The focus of their latest work, described in a paper in the online journal Nature called "Realization of three-qubit quantum error correction with superconducting circuits," addresses a key shortcoming of early quantum computers - their susceptibility to errors. Their breakthrough is demonstration quantum computing error correction in a solid-state system.
"Without error correction, you couldn't make a quantum computer that had an exponential speed-up," said Matthew Reed, a fifth-year Ph.D. student in physics at Yale who is the paper's first author. "Small errors would otherwise inexorably build up and cause the computation to fail."
*Making research data fly
The National Science Foundation awarded Yale a roughly $500,000 grant to craft a 100Gbps network for shuttling gobs of scientific data around the school and beyond, via a link to Internet2. The new network will run 10 times faster than the current network, which is shared with the rest of the university. Importantly, part of the project is a DMZ to prevent unauthorized parties from dipping into the data.
According to the NSF, the broader impact of the award is: "In essence, this project is creating a virtual facility for scientific collaboration and data sharing that will allow new research communities and collaborations to form within its walls. By leveraging the Science Network and Science DMZ, Yale will be able to pioneer new modes of research collaboration; host and serve up 'big data' scientific data stores; and work with institutions in its region, across the nation, and around the world to broaden the opportunities for scientific research, and support excellent education and training for students at all levels." (More from The Yale Daily News.)
*MacArthur Fellow into more than theory
Yale's Daniel Speilman, a professor of computer science, mathematics and applied science was named one of this year's 23 MacArthur Fellows - in other words, he's the recipient of a "genius grant." He gets $500,000 to work with over five years.
According to the MacArthur Foundation: "Spielman is a theoretical computer scientist studying abstract questions that nonetheless affect the essential aspects of daily life in modern society how we communicate and how we measure, predict, and regulate our environment and our behavior."
