Category: News

We were thrilled to be contacted by Anton Højris Middelhede at the Danish embassy in Oslo for a get-together while 2024 was still young. Together with Emilie Michaelsen and Øystein Sandvik we had a very interesting – and promising – exchange of thoughts and interesting opportunities. Øystein represents Invest in Denmark, a public service aimed to facilitate establishing new enterprises in Denmark.

As many may know, Denmark has a long-standing and proud quantum history – one that is not limited to Niels Bohr and his “Copenhagen interpretation” of quantum physics, but also involves dedicated research and innovation which extends as far as quantum physics itself.

And, contrary to Norway, Denmark is already a major player when it comes to making the second quantum revolution happen – aided by both substantial and public and private funding.

Our Danish contacts are most welcome again. As we did not manage to stick to our time schedule the last time, we are certain that we will find interesting things to talk about also next time we meet.

At the end of November 2023, the Quantum Hub and DQUANT welcomed a group of high school students from the Kuben videregående skole eager to learn about quantum mechanics. The visit comprised detailed lectures and practical tutorials aimed at introducing the students to the intricate and beautiful world of quantum physics.

The day commenced with an overall introduction and motivation to the topic. This was followed by instructive lectures on solving the Schrödinger equation for the hydrogen atom. The different sessions provided an overview of the equation’s application beyond the ground state and its significance in understanding atomic behavior exemplified by quantized energy levels for the one-electron system.

Following the lecture, the students participated in hands-on tutorials exploring the basics of quantum computing. Quantum Hub affiliated students and researchers guided them through demonstrations and experiments elucidating concepts such as superposition and entanglement.

It is our hope that the visit left the students with a deeper understanding of the fundamental principles governing the quantum realm. As they departed, it is our hope that the experience had sparked a greater interest in the complexities of quantum mechanics among the budding scientists.

This event was planned and led by A. Laestadius in close collaboration with S. Selstø, S. Denysov, and Owen Haugen Ogbebo.

With some delay, we are reporting about an exciting event that took place in Helsinki (November 14-15th, 2023). 3rd Nordic Quantum Life Science Roundtable is a next link in the chain of all-Nordic meetings that are designed for key players in the field, aiming to catalyze Quantum Life Science (QLS) through knowledge sharing and exploring new possibilities within the intersection of Quantum Technologies and Life Sciences. The two previous ones took place in Stockholm (2021) and Copenhagen (2022).

Two members of OsloMet’ s Quantum Hub, Pedro Lind and Sergiy Denysov, have attended the meeting (the former one is a co-organizer of the event). We were excited to see how far Finland made it in closing the gap between the cutting-edge research in Quantum Computing and such sectors as health care and pharmacology (and related IT fields). We could one hope that one of those days Norway will reach this stage.

The venue was quite interesting: It is a former sea fortress Suomenlinna (Finnish) or Sveaborg (Swedish). A chilling place with a certain air, but, strange enough, it fitted nicely.

The most exciting thing we saved to the end: The next roundtable will be in Oslo, September 2024. It will be organized jointly by NordSTAR, Quantum Hub, and Simula Lab. A third engraving, “Norway 2024”, will be added soon to the silver goblet!

It was a truly pleasant surprise when Anja Løkken Stokke at NCE Heidner Biocluster in late November contacted our hub to ask if we would be interested in giving a webinar. (Of course we were.)

The NCE Heidner Biocluster is Norway’s leading national cluster for green bioeconomy and sustainable food production. Representing the entire value chain in green bioeconomy, the cluster consists of 66 companies, research and educational institutions, and other relevant partners. As strategic areas of interest, they list

• Intenational commercialization
• Digitalization
• Circular economy and sustainability
• New business models and strategies
• Biotechnology

So it makes perfect sense that they would be interested in how the second quantum revolution may affect our future.

It was a pleasure to see the diverse turnout at the webinar, held December 14th this year. Around 20 leaders and researchers/developers in various companies and institutions took actively part. The lecturer was quite impressed by the level of both interest and insight.

It would seem that the second quantum revolution will not catch the Norwegian bio-industry off guard!

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