IEE at 15 – Quantum

Excerpt from the COE Convergence article "The Institute for Energy Efficiency at 15" (pg. 17)

The IEE was created as existentially significant questions about environmental sustainability were coming into sharper focus and becoming a larger part of the global conversation. The challenges presented have only deepened in the years between the institute’s founding and its fifteenth anniversary.

This segment from "The IEE at 15" presents a glimpse from the universe of research in the institute undertaken by ECE faculty.

"Chasing Quantum"

While many technologies are aimed at achieving gains in energy efficiency, some, like those in the quantum realm, must be energy-efficient even to function at all. “Quantum and efficiency go hand in hand,” says electrical and computer engineering associate professor Galan Moody, who is working to develop hardware for photon-based quantum computers and networks, noting the extreme fragility of particles entangled in the quantum state of interrelatedness, in which anything done to one of two entangled particles instantaneously affects the other, regardless of the distance between them.

Quantum bits, known as q-bits, are the quantum mechanical analog of classical bits, which power all of our electronics (the 0’s and 1’s corresponding to transistor off and on states). But unlike classical bits, q-bits can be in superpositions — simultaneously 0 and 1 — that are sensitive to every kind of environmental disturbance: vibration, temperature, humidity, etc. Anything can disrupt whatever quantum mechanical process a q-bit was a part of. “You can’t just dump more power in or amplify the signals when you’re dealing with q-bits, because it introduces too much noise,” Moody says, “so you have to think about system efficiencies from the beginning.”

COE/CLS Convergence magazine (Summer 2024) - "The IEE at 15" (full article pgs. 12-17)