Solid-state quantum simulators for biochemistry (SolidQ)

Solid-Q is a new joint research consortium generously funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation that the Quantum Photonics group is proud to be a part of. Solid-Q unites two leading solid-state experimental platforms and applies them to problems in quantum chemistry and material science. An overarching goal is to characterize and eventually control charge, energy, and heat transport of relevance for molecular reactions, material design, and quantum coherent transport in light harvesting complexes. Ultimately our goal is to simulate protein folding problems of relevance for drug discovery with a quantum advantage.

A quantum simulator is a specialized quantum hardware tailored to a specific problem intractable on classical computers. In chemistry, first-principles quantum calculations quickly become intractable. We aim at constructing practical solid-state quantum simulators by applying advanced and mature nanofabrication techniques. To this end we will use single photons as quantum bits that can be reliably controlled in advanced photonic circuits. This offers exciting opportunities for scaling up the technology. We will exploit our advanced single-photon sources and photon-emitter interfaces as essential ‘building blocks’ for quantum simulators towards real-world applications with a Quantum Advantage, i.e. in the regime where existing classical supercomputers surrender.