3:30–4:45 pm MCP 201
In this talk, I will give an overview of some promising quantum technologies and their ability to open new windows for particle physicists to detect weak, unknown signals at very low signal energy scales. For example, the qubits and quantum RAMs of quantum computers require exquisite isolation from environmental disturbances in order to preserve the information stored in single quantum excitations. Errors in quantum computers can therefore be caused by dark matter and by weak forces which can pass through conventional shielding and occasionally interact with the quantum circuitry. Moreover, quantum information from more purposefully designed quantum sensor arrays can be processed by quantum circuits prior to wavefunction collapse. These quantum manipulations have reasonably high fidelity and are already enabling dark matter experiments to reach sensitivity to small signals with amplitudes far below that of the zero-point fluctuations. In the future, quantum local area networks will be used to transport exponentially large data volumes from quantum sensor arrays directly into universal quantum computers. Efficient quantum algorithms can be then used to identify subtle signals lurking within the Hilbert space of the multi-sensor density matrix. The transport, storage, and processing of such large data volumes (10^90 complex coefficients for 300 qubits) is beyond the capacity of any conceivable classical computer system, and so quantum technologies will allow us to look at nature in ways that have never before been possible.