Q. Data encryption is talked about a lot as a commercial application for quantum systems, but what are some other uses that people are hoping to bring to fruition soon?

de Jong: In the next couple of years, we should be able to start to do simulations of materials in a way that really helps industry develop better energy technologies like I mentioned earlier and potentially better materials for classical computing. I also think a lot of companies are definitely gunning for applications in life science, where there are a lot of potential applications, like drug discovery for example. But that’s a longer way out.

Quantum computers are also very good at optimization. Think of the electric grid, managing airplane traffic, road traffic, financial transactions, or anything that operates as a complex network of systems – that is something that is very complicated to optimize and classical computers have a hard time with it.

So, there are many areas that could benefit from quantum computing and sensing as well as quantum networking, which is the very nascent field of creating powerful networks of quantum computers like we have networks of classical computers. Those three technologies have the potential to really make a step change in how our society and economy operates. Are we there yet? No. But that’s why I would say almost every Fortune 500 company has at least a couple of people looking at how quantum can help them.

Q. One of the huge draws of quantum computers is the potential to solve problems that are intractable with current computing technologies. What are some examples of new types of research that you are excited about?

de Jong: Oh, so many. I’m a computational chemist by training, I do quantum research, but I also enjoy working with experimentalists solving real-world chemistry problems. One of the things I’m working on is how can we develop better materials to capture carbon from the air. The calculations that go into simulating materials for this purpose are very expensive. We would need access to exascale computers for pretty much months at a time, here at Berkeley Lab’s National Energy Research Computing Center or at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Even with exascale computers, we greatly simplify the model of the reactions so we can run it on such a classical computer.

Our hope is that we won’t have to reduce our models. We can actually start running full models of reactions we’re interested in on a quantum computer. This comes with the additional benefit of saving a lot of power, as classical supercomputers require a great deal of energy to operate.

There are a lot of other fields with similar challenges, including high-energy physics, who hope to use quantum tools to increase our understanding of the foundational laws of the universe.

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