Leading a team to tackle quantum computing, Haohua Wang wins 2022 Science Discovery Award

This morning, the winners of the 2022 Science Discovery Award were announced. As a public interest award led by scientists, the Science Discovery Award adheres to the purpose of "facing the future, rewarding potential and encouraging exploration", encouraging young scientists to explore the "no man's land" of science without distractions. The award is intended to encourage young scientists to explore the "no man's land" of science. The award is open to ten fields of basic science and frontier technology, and no more than 50 winners will be selected each year, and each winner will receive a total of RMB 3 million in prize money over five years.

PhotonBox notes that this year, Professor Haohua Wang of Zhejiang University, who is engaged in superconducting quantum computing and quantum simulation, was awarded the Mathematical Physics Prize in the Scientific Discovery Award [1].

d9d8253c07bc6a7f3934c43cda8a6540

Haohua Wang, Professor and Doctoral Supervisor, School of Physics, Zhejiang University

01Seven years of dedicated research, breaking the world record in one fell swoop

Among the quantum computing research teams in China, Haohua Wang's team is a force to be reckoned with. Wang Haohua and the team he single-handedly created prepared 10 and 20 superconducting bits entangled states for the first time in the international arena, established the whole process of preparing superconducting quantum chips at Zhejiang University, developed two chips, Tianmu 1 and Mogan 1, and built a quantum simulator based on superconducting multi-bit integrated devices for studying important scientific problems in many-body physics, including the results of topological time crystals in July this year.

Haohua Wang's biography is not complicated, he was born in 1977, received his B.S. degree in Physics from Nankai University in 1999, and his Ph.D. degree in Physics from Pennsylvania State University in 2006. 2007-2010 he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and then returned to China to join Zhejiang University until today.

During his post-doc, Haohua Wang joined the team of the famous John Martinis, whose name will probably always be remembered in the history of quantum computing as the pioneer of superconducting quantum computing and the creator of Google's "quantum hegemony".

At that time, Haohua Wang might not have thought that a few years later, he would not only compete with his mentor Martinis, but also surpass him.

At the end of 2010, Haohua Wang set up a team of superconducting quantum computing and quantum simulation experiments from scratch, and Zhejiang University had a quantum computing research team for the first time. After seven years of dedicated research, Haohua Wang's team hit the ground running.

In 2017, Haohua Wang, in collaboration with Jianwei Pan, Xiaobo Zhu, Chaoyang Lu from University of Science and Technology of China, Shibiao Zheng from Fuzhou University, and Dongning Zheng from Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, realized the world's largest number of 10 superconducting quantum bits entangled at that time through a high-precision pulse control and global entanglement scheme, breaking the previous record held by Google/University of California Santa Barbara Martinis.

In 2019, Haohua Wang's team worked with the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Automation, Beijing Research Center for Computational Sciences and other domestic units to set a new record again - developing a quantum chip with 20 superconducting quantum bits and successfully manipulating it to achieve global entanglement.

f9c589736419a5a93203029dff211eb6

Superconducting quantum chip with 20 quantum bits entangled

02Establishing a full-flow preparation process for superconducting quantum chips

Since 2016, commercial companies represented by IBM have been promoting quantum computing from the laboratory to the market. Wang Haohua and his team have also seized the opportunity to overcome difficulties, and now have a full-stack R&D capability from superconducting quantum chip design, preparation, packaging to measurement and control, and an international advanced level integrated quantum measurement and control platform, which can realize a variety of complex quantum experiments.

In 2021, Zhejiang University Hangzhou International Science and Technology Innovation Center Quantum Computing Innovation Workshop was established, which provides all-round guarantee for quantum technology research and development, and the scale of the R&D team was expanded again.

Starting from the end of 2021, Haohua Wang's team entered a period of concentrated harvesting. The first was the release of two chips, Tianmu 1 and Mogan 1. Mogan 1 is a dedicated quantum chip with a fully connected architecture, suitable for achieving quantum simulation and precise regulation of quantum states for specific problems. The "Tianmu-1" chip is aimed at general-purpose quantum computing and adopts a more scalable nearest-neighbor connectivity architecture. To perform relatively complex quantum gate circuit algorithms, a total of 36 superconducting quantum bits are integrated on the TEM-1 chip.

cd6d3a0fd81462d7e6654ffe1dbbc77f

40b8b7703541eeb0e2e0ab9a9ceffd0e

For these two chips, the team said that "Mogan" and "Tianmu" correspond to the famous mountains in Zhejiang: Mogan Mountain and Tianmu Mountain, symbolizing the ambition of the quantum team to be based in Zhejiang, serve the whole country and face the world!

Based on this achievement, Jianwei Yin's team at Zhejiang University's School of Computer Science and Technology has developed a superconducting quantum computing cloud platform, "Taiyuan-1", which uses a visual programming environment to remotely access the " The platform uses a visual programming environment to remotely access the "Tianmu-1" quantum chip.

03Creating new matter: topological time crystals

What's more, in July 2022, a world-shattering result was achieved with the "TEM-1" superconducting quantum chip. Wang Haohua and his student Wang Zhen, in collaboration with Deng Dongling's group at the Institute of Cross-Information, Tsinghua University, demonstrated a new kind of matter, topological time crystals, on a superconducting quantum chip for the first time using fully digital quantum simulation [2].

Wang Zhen, one of the corresponding authors of the paper and a Distinguished Research Fellow at Zhejiang University, said [3], "Conventional time crystals have been implemented in certain experimental platforms, and we want to do what no one else has done." Two years ago, they learned by chance that Deng Dongling from Tsinghua University wanted to make "topological time crystals", and they found it attractive to collaborate with him to try to create such new time crystals on the "Tianmu-1" superconducting quantum chip.

Wang Zhen said that quantum computing is achieved by performing logical operations on quantum bits, also known as quantum gates. Different quantum gates are combined into different algorithmic "building blocks" to build the "architecture" that scientists have in mind. The ZJU research team is working on building more general quantum "building blocks". "When solving a specific problem, you only need to call up a combination of different 'building blocks' instead of changing the chip." The paper's co-first authors, Xue Zhang and Jinfeng Deng, PhD students at ZJU's School of Physics, believe that digital quantum simulation is a sure path to universal quantum computing.

After evaluating the brilliant idea proposed by Dongling Deng's group, Zhen Wang and Haohua Wang's group tried the first experimental scheme of "fully digital quantum simulation", using 26 quantum bits on a superconducting quantum chip ("Tianmu-1"), and using a quantum gate line with a depth of up to The new time crystal envisioned by Dongling Deng was realized by using 26 quantum bits on a superconducting quantum chip (Tianmu-1) with a quantum gate line of 240 layers. This joint research team has successfully simulated for the first time a chain-like topological time crystal composed of 26 "quasiparticles", and by modulating the system perturbation, the experiment successfully carved the boundary between the topological phase and the banal thermalized phase. This is somewhat similar to a row of children listening to headphones and spinning in circles, even if the rhythm of the music changes, it can still be observed that there is a stable "tacit agreement" between the two children at one end and the other end, periodically showing some kind of echo.

add6326bd3a1904c4af707a2fdc1f5b8

Researcher Wang Zhen (left) with team members

For Prof. Haohua Wang and the team at Zhejiang University, Zhen Wang said this [4], "I don't think I am a fully independent researcher yet. But I am very lucky that the superconducting quantum computing team at Zhejiang University, where we are located, has gathered a group of excellent talents and accumulated a very rich technical reserve under the leadership of Prof. Haohua Wang. Every breakthrough in this field relies on the power of unity and collective attack. Superconducting quantum computing technology involves multidisciplinary intersection, complex technology, and high difficulty of attack, it may be difficult for young people to make a breakthrough alone, only by uniting together and making joint efforts will we have a chance to realize a real quantum computer as soon as possible!"

In addition to congratulating Prof. Haohua Wang on his award, Prof. Ying Jiang of Peking University and Prof. Hongming Weng of the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, who are engaged in the research of quantum materials, also won the "Science Discovery Award" in mathematical physics. Congratulations from PhotonBox!

1aa3cba792eb2ab50d803f7b8d705c32