Category: News

We were thrilled to see the interest in quantum computing at the Department of Informatics in Bergen. No less than 24 students completed the course Introduction to Quantum Computing and Quantum Machine Learning! This is certainly a significant contribution when it comes to making our future workforce quantum literate.

The course responsible is Philip Turk, whom you can see in the picture – along with his Bloch sphere, is affiliated with SINTEF – in addition to the University of Bergen. He has every reason to be proud – both of the course he has developed and of his students’ performances at the oral examination. Many of them demonstrated convincing familiarity with advanced quantum algorithms such as quantum phase estimation and Shor’s algorithm – in addition to having simulated and trained their own quantum neural networks. Quantum machine learning coincides with Philip’s own research.

Being an informatics course, emphasis was put more on algorithms – and the formal distinctions between quantum and classical information – than on the physics behind it. We at the OsloMet Quantum Hub salutes the initiative and hope that it continues to build quantum competence in Bergen. Perhaps it would spread to the physics and the chemistry departments too?

Yesterday, November 23rd, our visiting researcher Maksym Teslyk sucessfully defended his PhD dissertation at the University of Oslo.

Not only did he defend his thesis, he also gave two lectures on different topics this day, which was a long one for him, no doubt. I had the pleasure of being present at the first of these lectures, in which he told a very interesting story about the subtle quest for actual quantum advantage in computing. While we know that it does exists for several problems, it’s fundamental nature appears somewhat elusive.

In any case: We at the OsloMet Quantum Hub want to say CONGRATS, Maksym!

Mid November a bunch of us had the pleasure of going to Helsinki, the captial of Finland and, arguably, the Nordic capital of quantum startups. In any case, what we learned did confirm that there is a lot of interesting Finish activities going on in the quantum area – both theoretically and experimentally.

Perhaps the most interesting part was a visit to the Low Temperature Lab at Aalto university. (By “low temperature” we are not referring not mean average Finish Winter temperature, we are talking milli Kelvins.) Several setups, involving extremely cold “fridges”, were constructed for various quantum sensing applications – including an ambitious quest to measure quantum effects in gravity.

Our trip, aiming both at learning more about Nordic quantum activities and at raising cohesion within our hub, also involved a visit to Helsinki University. In addition to an inspiring visit to a lab aimed at curious school children and youths, we learned about diverse topics such as quantum machine learning, post quantum cryptography and the benefits of using a combinatorial approach to quantum circuits – only to name a few.

For a few photos from the trip, please follow this link.

AI and Machine Learning are vitally important for Ruter and  Quantum Advantage is something the company is paying a serious attention to. This year Ruter’s AI department runs the second project on gauging the potential of quantum computing as a tool to address the specific use-cases Ruter deals with on daily basis.

Last Friday we were invited to the Ruter’s  AI  Day and asked to present one of our quantum computers. We did so and gained a substantial interests from the event participants. It was nice to see that quantum computing provokes thoughts – and curiosity – even in the senior IT professionals.

In September this year, my good college Morten Førre and I had the pleasure of being invited by Katarzyna Krajewska to her group in Warsaw. Recently, they have developed a promising method for studying with photo ionization of atoms computationally. PhD student Mihai Suster is central in this development work.

Typically, atoms and molecules exposed to strong laser field, which, incidentally, was the topic of this year’s Nobel prize in physics, are described theoretically and computationally without considering magnetic interactions. However, with strong enough fields and low/high enough photon energies, this approach breaks down – rendering the problem much tougher.

This was one of several topics for discussion.

Morten and I also had the pleasure to learn about ongoing activities within quantum information technology at the University of Warsaw – both theoretically and experimentally. We were quite impressed by their various labs – and their efficient setups.

Impressive was also a relevant word for describing the city. Well worth a visit!

We thank our hosts, Katarzyna, Julia, Deeksha, Jurek, and Mihai, so much for their overwhelming hospitality and hope that we can return the favor at some point.

-Sølve Selstø

On Thursday 21st of September OsloMet’s QuntumHub and DQUANT hosted an introductory quantum science event called QuantumHub day – a free and open event for everyone!

The event is aimed to spark interest and educate people about arguably one of the most disruptive and influential technologies known to date.

Here, attendees were introduced to the quantum science field and got the chance to try Norway’s first quantum computers! Furthermore, the event included the experience of quantum dynamics at close range and the possibility to play Quantum Moves with wave functions. During the event, attendees were rewarded a free QuantumHub t-shirt.

QuntumHub day was an insightful and inspiring event which was met with good feedback and left new people interested and hopefully more knowledgeable in the field of Quantum mechanics and computing.

As a part of our contributions to this year’s Forskningsdagene, the OsloMet Quantum Hub had the pleasure of contributing to OsloMet’s actitiveis at Holmlia. The Makerspace at our faculty was responsible for making Ungforsk happen – with an very interesting program put together to spur the curiosity of youth school pupils. Indeed an impressive job planning, announcing and implementing. Kudos to Notto Thelle, Kersti Fosse Blålid – and all other colleges and voluenteers involved. Read more about what went on at Ungforsk here:

https://www.oslomet.no/om/nyheter/ungforsk-2023

Slightly younger pupils were invited to a mini-Forskningstorg where one of the stands was dedicated to introducing them to quantum technology. Thanks, Aleksandar Davidov, Bendik Dalen and Kristian Wold, for your efforts!

The events took place 20th and 21st of September. A total of 400 pupils got a glimpse of quantum technology – first and foremost through playing Quantum Moves – a game developed at Aarhus University addressing quantum control and adiabatic quantum computing. Actually, the game is surprisingly addictive …