Quantum mechanics center

UNM is home to one of the nation’s only university Centers for Quantum Information and Control.

The center’s director, professor Ivan Deutsch, said the CQuIC has made UNM one of the most visible universities in the area of quantum information research.

“This is a melding of computer science and quantum physics,” he said. “The question is: What happens when we keep shrinking computer chips so small that we start getting to the level of single atoms? The laws of physics are just different then.”

Deutsch said a “bit” of information is usually stored digitally as 0 or 1, but in the world of quantum physics, the bit can be 0 and 1 at the same time, a concept that has many practical applications.

“The weird world of quantum mechanics allows us the possibility of performing more powerful computations than ever possible, like breaking secret codes and designing new materials,” he said.

The center was established in Aug. 2009 through a grant from the National Science Foundation and works closely with Sandia Laboratory. Research at CQuIC focuses on quantum information, quantum control, quantum metrology, quantum optics and several 500-level physics classes are also taught at the center.

Deutsch said researchers and the center’s graduate students are currently working on a quantum control system.

“A control system is something like in an airplane that adjusts and steers the system to a desired target,” he said. “We want to do the same thing at microscopic level of atoms and photons. We want to ‘steer them’ to a desired target.”

Center faculty and professor Carlton Caves said the CQuIC attempts to solve problems in Information Technology using physics concepts.

“It’s important because by using quantum mechanics you can do things that current information processing devices simply cannot do,” Carlton said. “You can send encrypted messages with security that nobody can get at and decode without being able to do something outside the realm of quantum mechanics.”