SoCal Hub Symposium

In the last decade, advances in photonic materials and manufacturing have enabled table-top experiments to be scaled down to compact chips with improvements in efficiency, robustness, scalability, and key performance metrics. These advances include chip-scale classical and quantum light sources, modulators, switches, memories, detectors, and light-matter interfaces that can be combined into modular systems for quantum information processing, chip-to-chip networking, quantum sensing, and optical beam delivery for interfacing with other quantum elements. To continue making breakthroughs in scalable and robust photonic platforms for quantum applications, the next decade will require addressing several challenges, including hetero-integration of different photonic materials, co-integration of photonics and electronics, ultra-low-loss photonic interconnects and packaging at scale, and the exploration of new materials, hetero-interfaces, and fabrication methods that can support these advances.

Theme Co-Chairs

Galan Moody
Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
UC Santa Barbara

Elizabeth Peterson
Staff Scientist
Los Alamos National Laboratory

Advances in the control of quantum coherence and entanglement in the solid state often rely on the nature of the materials hosting the quantum states and the fidelity of interfaces between these materials within devices. Ultrahigh purity bulk and thin materials are required as hosts for tailored quantum defects with robust coherence, and new material types are broadly sought that can host intrinsically protected quantum information. Discovering these new materials classes and interfaces capable of hosting novel, protected quantum states and perfecting the integration of known materials classes and interfaces into devices are both required steps for progress at this frontier. The coming years will require breakthroughs in these areas for continued advances in solid-state quantum devices.

 Theme Co-Chairs

Stephen Wilson
Professor of Materials
UC Santa Barbara

Vivien Zapf
Deputy Director, Quantum Science Center
Los Alamos National Laboratory

While sensing has long been a key application of a variety of quantum platforms, there are still major improvements to be made by utilizing many-body entanglement and correlations. Control of interactions among many quantum elements opens up new possibilities in this area, yet remains an outstanding challenge for many sensing-ready platforms. A key example would be entanglement-assisted sensing in which dipolar or cavity-mediated interactions among an ensemble of spins leads to metrologically useful entangled states, enabling measurement sensitivity beyond the standard quantum limit. Schemes for generating and utilizing many-body states need to be theoretically and experimentally evaluated, in particular in the presence of real sensing targets.

 Theme Co-Chairs

Ania Jayich
Professor of Physics
UC Santa Barbara

Tyler Guglielmo
Nuclear & Chemical Sciences
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Control of quantum systems away from equilibrium is a crucial element of modern quantum technologies, from pulse engineering to quantum error correction. The isolation and tunability of modern quantum information processing platforms opens up new possibilities in nonequilibrium quantum control, the transport of quantum information, the control of thermalization, and the development of dynamical control protocols which are intrinsically robust against decoherence. As one example of cutting-edge topics in this area, a largely unexplored frontier for quantum many-body physics involves the use of measurement and feedback to drive phase transitions and create new states of matter.

 Theme Co-Chairs

David Weld
Professor of Physics
UC Santa Barbara

Malcolm Boshier
Los Alamos National Laboratory