Quantum science and technologies have taken giant strides over the last decade. For the first time since the advent of quantum theory, it is now possible to build and precisely control complex quantum states of many particles. We are today in an era of noisy, intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) devices, with companies such as IBM and Google showcasing quantum devices with hundreds of quantum bits (qubits). This begs the question, how close are we to truly realizing a quantum computer? In what ways are quantum computers more powerful than their classical counterparts, and where do they derive this “power” from? In this talk we will try to address these questions, providing a glimpse into several interesting facets of the quantum world along the way. We will conclude with a brief discussion of the challenges that lie ahead, on the route to scaling up from NISQ devices to universal, fault-tolerant quantum computers.
Short Bio:
Prabha is an associate professor in the department of Physics at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Prior to this, she was an Inspire faculty fellow at the Chennai Mathematical Institute and a Post-doctoral Fellow with the Optics and Quantum Information Group at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences. She obtained her PhD in Physics from the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter at Caltech. Her research interests are broadly in the area of quantum computing and quantum information theory, and in particular in quantum error correction, and understanding the interplay between quantum foundations and quantum cryptography, and using quantum information as a tool to explore fundamental questions in theoretical physics.
