Building a Quantum Ecosystem with Alexandre Blais
Welcome to the New Quantum Era. I'm your host, Sebastian Hassinger. And in today's episode, I'm joined by one of the pioneers of quantum science and technology, Alexandre Blais. He's a professor of physics and the scientific director of the Institut Quantique. Alexandre's journey into quantum computing started more than two decades ago, initially inspired by a popular science article written by a future Nobel Prize winner.
Sebastian Hassinger:He spent time at the Yale Quantum Institute contributing to groundbreaking research in superconducting qubits and the development of circuit QED as a foundational architecture for modern quantum processors. We'll discuss how he, as a theorist, collaborates with experimentalists to push the field towards impossible goals. We talked also about the fundamental physics and real world engineering behind quantum devices, exploring the ongoing battle against decoherence, the intricate mysteries of quantum measurement and the surprising ways that quantum phenomena reveal themselves in these engineered artificial atoms that are created in the superconducting circus he helps build. We'll also discuss the unique quantum ecosystem that Alexandre has helped build in Chelbuch Quebec bridging academic research and entrepreneurship. From training and empowering students to launch innovative startups to attracting international players to Sherbrooke's Quantum Innovation Zone, Alexander has been at the heart of efforts to translate quantum science into global technology leadership.
Sebastian Hassinger:Discoveries in physics. So please join me for a fascinating conversation at the intersection of science, technology, and entrepreneurship as we explore the new quantum era with Alexander today.
Sebastian Hassinger:Alexandre, thank you very much for joining us. I've been actually looking forward to having this conversation with you. You and I have have spoken a number of times, I've always found it really interesting. Would you mind starting just by giving us a background on sort of how how you found yourself on this path to quantum computing?
Alexandre Blais:Okay. Well, first of all, thank you for the invitation to the podcast. That that's great. So in my case, I've been in quantum quantum computing for over twenty years. So in fact, I studied my in Canada, we have master's degree before PhD degrees.
Alexandre Blais:And so I studied my master's degree and decided, like, hey. That looks cool. That looks fun. And in fact, at the time, I I told someone, like, hey. This is what I'm going to do.
Alexandre Blais:And the answer I got was like, oh, well, okay. You do something fun for your master's, but do something serious for your PhD. So that was that was in '98.
Sebastian Hassinger:Wow. So Which university did you do your masters at?
Alexandre Blais:In fact in Sherbrooke, where I am now. Wow. So this is a bit uncommon. But Yeah. I mean, what I decided to do is something which was maybe a little bit risky.
Alexandre Blais:I don't know if I would recommend that. I was a bit bit naive at the time. I asked someone, a faculty member, would you be my adviser? I would this is what I would like to work on. I know, like, there's no experts on this here.
Alexandre Blais:I promise I won't be any trouble. I mean, I just need I I I need an adviser. Yeah. Amazingly, person agreed.
Sebastian Hassinger:And was that inspired by by work from, like, Shor's algorithm or or Aronov's, you know, the the threshold work or any of the other Deutsch, etcetera, are there papers that you were reading that were sort of inspiring you?
Alexandre Blais:In fact, I I didn't know all of that at that time, so that was indeed a few years after Shor. That was, in fact, it's inspired by a a a popular science magazine article written by Serge Haroche, who then Okay. Won the Nobel Price, and Jean Michel Raimond was his his longtime colleague. When they essentially said, I argued that, yeah, quantum computers would never work. That was basically it.
Alexandre Blais:And my first reaction
Sebastian Hassinger:Well, was I'm definitely gonna make my career in this then.
Alexandre Blais:Well, my reaction was first like, oh, wow. This is actually a field of research. I had no idea. This is amazing. This is what I mean, I I really liked quantum mechanics, and I said, like, this is what I want to do.
Alexandre Blais:And then yeah. Okay. Impossible. I don't know. It sounds really tough, but, I mean, as Feynman also said, it's it's it's a fun problem because it's such a tough problem.
Sebastian Hassinger:Yeah. Yeah. That's great. And so then your after your PhD, you ended up at Yale. I guess in were you a PI I'm sorry.
Sebastian Hassinger:A postdoc with Rob Schoelkopf. Is that right?
Alexandre Blais:With Steve, in fact.
Sebastian Hassinger:Oh, with Steve. Okay. Steve Girvin.
Alexandre Blais:There is a one funny one more funny story if you want. We can go back to to to the grad studies. I mean, that will give you, like, a feeling for the for the for the background. So so there was no indeed, no one in Sherbrooke working on this. Then there there was someone in chemistry and someone in maths interested, and we had discussions.
Alexandre Blais:So that that was I mean, they they were people to talk to, but in physics, nobody. And a postdoc from UBC came to Sherbrooke to give a class, in fact, on many body theory. He had just written a book. And he was interested in how could one build qubits based on superconductors. In this case, high TC, high temperatures per conductor is not aluminum, which is this the what is now used, which is superconducting at, like, well below one kilo below a Kelvin.
Alexandre Blais:But but other materials, YBCO, it's called. It's a it's a it's a superconductor, which is superconducting at something like 70 or 90 degrees cels Kelvin. Sorry.
Sebastian Hassinger:Kelvin. Right. Right.
Alexandre Blais:And then we wrote a paper on this. And the next time I saw him, he said, yeah. Do you mind if I start a company based on this? And so that was a d wave supercomputer based. So you know why where this is coming going.
Alexandre Blais:So yeah. So this is that that became D-wave systems.
Sebastian Hassinger:That's crazy.
Alexandre Blais:And so I for a while, I worked a little bit with them when I was a PhD. And that stopped when indeed I joined Yale to work with Steve Girvin as
Sebastian Hassinger:a postdoc. Right. Okay. Okay. And so, I mean, you're you're a theorist.
Sebastian Hassinger:Right? You're you're more a theory than but you work you seem that your career and your research papers are all very, very close collaboration with experimentalists. Was that the way it was right from the beginning?
Alexandre Blais:Well, so when I I joined well, I mean, when I was at the end of my PhD, had a scholarship from the Canadian government to do a postdoc and was trying to decide where I should go. And I I, yell at the time didn't have any really experiments on on qubits, on superconducting qubits. They were they were first experiments that were going to that in that direction. Michel Devoret had just moved.
Sebastian Hassinger:Right.
Alexandre Blais:Steve had recently moved. Steve Girvin. And Rob Schoelkopf had been there for some time. But looking at a place, said, like, what I mean, there is a mixture there of theorists and experimentalists. I think this is really powerful.
Alexandre Blais:This is what I want to do. I think this is the best place to go. Although they were not the most advanced place at the time. And and, really, I think there's there is real power in that collaboration.
Sebastian Hassinger:Mhmm. Mhmm.
Alexandre Blais:What we're trying to do is really difficult. Yeah. It's a really difficult challenge. And so we need tons of expertise, and that includes theory and experiments. And, course, that it that is also true well, more broader than physicists.
Alexandre Blais:Right? We understand that we need mathematicians and computer scientists and engineers and so on. But so indeed, I I've I've throughout the the rest of my career, then I I really enjoy working with experimentalists. I I mean, my biggest joy is when we have a theory proposal, and then someone builds it and it works. I just find that completely amazing.
Sebastian Hassinger:Yeah. It's pretty incredible. So, I mean, were you at Yale that was such an incredibly sort of foundational time for superconducting qubits. Did you overlap with Chad Rigetti or Jake Gambetta or, yeah, that that whole the whole Yale gang?
Alexandre Blais:The whole Yale gang. So I arrived in 2000 January 2003. At the time, Andreas Walraff had been there for about six months, the experimentalist with whom I'm still collaborating twenty plus years after. Jay Gambetta arrived about a year after me, and that was great. That was great because by then, we had realized, oh, wow.
Alexandre Blais:The the the language the language to describe these systems and and most superhunting qubits is really the language of quantum optics. But we were nobody there was an expert in quantum optics. We were just learning this. And for the last year, I've been reading and and and and, yeah, reading about superconducting qubits. On the other hand, Jay was an expert on superconducting qubits.
Alexandre Blais:This is what he had done, but didn't know about superhunting qubits. And so we had this great exchange where I would tell him, like, okay. This is how superheroing qubits work, and he would go on, and this is our our master equation work. This is how a quantum trajectory work, all the the the foundational work in quantum optics. So it was really, really a great combination, and that was just a fun collaboration.
Sebastian Hassinger:And and I guess I mean, the the output of that in in large part other than the transmon qubit itself was circuit QED. Right? It's sort of an adaptation of quantum elect quantum electrodynamics to to the superconducting sort of resonator reg regime?
Alexandre Blais:Correct. And so in fact, circuit QED comes before the transmon. In a in a way, the the transmon cannot exist without superconducting circuit QED. Because one thing that circuit QED so as you said, so you have a superconducting qubits, which is based on Josephson junctions based on on on on typically aluminum, which is, as I said before, superconductor at the temperatures where we operate. But the the standard way at that time to measure these qubits was to first encode information in the qubits in the presence or absence of a charge in a region of the circuit.
Alexandre Blais:So it's called a charge qubit, a Cooper pair box. And Yasunoba Nakamura had done a beautiful experiment already in in 1999. But then that required to measure that charge, and that's a very difficult thing to do. And with circuit QED, what we realized is that this there were other ways, much more gentle ways to measure the qubit based on simply probing transmission of some microwave mode of some microwave resonator, which is coupled to the qubit. And as a result, you didn't need to measure charge.
Alexandre Blais:You didn't need to build a charge sensor. And so and as it turned out, the Transmon, its information is not encoded in absence or presence of a charge. It's a much more subtle encoding. In a way, it's transmon, you should really take as an artificial atom. It's a hydrogen atom which has energy levels and so but the energy levels are not like one charge, two charge, three charge.
Alexandre Blais:It's really like a number of a quantum of excitation in that circuit. And so before circuit QED, there would have been no ways to probe that qubit. And now we have Right. We have with circuit QED, we have that.
Sebastian Hassinger:Right. Right. That's really incredible. And and, I mean, QED itself, that's I think what Feynman sort of has the the sort of set of lectures in which he sort of says, like, this is the most incredible scientific theory in human history because it's so incredibly predictive of natural phenomena. Right?
Alexandre Blais:And Mhmm.
Sebastian Hassinger:It has you know, there's also I guess, it's previously sort of been expressed in cavity atomic cavity quantum electrodynamics. And was that sort of you just sort of had to adapt those sets of of rules to the to the circuit sort of regime?
Alexandre Blais:Mhmm. Yeah. So QED is a much more general theory for the which describes infractions of light and matter, indeed, on on which Feynman has worked and won the Nobel Prize for. But something which was preexisting to cavity QED is I refer back to Serge Haroche that I mentioned already Mhmm. Was this this realization that you could do something which is was is still called cavity QED.
Alexandre Blais:You can place a single atom inside a single cavity. And for the group of in France, this is made by using what is called a Rydberg atom, a highly excited atom inside a microwave cavity. And there, what is amazing is that they could exchange a single photon, microwave photon living inside this cavity as I mean, exchange this to I mean, the the atom would absorb this and reemit it and reabsorb it and reemit it, and there would be this co event exchange between light and matter, the cavity the field and the cavity of the atom. And so this is really the inspiration that we had for circuit QED. But, I mean, I think it's it's important to say that if you look at the literature, we were not the first the the the 2004 PRA that introduces the circuit QED architecture was not the first paper in the literature that would make this parallel.
Alexandre Blais:This is something that was very much in the air. I mean, people were starting to think about this. In my PhD, I had already started to think about this. But the work at Yale, I think for the first time really laid out, like, oh, these are the all of the essential elements, and this is the old package with which you can accomplish that.
Sebastian Hassinger:Right. And that at this point, circuit QED is is sort of the underpinning of all of the major gate based modalities of qubits. Right? I mean, it's it's applicable to to not just superconducting qubits, but but anything where you're trying to apply logical gates. Is that right?
Sebastian Hassinger:Or pretty much No.
Alexandre Blais:Not not photonic. The Yeah. No. Not photonic. Also not atomic, like, neutral atoms or or trapped ions.
Alexandre Blais:But spin qubits, for example, based on quantum dots, very much use not all of them, but several use these ideas use these idea. I've I've borrowed ideas related to the the way we measured the qubits, but also the fact that these microwave resonators can couple two quantum objects which are far apart from each other at a distance. Mhmm. The this concept of a quantum bus, right, where where the infraction is not limited to nearest neighbors, but now you can have qubits or spins in that case, which are separated by as much as a centimeter, and suddenly they can talk. And this is something that has been demonstrated with spin qubits and semiconductors.
Sebastian Hassinger:Right. You're still primarily working in superconducting qubits, though. Right?
Alexandre Blais:Correct. I I I was involved in some of the first experiments that that showed the spin spin coupling or or showed rather the not spin spin coupling in the in that case, but rather the coupling of a single spin to microwave photons, and then people did the spin spin coupling later, which this is something that followed. But almost all of my work has been is is based on superconductors. That's correct.
Sebastian Hassinger:Yeah. And and when you in your superconducting qubit work, it seems like a lot of your focus is on preventing decoherence, extending coherence times, you know, experimenting with approaches to to fabrication and design that will lead to higher you know, lead us to error corrected or fault tolerant qubits. Is that, you know, is that sort of the the characterizing correctly what the your main thrust is?
Alexandre Blais:Yeah. I think it's it's a a fair way to say it. I think I I one other way to say it is that I mean, if you look at the field now, something which has changed is that when we started that, it was really pure fundamental, like, curiosity based research. And now you could say, well, this is applied research. Companies are doing this, and it's it has completely transformed.
Alexandre Blais:But, yeah, so now we're are in a situation where Amazon or IBM or Google or or Intel or so many kind of numerous startups.
Sebastian Hassinger:Nord Quantic.
Alexandre Blais:Nord Quantic and so heavily invested in in this area. And so what is the role of academia? Well Mhmm. I mean, the role of academia is not to build a quantum computer. That can't be a role.
Alexandre Blais:I mean, the that that requires too too much resources. But the reality now is that the there's a scaling challenge. Of course, we need to learn how to fabricate in a way which preserves coherence and and and also preserves our ability to control the individual components as we scale up. So that's a massive engineering problem with a lot of physics underpinning these problems also. But the reality is that scaling up today's technology would simply not work.
Alexandre Blais:If you just brute force, scale up, and say, like, let's, like, make a million transmon qubits in the way we're doing it, that that would that's that will fail. That will not be a useful quantum computer. The reality is that we need to continue to improve all of the components of these devices and all of the operations on these devices, and that is something that an academic group can do. And this is what Right. We are doing.
Sebastian Hassinger:Right. Yeah. And not not just improve in an engineering, like an incremental engineering sense, but improve our understanding of the underpinnings of the the the physical science that is intrinsic to the behaviors that we need to understand. It's it's such fundamental Yeah. Level of work that you're doing still.
Sebastian Hassinger:It's really quite nice.
Alexandre Blais:Can make one example, which to me is is refresh surprising and refreshing. And and this is a contribution for my work, but for my group, but other other groups, including Google and others and and Michel Devoret's group at at Yale have contributed to that. But as it turned out, there there has been, for the last twenty year, mystery in the field of circuit QED. So in the 2004 PRA, which introduces the the proposal, everything turned out to be correct except one prediction. And that prediction is that the readout would be amazingly good.
Alexandre Blais:So so as I said, you probe the you have a a qubit that's coupled to some resonator. You can you you shine this you shine this resonator with microwaves, and there's transmission. You measure the transmission, and you get the the state of the qubit. And the naive theory is that if you shine more microarrays at input port, there's more signal at the output port. More signal, faster readout, better readout.
Alexandre Blais:And then the prediction was I made that that that would be amazing. But already, like, the first experiment in 02/2004, we realized, well, that is not the case. If you start measuring too hard, something bad happens to the qubit. Right. And that turned out to be something which was unsolved for essentially twenty years.
Alexandre Blais:My first master's student back in 02/2006, I told him, hey. That's an interesting problem. We you should try to solve this. We came to something, but it didn't solve it. In 02/2016, Google put their finger on on something, which is which was the the crux of the problem, but still not the full picture had emerged.
Alexandre Blais:And in the last year or so, now as a community, we've really understood this. But this is amazing to me. Like, it's the physics of one single qubit, and it's a problem which had been out there for twenty for twenty years. And still, like, we we need to understand that. So it's these are complex system even in their essence.
Alexandre Blais:And even where you take a single of these of these qubits, these these remains complex nonlinear systems, and there's simply a lot to understand.
Sebastian Hassinger:And and that's is that dispersive readout that you're referring to? That's the that's the challenge? And and is there what what is this the sort of the essence of the the solution to that problem?
Alexandre Blais:Yes. So the essence and it's the essence is in a complicated way, we would call this multiphoton resonances. So, essentially, you have a an artificial atom, a system which has a bunch of energy levels, and you use only the first two to to do for to encode zero and one. The there's the first two energy levels of this artificial atom, other logical states, other qubit states. And for sure, you never want to explore anything else than these first two.
Alexandre Blais:And it turns out that the measurement is well, let me back up once again. So how do you do gates on these qubits? You do gates by shining light, microwaves, at the zero one transition frequency. Any deviation for the zero one transition frequency would in principle not cause any transitions. So if you were to drive off resonantly from the zero one transition, nothing.
Alexandre Blais:If you drive on resonance, a gate. Perfect. As it turned out, readout is a drive, but it's a drive which is off resonance. This is Right. What we call the dispersive readout.
Alexandre Blais:And for sure, we thought everybody in the committee committee thought that that will cause no problems. But as it turns out, in nonlinear systems, there's something which is called a multiphoton resonance where multiple you can add up multiple photons of the drive to cause very, very strange transitions, say, from zero to 12 in your Interesting. Artificial And and so understanding this, so this is something which had already been pointed out in 2016 by some work by Google. Right. They had pointed out, oh, this seems important, but not all of their understanding had emerged.
Alexandre Blais:And this is something that we've worked on. But something which is quite amazing to me is that in the last months or so, only after we've completed that work and published the work, I've realized that, in fact, that was known since the eighties in the context of the ionization of the hydrogen atom.
Sebastian Hassinger:Oh,
Alexandre Blais:exactly the same physics. It's
Sebastian Hassinger:Amazing. Because, I mean, as you said, it's an artificial atom. It's an artificial
Alexandre Blais:So the
Sebastian Hassinger:behavior is matching even at that level.
Alexandre Blais:And and it's the the the the matching is it's it's amazing. Right?
Sebastian Hassinger:It's such a good example of how this this, you know, this interesting problem, as Feynman put it, you know, is simultaneously, as we're trying to build a technology out of these quantum mechanical building blocks, it's it's, you know, driving deeper and deeper understanding into the fundamental, you know, behaviors of the the physical universe. It's really incredibly, like, synergistic, I think, that the two pursuits are are helping each other so much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Sebastian Hassinger:That's really interesting. And so you've you've returned to University of Sherbrooke , and you mentioned sort of the role of academia. You're also leading Institut Quantique, which is a a Quebec government funded effort in with the University of Sherbrooke leads, I believe. Right? And is that sort of meant to sort of bridge academia and and the industrial the the applied research in quantum computing?
Alexandre Blais:Right. So so it did so I'm the scientific director of the Institute Quantique, something which is an institute which was founded in 2016. So it was first founded based on funding from the federal government. Mhmm. We are funded by by the Quebec government also.
Alexandre Blais:So what you what you said is correct. The the yeah. That institute has about 40 to 45 PIs. The number are increasing. I don't know exactly where we are now.
Sebastian Hassinger:That's great
Alexandre Blais:350 people, students, postdocs, staff. So so quite a large institute which covers both quantum information, quantum engineering, quantum materials, but we also have members in chemistry, maths, political science, business school, and so on. And so the the the name of the the the grant the pro the grant proposal that we obtained, which was about $30,000,000 to which kick started the institute, was from quantum science to quantum technology. So our goal was really to to make that bridge. And and we wanted to make that bridge in a way which would have a long lasting impact.
Alexandre Blais:So something that we understood at the time was that our major export in Sherbrooke in quantum was talent. We train people. They would go and work elsewhere.
Sebastian Hassinger:Right. Right.
Alexandre Blais:And the question is, how can we reverse that? It's great. I mean, we're IP for students to be our ambassadors that they should go and some should distantly go, but can we keep some here in the area? And and if I have time, maybe I can tell you some of the actions that we've taken and and the outcome of that.
Sebastian Hassinger:I I really I'm very, very fascinated, by this type of public sector, you know, quantum institute, quantum initiative, quantum strategy, because I think it's really vital for for keeping the progress going, because of that that interdependence between, applied and and academic research. So, yeah, please. Very interested.
Alexandre Blais:So so, I mean, one thing that we recognize, and that not just us, but that it was a a a, like, a position of the University of Sherbrooke was that, okay, we would like to start companies, right, in this area. But if a professor starts a company, excellent. But at the same time, you just lost someone that you you Right. That you, like, you helped, like, establish, you you built a lab, and you you just lost all of that expertise and the training that this person was bringing. And so the focus was really on, can we get the students to start companies?
Alexandre Blais:And the way we went about with that is, for example, we we offered classes in the business in collaboration with the business school for an how do you start your business, essentially, but targeted to physicists and engineers working at the Institut Quantique Right? Just general business knowledge, business model canvas type things. We also and I'm more importantly, we add about a million dollar per year that we would give in seed funding. If you're professor x and we've been doing research y for the last z years, Great.
Alexandre Blais:Continuing doing this, you don't need our help. If you want to start something new, however, if you want to transition from something else to quantum, you want to start a new collaboration, great. You can apply. Your your application for a two year project will be evaluated by a team of intern of Canadian researchers. And everybody in the institute is is admissible.
Alexandre Blais:Everybody in most places was would mean only all I mean, all the PIs. In our case, all the students, postdocs, class members could apply. That's first year, one student got a grant, about 100 k. It's not, I mean, not large, but still not small. And next to it, well, professor did not get a grant.
Alexandre Blais:And he was like, oh, what just happened now? So there was a bit of a reaction. Yeah. But that person person is David Roy-Guay, who, based on his work with that grant, founded SB Quantum, which is the first startup quantum startup in Sherbrooke. And That's great.
Alexandre Blais:They now have about 30 employees running since
Sebastian Hassinger:2020. Fantastic.
Alexandre Blais:Their technology has been selected by nigh NASA to be sent in space to do a detailed map of the Earth's electromagnetic field.
Sebastian Hassinger:Oh, so this is a a sensing technology. I remember reading
Alexandre Blais:about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that that data will be used.
Alexandre Blais:So when you open Google Map, there's this little blue dot. It uses GPS, but it also uses other data, including the detailed map of the Earth magnetic field to locate you. And so in a few years, every users of cell phones on the on the planet will be using data acquired by SB Quantum by this this 100 k that I mean
Sebastian Hassinger:Amazing.
Alexandre Blais:That's an amazing story. And there's only one of them. Then there's Nord Quantic. There's Qubic. There's Right.
Alexandre Blais:We have several companies like this. And then IBM started to establish itself in Sherbrooke and 1Qbit, a Canadian startup. And at that point, the government said, okay. There is something special happening in Sherbrooke. And they created what is called innovation zone, which is essentially a startup hub for Quantum.
Alexandre Blais:And now there's 15 companies, about 200 jobs in Quantum in Sherbrooke. Pasqal is here, the French neutral atom company and Nord Quantique. And so
Sebastian Hassinger:many more. I mean, that was really impressive being able to to, you know, offer something to a France based startup that would attract them to to Canada and to Quebec. Mhmm. What was the what's what's the attraction for Pascal?
Alexandre Blais:So they first, I mean, they they wanted to expand beyond France. That was a decision that they they had made. But so why Sherbrooke now? Why not go to The US? Right.
Alexandre Blais:Well, they wanted to have a talent. They wanted a place where they would be, like, people that they could attract
Sebastian Hassinger:Right.
Alexandre Blais:To work in their their company, and they felt like this is the this is the right place. The we have a nice story where the the CEO of 1Qbit came to Sherbrooke well before the Innovation Zone. I mean, just when the institute was starting really, and he had a discussion with students, only students. There was I mean, we didn't brief the students, like, students and the CEO. And the the CEO said, like, oh, yeah.
Alexandre Blais:Well, I I'd like Andrew Fursman. I I'd like to to start a comp like, to start a branch of my company in Quebec, and I I'm thinking of doing it in Montreal. And all of the students said, no. No. No.
Alexandre Blais:No. You want to do you should you want to do this in Chabroek. We're here. This this is where we want to stay, and this is what he did in the end.
Sebastian Hassinger:That's amazing. That's great. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah.
Sebastian Hassinger:I mean, I regularly point to Institute Quantique and Sherbrooke as being the best example of the the sort of all of the pieces that you need to to jump start a a startup ecosystem and and bridge that, as you said, that academic research to the applied research that starts to have an industrial impact. So I think you're doing a fantastic job there. It's really quite exciting. So we're we're I'll I'll I'll we'll finish up, but I I wanna get your view. So I had this conversation with Steve Girvin Mhmm.
Sebastian Hassinger:Actually on Helgoland at the the conference commemorating the hundred years of of quantum physics. And he said that he ultimately you know, while the the industrial the applied research is is striving towards this sort of fault tolerant quantum computer at scale that can do, you know, whatever, crack all codes or optimize financial portfolios or whatever it's gonna do sometime in the future. He thinks of himself as as an experimentalist, and the systems he's trying to build are the motivation is that he wants to sit he wants to have a many body system that he could actually control and do experiments on. Do you if you had to choose one of those outcomes, you had to choose, like, sort of the industrial, you know, commercial realization of fault tolerant quantum computing at scale or being able to do many body physics quantum physics at at you know, with enough control and enough precision, you could make fundamental breakthroughs in in the field of quantum physics. Which one would you choose?
Alexandre Blais:That's a tough question because I do I really need to choose? I think we can have both. So, I mean, what I can say is that, I mean, I think quantum computers will before being commercially useful, will be fantastic tool for discoveries. Right. And and so I think this is I mean, they are amazing tools.
Alexandre Blais:At the same time, I think building a quantum computer is kind of a challenge of the century. Right? It's just such a difficult problem. And seeing this through, I mean, I would love to see this happen, right, to see, like, okay. We we've achieved that that imp like, that that incredible mission.
Alexandre Blais:There is in quantum mechanics, a if you go to the old quantum mechanics, there is something called Bohr's complementary Mhmm. Principle that if a a system becomes large, it beca it starts to act classically. There's a transition for quantum Mhmm. Classical. What we're trying to do is to go against that very fundamental principle.
Alexandre Blais:We're trying to build a bigger and bigger system that be as ever more quantum. I think this is just amazing. Right? We're we're we're trying to do something which was deemed impossible.
Sebastian Hassinger:Right.
Alexandre Blais:But, yeah, it looks like it's actually possible.
Sebastian Hassinger:Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's a classic cake and eat it too kind of answer, Alexandre, but I'll I'll allow it.
Alexandre Blais:It's fine. Sorry about that,
Sebastian Hassinger:but that's fantastic. Thank you so much for your time. This has been really, really interesting. I really appreciate it.
Alexandre Blais:Thank you for your invitation again.
Sebastian Hassinger:Thank you for listening to another episode of the podcast, a production of the New Quantum Era hosted by me, Sebastian Hassinger, with theme music by OCH. You can find past episodes on www.newquantumera.com or on bluesky @newquantumera.com. If you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and tell your quantum curious friends to give it a listen.
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