.
SPEAKER_00 (17:01):
Something, something significantly lower.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (17:04):
Now, the the my uh one of the things that um our
guests who've talked abouttrapped ions, trapped neutral
atoms have discussed is that thewhole system runs at room
temperature.
That only the ions, only the theneutral atoms are at z at zero
Kelvin or near zero Kelvin, andthat it's just in a room is I I
(17:24):
think that's the case here aswell.
SPEAKER_00 (17:26):
This this this would I I think this opens the
possibility of having systemsbased on trapped ions that would
essentially work in a fairlysimilar approach, like with
neutral atoms, right?
Yeah, because the big advantageof the neutral atoms is that um
(17:47):
the cold part is is reallyfocused around them.
And I think I think you're spoton, Patrick, because what what
they're claiming um in the inthe article is that basically
they have like uh two nanoscaleantennas on the on the chip,
right?
Which are um emitting beams oflight to manipulate a um trapped
(18:12):
ion that sits at a layer abovethese these antennas.
And those antennas themselvesare actually connected by
waveguides that route the lightto them.
So it's it's I I think it's avery interesting approach,
right?
Where they are routing light uhusing this this chips, and then
(18:36):
they are using those nanoscaleantennas to emit it in a way
that would control the trap ion,which is very interesting.
SPEAKER_03 (18:42):
By using the word antenna, you made me realize
that they're they're probablymanipulating the duality of
light as both a wave and aparticle.
I was thinking of it as aparticle, because it's hard to
think of it as both.
You have to think of it as both.
(19:03):
But uh but by using the wordantenna, they're invoking the
wave understanding of light asopposed to the particle
understanding of light.
SPEAKER_00 (19:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And my understanding is thatthey have some some very
intricate ways, right, of ofshedding these beams of light to
the ion that that sits above,which essentially creates this
this very, very interesting, uh,very interesting effect.
But uh without kind of riskinginto going back into even more
(19:38):
detail, I I think the principleis worth kind of uh uh noting
here, which is instead of tryingto cool something, right, with
external forces, which has beenthe fundamental approach, the
standard approach, right, forthese cryostats, what this
(19:59):
technique is is proposing islet's try to do the cooling at
the ions level, at that trappedions level.
So in my mind, the way I see it,right, if you say build a system
with, I don't know, a hundredtrapped ions acting as qubits,
you literally build a hundredtiny, tiny, tiny cryostats,
(20:24):
right?
Refrigerators, yeah, which areessentially acting on their
associated trapped ions.
SPEAKER_03 (20:32):
And the temperatures the temperature is localized to
that trapped ion, not the wholechamber, the whole room.
Because you're not, it's avacuum.
You can't allow air, you can'tallow other things in that
space.
So therefore, it's got to be avacuum chamber, a cryostat's a
good good analogy.
You've got these antennas thatare that are pumping a waveform
(20:55):
of light that holds it into oneplace, that that confines it
into one place.
SPEAKER_00 (21:00):
Yeah, yeah.
And I think, I think, again,this is very obviously very
early work, right?
But uh in my mind, to be veryhonest, I always looked at
trapped ions as like a greatapproach, but um somehow I felt
(21:21):
it was uh not going to have thesame, let's say, opportunities
of development in terms ofscaling because of the very
nature, right?
Of the requirements on one handand also uh regarding the
topology of these things.
SPEAKER_03 (21:40):
But this could break it, break that open?
SPEAKER_00 (21:42):
I think, yes, yes.
I think this could uh literallykick uh um uh trapped ion
modalities into a higher tier.
And if it proves to be stableenough to also do scaling.
Right, and and other things.
Because just to be clear, whatthe MIT team is stating here is
(22:06):
that they have validated theprinciple, right, and they have
like a working uh uh setup forthis, but as we know very well,
right, a lot of things need tothen fall into the right place
for scalability, for being ableto properly uh further control
these trap ions so that they canhave I mean in the five year in
(22:32):
the five years and before thatwe've been doing this, it's
definitely noticed.
SPEAKER_03 (22:36):
We I've definitely noticed, and I know you've
noticed, that there's a stepfunction.
It's not a linear curve of, oh,we're just gonna get progress
every day.
And and we're seeing this in AI.
Well, your your your yourfavorite topic other than
quantum pavy um is you havethese sudden jumps.
Like in machine learning in2014, we had a sudden jump, and
(22:58):
Chat GPT got us a sudden jump inawareness of the mass
population.
And these step functions, youdon't, you can't predict them.
You can you know hope and youcan watch the news and see
what's going on.
And it's only in looking backthat we'll we'll really
understand their impact.
We're lucky that Bell Labsdidn't say, well, vacuum tubes
(23:19):
are good enough.
We don't need to look foranything else because we'd be
using vacuum tube computers, andthey wouldn't really, I don't
think they would have scaled theway they have.
Um, and so we we we need to keepthinking, have an open mind
towards these differentmodalities, is I think key.
SPEAKER_00 (23:36):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
It's it's the differentmodalities, and it's also the uh
the sometimes human geniusbehind taking like a slightly
different approach or evenradically different approach.
Uh I distinctly remember,because since we also talked
about our five years um uh inthe making, I distinctly
(24:00):
remember when we were talking tothe Harvard team uh and they
were explaining us like, hey,look, uh we thought we could uh
address the problem of two qubitgates and the problem of the
limitations of the topology,right?
By guess what?
Moving the qubits, right?
Where they were like, cool.
(24:21):
So if we want to run a two-qubitgate, we're just gonna bring the
two qubits together, we're gonnarun the gate and we're gonna
send them back uh where theywhere they can, right?
SPEAKER_03 (24:32):
So that doesn't I I wonder how that interferes with
this or or how these two becausethat was the the outside lasers.
Yes.
The outside lasers picking up acube bit and moving it.
I guess it doesn't prohibit thathere.
Because you could move you couldpotentially use the external
(24:55):
lasers, like what we're callingexternal lasers, they're still
in the quantum computer, but youcould use the big lasers, the
outs external lasers, to pick upa quantum bit out of one of the
cryostats, shut off the localstream, and then move it to
another cryostat.
I wonder, yeah.
(25:16):
So yeah, I mean it's two stepsforwards, one step back.
We you know, we Yeah, yeah.
There's other engineeringchallenges, as we said, you
know, the step function umaspects of this.
Um but yeah, and and and when wefirst started the podcast, I
didn't I didn't really think ofof uh this was like an also ran.
I didn't think of uh trappedions or trapped neutral atoms as
(25:41):
uh a major contender, and itvery well could be the one.
SPEAKER_00 (25:46):
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I think these kind ofof, as you were, we all pointed
out, these I would even callthem sudden advances, right?
Where uh there is a new ideathat essentially opens uh a
whole lot of opportunities forthese these these modalities is
(26:07):
is the thing that will push umuh the the quality uh of the
qubits forward and also thenumber, right?
And um across the whole range ofmodalities, if you think about
it, right?
Uh we've seen some of thedevelopments that were published
uh in the field of topologicalquantum computing, mostly driven
(26:29):
by Microsoft.
We've seen the uh uh the news,right, about what the Harvard
team and the um uh QRA team isis is doing.
This interesting approach,right, from from from MIT.
Uh I I believe that there is alot yet to be um uncovered in
(26:51):
terms of the modalities.
And what really makes itinteresting for me, uh, I'm
talking about this particularannouncement coming from MIT, is
I think you should neverdiscard, as you very well
pointed out, any of themodalities.
Because even if a certainmodality seems to, let's say,
(27:14):
have reached a certain plateauin terms of its development,
right?
And you don't hear significantnews for like, I don't know, six
months, twelve months, whatever,right?
You could face something likethis where all of a sudden, hey,
yes, we had this idea, and nowtrapped ions are becoming, let's
(27:35):
say, more uh easier to cooldown, more efficient.
Uh, they can reach betterscalability.
And just to be very clear,right, all of these things still
have to be proven, right?
We're talking here about aninteresting idea, a concept that
was good enough and could beproven, right?
Hence it was uh uh published inin peer-reviewed journals, but
(28:01):
you should never literallydiscard, like say, yeah, yeah,
yeah, people have tried a lotwith, I don't know, trapped
ions, and we know all aboutthose.
SPEAKER_03 (28:09):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (28:10):
This this is what what makes it for me, to be
honest, again, thinking aboutthe five years, is that you
never know what next month isgoing to bring.
SPEAKER_02 (28:19):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (28:19):
Um in terms of like new announcements, in terms of
the things that that that thatget discovered, and then the the
the results.
That's I think that's thebrilliant part.
SPEAKER_03 (28:31):
The safe bet in the beginning of the actual quantum
age, when there were real actualquantum computers, actual qubits
that could calculate.
The safe bet's always been seenas um superconducting qubits,
um, superconducting circuits.
Um, and then you know, you yougot the other modalities,
(28:53):
photonics, um, you know, trappedions, uh, Microsoft's uh
endeavors with um the uh youknow equixotic materials that
didn't exist.
And the problem is it's it'salmost, I mean, to come up with
a a grand analogy, it's like westart in Boston and the goal is
(29:13):
to circle the earth.
Well, I might decide to use aballoon, you know, like the
movie, or I might decide to walkor use a horse or a car.
But there's lots of ways, youknow, you're gonna get trapped
by the oceans.
You're gonna run up againstlimits that you can't surpass.
Um if you wait for the jet,you're gonna get there more
(29:34):
efficiently, but you're notgonna leave as soon.
You're not gonna, you know,you're not gonna start walking
right away.
And I think we may very well belooking at it's gonna be a jet.
Now, the United States has anagency called DARP.
I've mentioned them in the past,and what they do is they fund
research that they think has thepotential to unlock something um
(29:57):
big.
And so they they fundedautonomous vehicles and drone
technology, GPS, the internet.
Um, so this is why, you know, AlGore helped establ uh uh fund
DARPA, so therefore he helpedcreate the internet.
Uh so the saying goes.
But one of the things thatthey've done in the last couple
of years is they've approachedseveral companies, including
(30:18):
Microsoft, because they werecurious about whether these new
modalities or less mainstreammodalities might be the breakout
that gets us to a millionqubits.
Microsoft's been really quiet,and you and I, you know, we we
listen attently to that.
Um I don't know whether they'reever gonna have a big step
function where they're gonnacatch up with everyone else.
(30:39):
I don't know if Trapped Ions isgonna be the runaway hero here,
but it's definitely aninteresting space to watch.
Um Is there anything else thatyou've seen recently before we
wrap up?
We're at we're at 30 minutes nowthat we should talk about as far
as modalities go, or is this thethis is the big news I think of
the day?
SPEAKER_00 (30:56):
It it is the big news, but I really want to uh I
I know we're close to be attime, but I want to get back to
your analogy because Iabsolutely like it.
And I would like to add a twistto it.
Right.
So you said, hey, you've got tocircle the globe, right?
And then you can, let's sayyou're, I don't know, in the um
(31:17):
1850, you're in 1850, right?
And you have the choice of goingby horse or by balloon, right?
Let's think a little bitdifferent.
Change the task.
Your task is to circle the globea thousand times.
Not one time.
SPEAKER_01 (31:33):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (31:34):
Right?
SPEAKER_03 (31:34):
Add a little bit of scalability into this.
So walking becomes much moredaunting at that point.
Horses become much moredaunting.
SPEAKER_00 (31:43):
Even horse, even balloon, right?
And then you have the choice ofhey, I'm gonna start doing the
circling with whatever we havenow.
Which waits, or invest insomething, right?
Wait 60 more years or 70 moreyears, right?
Uh until, or let's say 80 moreyears until I get like the first
(32:05):
fast airplane.
Right.
And then all of a sudden, whatseems to be technically
impossible because of the scale,right, becomes true.
SPEAKER_03 (32:16):
And I think uh with this twist, the analogy
perfectly describes well, it'slike would you rather go to
Alpha Centauri and leave now orwait 50 years and we'll pass you
with the new technology beforeyou even get past the org cloud?
SPEAKER_00 (32:31):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Exactly, exactly.
That is, yeah, yeah.
Getting back to your question, Ithink what I really liked about
uh 2025, uh, it was a year wherewe've seen multiple uh
breakthroughs uh in varioustypes of of modalities.
(32:54):
Uh but I think the even biggerthing was that we've seen
breakthroughs in terms of stableuh qubits.
SPEAKER_03 (33:03):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (33:04):
I think 2025 was a year where we've seen massive
advancements in errorcorrection, uh kind of combined
with the stability um ofmultiple of multiple qubits.
And my hope for 2026, honestly,is that that this trend will
will continue.
SPEAKER_03 (33:25):
Slow and steady.
SPEAKER_00 (33:26):
And and yeah, and and we will see, hopefully
within a few years, we will seesome some really, really like
truly remarkable results thatwould essentially put us into a
situation where we can talk withmore, let's say, confidence
about commercially availablescaled uh uh scaled quantum uh
(33:48):
computers.
Now, there's one interestingthing that is happening this
year, by the way, speaking aboutmodalities, is I think somehow
uh AI is still uh stealing alittle bit the show in the sense
that we see all the discussionand all the kind of heated
debate and and uh still all themassive investments uh uh going
(34:14):
into AI.
And as you said, I'm coming fromthe AI side, so I I think that's
that's that's welcome.
Uh but um my hope and also myperception is that quantum is
still going at a very, very uhsteady and fast pace in terms of
the of the developments.
(34:34):
If we just look at the rounds ofinvestments that some of the
kind of flagship companies havegot uh in the past 12 months, I
think uh there's a lot of veryinteresting new things that are
going to be uh I think part ofit is that it's an area of
physics that is seeing progress,while theoretical, you know,
(34:57):
string theory, things like thathave gotten to points where they
you can't test them.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (35:01):
And so I think this is a positive, constructive,
potentially profitable outputfor these universities.
So, you know, we've talked toFred Chong from Chicago
University, we've talked toprofessors from many
universities, and you know, wewe talked to the Harvard team.
Universities are still playing avery big role here because
there's fundamental science atstake as well, you know, and and
(35:23):
it's applications beyond justquantum, like we were talking
about with this.
SPEAKER_00 (35:28):
Exactly.
And then the other thing isremember we had uh a few guests
that were kind of stressing outthe fact that the developments
in the quantum computing side,right, are actually driving
ideas and potential developmentsin fundamental physics as well.
(35:50):
So I think it's kind of an area,it's like a two-way street here,
right?
You you need some advancementsin the fundamental physics, but
also advancements in buildingthe quantum computers can help
us uncover, right?
Uh uh new things about uh uhabout about physics.
Like think of it like this likeI don't know, 20 years ago, who
(36:13):
could imagine that we will beable to build something that can
move atoms in space, right?
Or if we speak aboutcommunications, building single
photon emitters and singlephoton detectors um are things
that that a few decades ago werepurely theoretical, but nobody
(36:36):
was like, build diamonds, buildartificial diamonds with
specific flaws at specificatomic levels.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_03 (36:46):
The nano world is gonna come eventually, but I
think it's gonna be on the backof the quantum developments.
SPEAKER_00 (36:51):
Most likely, yes.
So this is why I was veryexcited, right, about this
particular announcement, uh,because it's yet another proof
that things can be can move andnot only move, but also things
can essentially turn a modalityuh into like the new red-hot
(37:13):
kind of cool kid on the blockthat can significantly advance
the building of those uh largenumber stable qubits that we all
strive for.
So this was great, and it was agreat way to start um 2026, um,
especially because it was amodality that we were not
(37:34):
particularly um uh seeing a lotof news um in in the previous
years.
So I think we're uh we'relooking great in in the space,
and I'm honestly very excitedabout um what are some of the
new things that we will learnfrom our uh guests in Twitter.
SPEAKER_03 (37:52):
I'm imagining what we'll be talking about five
years hence, so uh, but let'stake it one year at a time.
SPEAKER_00 (37:56):
We might want to do an episode, Patrick, by the way,
where we would just lay down alist of things that we believe
we will be talking about in Idon't know, two years' time or
whatever.
And then when the time comes, itwill be great to review that
episode.
Although or to delete it.
Yeah, exactly.
We might not want to make itpublic after all.
SPEAKER_01 (38:19):
Yeah.
I don't know what episode you'retalking about.
SPEAKER_03 (38:23):
All right.
Well we'll leave it there asusual.
Great talking to you, Cyprian,and we'll see everybody else
next time on Entangled Things.
SPEAKER_01 (38:29):
Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03 (38:30):
Bye.
SPEAKER_01 (38:31):
Have a great time at Runby.
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Hey Ciprian, how are you doing?
Hey, Patrick.
I'm doing great, looking forwardfor another great episode of
Entangled Things.
SPEAKER_03 (00:47):
Well we're lonely today.
It's just you and I, but uh it'sit's kind of a significant
milestone.
So we're five years and a littlebit of doing this.
So every two weeks for fiveyears, we've released an
episode.
Consistency is key, uh, andwe've talked about so much.
I I don't want to do a fullretrospective because we do have
something to talk about today.
Uh, but it's been amazing tounderstand things that we
(01:11):
weren't talking about five yearsago, you and I.
We I really wasn't talking aboutquantum sensing.
I really wasn't getting intoannealing.
Um, so it's it's been very uhrevealing the because of our
guests mostly.
SPEAKER_00 (01:25):
Yeah, absolutely.
I I think every time I'm likelooking back at the unbelievable
length of of our um of ourpodcast, I I think we were
really fortunate to have an anincredible line of uh of guests.
And uh uh It's true what theysay, right?
(01:48):
If you really want to learnabout something, uh do a
podcast.
SPEAKER_03 (01:53):
Yeah, that's helped a lot.
So we're gonna have a lot ofgreat guests the rest of this
year, uh, a lot of recurringpeople who've come back, a lot
of new people who um you knowwe've met along the way.
Uh, but we have something totalk about today.
We don't have a guest to talkabout it, but uh MIT News has an
article that you point youbrought to my attention.
You want to talk about what whatthey're saying and why we're
(02:13):
surprised?
SPEAKER_00 (02:14):
It's it's an interesting thing because it's
another, yet another um ideathat could dramatically change
things in this time in themodalities um of building
quantum computers.
And remember, many, many timeswe are talking about the
(02:34):
modalities, and we say, look,there is no clear winner here.
Right.
It could be that it's somethingcompletely different from what
we are talking about these days.
Um this is an interesting uh uhresearch and and result that was
um uh was published.
Uh and it refers to a modalitythat we often refer to and we
(03:01):
often mention, we haven't reallykind of discussed in depth,
right?
Uh despite the fact that it'sone of the first ones that was
attempted.
And I'm talking here about uh uhabout trapped ions, right?
SPEAKER_01 (03:14):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (03:15):
And um trapped ions have been uh in in many, many
applications, even before wecall them quantum computers,
right?
Remember, things like atomicclocks and and other things are
are actually using this thisphenomenon.
And the the interesting thingabout building a quantum
(03:37):
computer with trapped ions isthe temperature.
Uh and the kind of keyword hereis trapped, right?
In order to keep the iontrapped, uh, which essentially
means control it properly, youneed to go uh down a lot in
terms of temperature.
You need to cool down that chipto very, very low temperatures.
(04:00):
Um, and um then you have theproblem of controlling the ion.
And and the the standardapproach, the uh would I dare to
say traditional approach is touse lasers.
SPEAKER_03 (04:13):
Right.
Um laser tweezers, basically, iswhat when we had Yval Boger on
uh from QRA, he talked aboutlaser tweezers.
Now they use neutral atoms, notions.
I I think that's a a matter ofhow big you want the biggest
atomic structure you can getwithout being a multiple at
(04:34):
atomic molecule.
So so they want ions that areyou know really big or neutral
atoms that are really big sothat they can, you know, so it's
it's easier to to grab somethingif it's bigger at these scales.
SPEAKER_00 (04:47):
Yeah, yeah.
And also neutral atoms requireuh significantly uh less
cooling, right?
SPEAKER_03 (04:55):
They well doesn't the doesn't I so maybe I'm
misunderstanding.
My understanding was the factthat you're holding an atom or
an ion in place cools it becauseheat is just moving around.
SPEAKER_00 (05:07):
Heat is it's it's yes, exactly.
It's it's kind of like a sideeffect, right, of the of the
control.
Um what caught my attention, andI think is is a very interesting
idea, is uh the the team at MITis proposing a radically
(05:28):
different approach toessentially control, right, and
and and ultimately also coolthose those ions.
Traditionally, the lasers werebig bulky things that were
coming from the outside, right?
So you were concentrating thoselasers um on the uh on the ions
(05:50):
and attempting to uh uh tocontrol them, right?
So um this was one of thelimiting factors, and it still
is obviously one of the limitingfactors for uh uh trapped ions.
And the announcement that waspublished by the MIT research
team is that they are working ona significantly more efficient
(06:14):
way to cool these um uh ions.
Instead of coming with thelasers from the outside, they're
actually building photonic chipsthat would provide the same
capability of those lasers, butvery, very close or
significantly closer to um uh tothe trapped uh eye, right?
(06:38):
So basically what they they theyclaim they can achieve is an
order of magnitude, meaning 10times, right?
Getting 10 times below the limitof like standard laser cooling
by doing it with photonic chips.
And that in itself, the idea,right, is uh one of the things
(07:00):
that that I believe could be asignificant uh game changer, at
least for the trapped ions.
SPEAKER_03 (07:06):
So to paraphrase an old horror movie, the lasers are
coming from inside the chip.
SPEAKER_00 (07:11):
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (07:14):
Well, yeah, I mean, I I guess I never thought of
this.
And and the this so this is fun,this is the funny thing, is that
you get enlightenment by, youknow, I never thought of it, but
of course the lasers you'd you'denvision maybe there's a uh a
trapped ion computer, uh quantumcomputer with a hundred qubits,
and maybe there's only a dozenlasers that control and move
(07:38):
things around.
Well, it's kind of like cranesat a at a at a shipyard.
You know, you've seen thosecranes like at you know Long
Beach and other shipyards in inHong Kong where you've got a few
cranes and they move the things.
Well, you can't you can't doanything unless you've got a
crane available.
So this might also mean that youcan do more um moving and
(08:01):
controlling of individualqubits, because I doubt those
older systems had lasersdedicated to each qubit, but it
sounds like they might in thiscase.
SPEAKER_00 (08:11):
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, let's just quicklyremind our audience, right, uh
uh what is the the trapped ironapproach, essentially, right?
The the way you do it um isessentially you peel off an
electron from an atom, and thatgives you an ion, right?
(08:34):
And then basically, you trapthat ion, which is an atom that
is is is missing an electron, uhusing frequency.
Yeah, it would have a positivepositive frequency signals,
yeah, uh, and you manipulate itusing optical signals.
That's kind of the gist of thetrapped ion uh approach, and has
(08:55):
significantly improved withinthese confinements uh in in
years uh to the point where nowessentially it happens uh in a
plane, right?
So you don't need to buildlittle things, little towers
that control, right, and trapthe iron as you you have uh uh
you had to do it maybe 10 yearsago, right?
(09:16):
It's it's significantly uh uhefficient, right?
But still um it is uh verydifficult to uh uh to control,
um, especially when you talkabout scalability, because the
scalability is the the bigproblem of every single quantum
computer uh quantum computerbuilder, right?
(09:39):
And because you need to preventcollisions between that uh ion,
right, and gas molecules in theair, it's it's like that low,
right?
It it becomes a game of how do Iprevent my ion from colliding
(09:59):
with gas molecules in the air.
What you have to do, right, isyou need to keep those ions in
an almost perfect vacuum so thatyou you limit every type of
interference there.
And uh what you do in thetraditional approach is
(10:20):
essentially you have these bulkylasers that sit outside, and you
attempt to achieve that uh withthose uh uh bulk.
SPEAKER_03 (10:29):
So you're probably looking at more powerful lasers,
which means more heat, moreenergy with the old approach.
With the new approach, thenthey're they're closer.
You probably have more of them.
So they're you know, they'remore dedicated to you know a
fewer number of qubits, if noteven one to one or five to one
or whatever the ratios are.
(10:50):
There's not a lot of detail inthe article about that.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (10:53):
Uh there's a there's a research, uh the article
refers to two research papers umthat are published.
So the research papersthemselves contain like the
super specific scientificdetails.
But the the principle I think isvery interesting because the one
problem that was hurting a lot,these trapped ion structures,
(11:16):
uh, were vibrations.
Even the the slightest vibrationin the structure of those
outside lasers woulddramatically affect their
accuracy and ultimately thequality of the qubits that were
built to this this wave.
So it's not only that you haveto build those things, it's not
(11:38):
only that you have to ensurelike the perfect vacuum.
You also need to ensure a roomthat is completely free of
vibration, um, even vibrationscoming from the outside.
And you would technically saysure, but when I'm sitting on my
chair, right in my room at mydesk, we're sitting both of us
(12:02):
at a desk right now, right?
We don't feel vibration.
Well, it's not that kind ofvibration.
It's it's the kind of vibration,right, that you would not even
feel, like even the slightestthing uh uh would would provoke.
SPEAKER_03 (12:17):
If I think about this, I mean you're dealing with
a trapped ion.
I I don't know off the top of myhead what um what element
they're using for this.
Um, but it's it's probably thelarge you know, a larger element
so that they can do it.
But even if you took thesmallest metals, the smallest
(12:39):
materials you can build a laserwith, you would have to think
that that laser would be biggerby orders of magnitude than the
than the atom that that you'retrying to control, the the ion
that you're trying to control.
And so I think this has reallybig um consequences down the
line, this kind of research fornanobot nanobots, uh, you know,
(13:04):
nanotechnologies, um, things ofthat nature.
Because if you can control asingle atom, then you probably
can control molecules andmedicines and and other things
like that.
Uh so I'd be very curious.
I mean, there's not a lot ofdetail.
I don't I don't think it theythere's no pictures, of course,
but um there's not a lot ofdescription uh in how uh this is
(13:26):
achieved.
It's not like you could havethis a traditional laser.
It's not like you shrink alittle laser down because
there's just so few atoms thatcan be used before you get to a
macro scale.
And that's why the approach wasused that you describe where the
lasers came from the outside,because then the laser can be
whatever size it needs to be.
(13:46):
And as long as the beam isconfined.
SPEAKER_00 (13:48):
Um what they what they apparently use is obviously
significantly lower power.
Um, I wouldn't even call themlasers anymore, right?
Uh probably it's better to callthem like optical fields, but
their approach is to actuallyuse um two distinct beams of
(14:13):
light, right?
And uh because of theinteractions of those two
distinct beams of light, thereis a a phenomenon that that
happens there, uh which is uhcalled uh polarized gradient
cooling, which essentiallylimits the degrees of freedom of
that particular ion, right?
(14:35):
And the more you limit thedegrees of freedom, the cooler
it it gets.
So it's not really building.
I uh the way I read into this,it's not really building mini
lasers, right?
It's actually using photonics,so generating beams of uh of
light, in these two cases, twobeams of light, that would have
(14:56):
this effect of essentiallyreducing the kinetic energy of
the of the ion.
So that's why I think it's it'sreally, really um uh
interesting, and we will um haveto like like um keep an eye on
this because uh I think this wasattempted multiple times in the
past, but it's the first timesomeone really publishes uh um
(15:23):
information right about uhachieving the possibility of
efficient uh uh efficientcooling.
SPEAKER_03 (15:31):
So I wonder and this is me thinking a lot, I guess.
I wonder if the way you'd dothis is you'd have a a source of
coherent light.
So a laser, if you will.
Source of coherent light, andyou'd have an aperture at each
qubit so that you could turn itoff or on.
(15:51):
And when it's on, it's it's it'sdoing its thing.
And maybe it's always on.
Maybe there isn't need to be anaperture that closes and opens,
and that it's manipulating thestate of the are these lasers
used to manipulate the state ofthe qubits, do we know?
SPEAKER_00 (16:08):
As as far as my understanding is, this is mostly
focused on the cooling side.
SPEAKER_03 (16:13):
Okay, so then therefore you wouldn't need an
aperture, you'd just need asource.
So you could literally have aconventional laser device
creating coherent photonicstreams, and you could channel
them through fiber optics to thechip, and then basically have
them basically be the thingthat's holding it in place.
(16:33):
Think of like the um, you eversee the the bell, the bell that
goes over the cheese plate?
Yeah, the glass bell.
It I imagine it being like thatmade of photons.
Yeah, right.
And it's holding that eye onwhere you want it.
And by being more efficient andbeing more focused, it can hold
it in place ten times moreefficiently, which it translates
(16:55):
to ten times the cooling.
So we might literally move fromthree Kelvin to 0.3 Kelvin.
SPEAKER_00 (17:01):
Something, something significantly lower.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (17:04):
Now, the the my uh one of the things that um our
guests who've talked abouttrapped ions, trapped neutral
atoms have discussed is that thewhole system runs at room
temperature.
That only the ions, only the theneutral atoms are at z at zero
Kelvin or near zero Kelvin, andthat it's just in a room is I I
(17:24):
think that's the case here aswell.
SPEAKER_00 (17:26):
This this this would I I think this opens the
possibility of having systemsbased on trapped ions that would
essentially work in a fairlysimilar approach, like with
neutral atoms, right?
Yeah, because the big advantageof the neutral atoms is that um
(17:47):
the cold part is is reallyfocused around them.
And I think I think you're spoton, Patrick, because what what
they're claiming um in the inthe article is that basically
they have like uh two nanoscaleantennas on the on the chip,
right?
Which are um emitting beams oflight to manipulate a um trapped
(18:12):
ion that sits at a layer abovethese these antennas.
And those antennas themselvesare actually connected by
waveguides that route the lightto them.
So it's it's I I think it's avery interesting approach,
right?
Where they are routing light uhusing this this chips, and then
(18:36):
they are using those nanoscaleantennas to emit it in a way
that would control the trap ion,which is very interesting.
SPEAKER_03 (18:42):
By using the word antenna, you made me realize
that they're they're probablymanipulating the duality of
light as both a wave and aparticle.
I was thinking of it as aparticle, because it's hard to
think of it as both.
You have to think of it as both.
(19:03):
But uh but by using the wordantenna, they're invoking the
wave understanding of light asopposed to the particle
understanding of light.
SPEAKER_00 (19:13):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And my understanding is thatthey have some some very
intricate ways, right, of ofshedding these beams of light to
the ion that that sits above,which essentially creates this
this very, very interesting, uh,very interesting effect.
But uh without kind of riskinginto going back into even more
(19:38):
detail, I I think the principleis worth kind of uh uh noting
here, which is instead of tryingto cool something, right, with
external forces, which has beenthe fundamental approach, the
standard approach, right, forthese cryostats, what this
(19:59):
technique is is proposing islet's try to do the cooling at
the ions level, at that trappedions level.
So in my mind, the way I see it,right, if you say build a system
with, I don't know, a hundredtrapped ions acting as qubits,
you literally build a hundredtiny, tiny, tiny cryostats,
(20:24):
right?
Refrigerators, yeah, which areessentially acting on their
associated trapped ions.
SPEAKER_03 (20:32):
And the temperatures the temperature is localized to
that trapped ion, not the wholechamber, the whole room.
Because you're not, it's avacuum.
You can't allow air, you can'tallow other things in that
space.
So therefore, it's got to be avacuum chamber, a cryostat's a
good good analogy.
You've got these antennas thatare that are pumping a waveform
(20:55):
of light that holds it into oneplace, that that confines it
into one place.
SPEAKER_00 (21:00):
Yeah, yeah.
And I think, I think, again,this is very obviously very
early work, right?
But uh in my mind, to be veryhonest, I always looked at
trapped ions as like a greatapproach, but um somehow I felt
(21:21):
it was uh not going to have thesame, let's say, opportunities
of development in terms ofscaling because of the very
nature, right?
Of the requirements on one handand also uh regarding the
topology of these things.
SPEAKER_03 (21:40):
But this could break it, break that open?
SPEAKER_00 (21:42):
I think, yes, yes.
I think this could uh literallykick uh um uh trapped ion
modalities into a higher tier.
And if it proves to be stableenough to also do scaling.
Right, and and other things.
Because just to be clear, whatthe MIT team is stating here is
(22:06):
that they have validated theprinciple, right, and they have
like a working uh uh setup forthis, but as we know very well,
right, a lot of things need tothen fall into the right place
for scalability, for being ableto properly uh further control
these trap ions so that they canhave I mean in the five year in
(22:32):
the five years and before thatwe've been doing this, it's
definitely noticed.
SPEAKER_03 (22:36):
We I've definitely noticed, and I know you've
noticed, that there's a stepfunction.
It's not a linear curve of, oh,we're just gonna get progress
every day.
And and we're seeing this in AI.
Well, your your your yourfavorite topic other than
quantum pavy um is you havethese sudden jumps.
Like in machine learning in2014, we had a sudden jump, and
(22:58):
Chat GPT got us a sudden jump inawareness of the mass
population.
And these step functions, youdon't, you can't predict them.
You can you know hope and youcan watch the news and see
what's going on.
And it's only in looking backthat we'll we'll really
understand their impact.
We're lucky that Bell Labsdidn't say, well, vacuum tubes
(23:19):
are good enough.
We don't need to look foranything else because we'd be
using vacuum tube computers, andthey wouldn't really, I don't
think they would have scaled theway they have.
Um, and so we we we need to keepthinking, have an open mind
towards these differentmodalities, is I think key.
SPEAKER_00 (23:36):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
It's it's the differentmodalities, and it's also the uh
the sometimes human geniusbehind taking like a slightly
different approach or evenradically different approach.
Uh I distinctly remember,because since we also talked
about our five years um uh inthe making, I distinctly
(24:00):
remember when we were talking tothe Harvard team uh and they
were explaining us like, hey,look, uh we thought we could uh
address the problem of two qubitgates and the problem of the
limitations of the topology,right?
By guess what?
Moving the qubits, right?
Where they were like, cool.
(24:21):
So if we want to run a two-qubitgate, we're just gonna bring the
two qubits together, we're gonnarun the gate and we're gonna
send them back uh where theywhere they can, right?
SPEAKER_03 (24:32):
So that doesn't I I wonder how that interferes with
this or or how these two becausethat was the the outside lasers.
Yes.
The outside lasers picking up acube bit and moving it.
I guess it doesn't prohibit thathere.
Because you could move you couldpotentially use the external
(24:55):
lasers, like what we're callingexternal lasers, they're still
in the quantum computer, but youcould use the big lasers, the
outs external lasers, to pick upa quantum bit out of one of the
cryostats, shut off the localstream, and then move it to
another cryostat.
I wonder, yeah.
(25:16):
So yeah, I mean it's two stepsforwards, one step back.
We you know, we Yeah, yeah.
There's other engineeringchallenges, as we said, you
know, the step function umaspects of this.
Um but yeah, and and and when wefirst started the podcast, I
didn't I didn't really think ofof uh this was like an also ran.
I didn't think of uh trappedions or trapped neutral atoms as
(25:41):
uh a major contender, and itvery well could be the one.
SPEAKER_00 (25:46):
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I think these kind ofof, as you were, we all pointed
out, these I would even callthem sudden advances, right?
Where uh there is a new ideathat essentially opens uh a
whole lot of opportunities forthese these these modalities is
(26:07):
is the thing that will push umuh the the quality uh of the
qubits forward and also thenumber, right?
And um across the whole range ofmodalities, if you think about
it, right?
Uh we've seen some of thedevelopments that were published
uh in the field of topologicalquantum computing, mostly driven
(26:29):
by Microsoft.
We've seen the uh uh the news,right, about what the Harvard
team and the um uh QRA team isis is doing.
This interesting approach,right, from from from MIT.
Uh I I believe that there is alot yet to be um uncovered in
(26:51):
terms of the modalities.
And what really makes itinteresting for me, uh, I'm
talking about this particularannouncement coming from MIT, is
I think you should neverdiscard, as you very well
pointed out, any of themodalities.
Because even if a certainmodality seems to, let's say,
(27:14):
have reached a certain plateauin terms of its development,
right?
And you don't hear significantnews for like, I don't know, six
months, twelve months, whatever,right?
You could face something likethis where all of a sudden, hey,
yes, we had this idea, and nowtrapped ions are becoming, let's
(27:35):
say, more uh easier to cooldown, more efficient.
Uh, they can reach betterscalability.
And just to be very clear,right, all of these things still
have to be proven, right?
We're talking here about aninteresting idea, a concept that
was good enough and could beproven, right?
Hence it was uh uh published inin peer-reviewed journals, but
(28:01):
you should never literallydiscard, like say, yeah, yeah,
yeah, people have tried a lotwith, I don't know, trapped
ions, and we know all aboutthose.
SPEAKER_03 (28:09):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (28:10):
This this is what what makes it for me, to be
honest, again, thinking aboutthe five years, is that you
never know what next month isgoing to bring.
SPEAKER_02 (28:19):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (28:19):
Um in terms of like new announcements, in terms of
the things that that that thatget discovered, and then the the
the results.
That's I think that's thebrilliant part.
SPEAKER_03 (28:31):
The safe bet in the beginning of the actual quantum
age, when there were real actualquantum computers, actual qubits
that could calculate.
The safe bet's always been seenas um superconducting qubits,
um, superconducting circuits.
Um, and then you know, you yougot the other modalities,
(28:53):
photonics, um, you know, trappedions, uh, Microsoft's uh
endeavors with um the uh youknow equixotic materials that
didn't exist.
And the problem is it's it'salmost, I mean, to come up with
a a grand analogy, it's like westart in Boston and the goal is
(29:13):
to circle the earth.
Well, I might decide to use aballoon, you know, like the
movie, or I might decide to walkor use a horse or a car.
But there's lots of ways, youknow, you're gonna get trapped
by the oceans.
You're gonna run up againstlimits that you can't surpass.
Um if you wait for the jet,you're gonna get there more
(29:34):
efficiently, but you're notgonna leave as soon.
You're not gonna, you know,you're not gonna start walking
right away.
And I think we may very well belooking at it's gonna be a jet.
Now, the United States has anagency called DARP.
I've mentioned them in the past,and what they do is they fund
research that they think has thepotential to unlock something um
(29:57):
big.
And so they they fundedautonomous vehicles and drone
technology, GPS, the internet.
Um, so this is why, you know, AlGore helped establ uh uh fund
DARPA, so therefore he helpedcreate the internet.
Uh so the saying goes.
But one of the things thatthey've done in the last couple
of years is they've approachedseveral companies, including
(30:18):
Microsoft, because they werecurious about whether these new
modalities or less mainstreammodalities might be the breakout
that gets us to a millionqubits.
Microsoft's been really quiet,and you and I, you know, we we
listen attently to that.
Um I don't know whether they'reever gonna have a big step
function where they're gonnacatch up with everyone else.
(30:39):
I don't know if Trapped Ions isgonna be the runaway hero here,
but it's definitely aninteresting space to watch.
Um Is there anything else thatyou've seen recently before we
wrap up?
We're at we're at 30 minutes nowthat we should talk about as far
as modalities go, or is this thethis is the big news I think of
the day?
SPEAKER_00 (30:56):
It it is the big news, but I really want to uh I
I know we're close to be attime, but I want to get back to
your analogy because Iabsolutely like it.
And I would like to add a twistto it.
Right.
So you said, hey, you've got tocircle the globe, right?
And then you can, let's sayyou're, I don't know, in the um
(31:17):
1850, you're in 1850, right?
And you have the choice of goingby horse or by balloon, right?
Let's think a little bitdifferent.
Change the task.
Your task is to circle the globea thousand times.
Not one time.
SPEAKER_01 (31:33):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (31:34):
Right?
SPEAKER_03 (31:34):
Add a little bit of scalability into this.
So walking becomes much moredaunting at that point.
Horses become much moredaunting.
SPEAKER_00 (31:43):
Even horse, even balloon, right?
And then you have the choice ofhey, I'm gonna start doing the
circling with whatever we havenow.
Which waits, or invest insomething, right?
Wait 60 more years or 70 moreyears, right?
Uh until, or let's say 80 moreyears until I get like the first
(32:05):
fast airplane.
Right.
And then all of a sudden, whatseems to be technically
impossible because of the scale,right, becomes true.
SPEAKER_03 (32:16):
And I think uh with this twist, the analogy
perfectly describes well, it'slike would you rather go to
Alpha Centauri and leave now orwait 50 years and we'll pass you
with the new technology beforeyou even get past the org cloud?
SPEAKER_00 (32:31):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Exactly, exactly.
That is, yeah, yeah.
Getting back to your question, Ithink what I really liked about
uh 2025, uh, it was a year wherewe've seen multiple uh
breakthroughs uh in varioustypes of of modalities.
(32:54):
Uh but I think the even biggerthing was that we've seen
breakthroughs in terms of stableuh qubits.
SPEAKER_03 (33:03):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (33:04):
I think 2025 was a year where we've seen massive
advancements in errorcorrection, uh kind of combined
with the stability um ofmultiple of multiple qubits.
And my hope for 2026, honestly,is that that this trend will
will continue.
SPEAKER_03 (33:25):
Slow and steady.
SPEAKER_00 (33:26):
And and yeah, and and we will see, hopefully
within a few years, we will seesome some really, really like
truly remarkable results thatwould essentially put us into a
situation where we can talk withmore, let's say, confidence
about commercially availablescaled uh uh scaled quantum uh
(33:48):
computers.
Now, there's one interestingthing that is happening this
year, by the way, speaking aboutmodalities, is I think somehow
uh AI is still uh stealing alittle bit the show in the sense
that we see all the discussionand all the kind of heated
debate and and uh still all themassive investments uh uh going
(34:14):
into AI.
And as you said, I'm coming fromthe AI side, so I I think that's
that's that's welcome.
Uh but um my hope and also myperception is that quantum is
still going at a very, very uhsteady and fast pace in terms of
the of the developments.
(34:34):
If we just look at the rounds ofinvestments that some of the
kind of flagship companies havegot uh in the past 12 months, I
think uh there's a lot of veryinteresting new things that are
going to be uh I think part ofit is that it's an area of
physics that is seeing progress,while theoretical, you know,
(34:57):
string theory, things like thathave gotten to points where they
you can't test them.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (35:01):
And so I think this is a positive, constructive,
potentially profitable outputfor these universities.
So, you know, we've talked toFred Chong from Chicago
University, we've talked toprofessors from many
universities, and you know, wewe talked to the Harvard team.
Universities are still playing avery big role here because
there's fundamental science atstake as well, you know, and and
(35:23):
it's applications beyond justquantum, like we were talking
about with this.
SPEAKER_00 (35:28):
Exactly.
And then the other thing isremember we had uh a few guests
that were kind of stressing outthe fact that the developments
in the quantum computing side,right, are actually driving
ideas and potential developmentsin fundamental physics as well.
(35:50):
So I think it's kind of an area,it's like a two-way street here,
right?
You you need some advancementsin the fundamental physics, but
also advancements in buildingthe quantum computers can help
us uncover, right?
Uh uh new things about uh uhabout about physics.
Like think of it like this likeI don't know, 20 years ago, who
(36:13):
could imagine that we will beable to build something that can
move atoms in space, right?
Or if we speak aboutcommunications, building single
photon emitters and singlephoton detectors um are things
that that a few decades ago werepurely theoretical, but nobody
(36:36):
was like, build diamonds, buildartificial diamonds with
specific flaws at specificatomic levels.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_03 (36:46):
The nano world is gonna come eventually, but I
think it's gonna be on the backof the quantum developments.
SPEAKER_00 (36:51):
Most likely, yes.
So this is why I was veryexcited, right, about this
particular announcement, uh,because it's yet another proof
that things can be can move andnot only move, but also things
can essentially turn a modalityuh into like the new red-hot
(37:13):
kind of cool kid on the blockthat can significantly advance
the building of those uh largenumber stable qubits that we all
strive for.
So this was great, and it was agreat way to start um 2026, um,
especially because it was amodality that we were not
(37:34):
particularly um uh seeing a lotof news um in in the previous
years.
So I think we're uh we'relooking great in in the space,
and I'm honestly very excitedabout um what are some of the
new things that we will learnfrom our uh guests in Twitter.
SPEAKER_03 (37:52):
I'm imagining what we'll be talking about five
years hence, so uh, but let'stake it one year at a time.
SPEAKER_00 (37:56):
We might want to do an episode, Patrick, by the way,
where we would just lay down alist of things that we believe
we will be talking about in Idon't know, two years' time or
whatever.
And then when the time comes, itwill be great to review that
episode.
Although or to delete it.
Yeah, exactly.
We might not want to make itpublic after all.
SPEAKER_01 (38:19):
Yeah.
I don't know what episode you'retalking about.
SPEAKER_03 (38:23):
All right.
Well we'll leave it there asusual.
Great talking to you, Cyprian,and we'll see everybody else
next time on Entangled Things.
SPEAKER_01 (38:29):
Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03 (38:30):
Bye.
SPEAKER_01 (38:31):
Have a great time at Runby.
SPEAKER_02 (38:33):
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