Institute of Quantum Mechanics & Strategic Studies

Moments of Honour:

On 17th October 2024, Me being felicitated by the Chief of Naval Staff - Indian Navy, Admiral Dinesh Kumar Tripathi ji at the Ministry of Defence, South Block, Central Secretariat, New Delhi.
Kartik Umakant Desai

Underwater Domain Awareness (UDA).

Its indeed an excellent initiative spearheaded by our dear friend Dr. Cmdr. Arnab Das, founder & Director, Maritime Research Centre, India, and erstwhile Project Director - Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) & a Cmdr. of Indian Navy.

While it complements Underwater Quantum Matrix, the 6th generation Quantum technology initiative of my Institute of Quantum Mechanics & Strategic Studies & Umakant Desai Foundation;

Its a need of the hour from the Indian perspective to upgrade & update the underwater capabilities with 6th Generation of Quatum technologies, that shall secure India's vast coastlines of 7516 km from any stealth enemy threats from underwater, provide opportunities to optimise exclusive economic benefits in India's 2.2 million sq. km of surrounding Oceans as well in 150,000 sq. km of Central Indian Ocean region by fetching underwater mineral riches & green energy sources, explore lost civilisations buried underneath the Oceans, Secure & explore vast treasures of marine life,
and even promote Underwater tourism...!

I assure my support & convey hearty complements to Dr. Cmdr. Arnab Das for spearheading this noble initiative.

Kartik Umakant Desai
Chairman of the Board,
Institute of Quantum Mechanics & Strategic Studies.
&
Founder & Director,
Umakant Desai Foundation.
&
Member of the Board of Directors,
World Maritime Organization.

DRDO successfully achieves Quantum Communication :

My hearty Congratulations to the team of Scientists at the DRDL & RCI - Hyderabad (DRDO).

Defence Research & Development Organisation of India (DRDO) has achieved a milestone in the Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) technology by showcasing secure communication between two labs using the Quantum technology based security.

Secure communications are vital for defence and strategic agencies world over and distribution of encryption keys from time to time is an important requirement in this context.

Sharing of keys over the air or wired links requires encryption, which in turn requires encryption keys to be pre-shared. Quantum based communication offers a robust solution to sharing the keys securely. DRDO undertook the project for development of this technology.

Between two DRDO labs at Hyderabad, DRDL and RCI, to show secure communication. The Defence Minister of India, Mr. Rajnath Singh congratulated the DRDO team for successful demonstration of QKD communication.

The technology is developed by CAIR, Bengaluru and DYSL-QT, Mumbai. Quantum Communication using time-bin Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) scheme was performed under realistic conditions. The setup also demonstrated the validation of detection of a third party trying to gain knowledge of the communication. Quantum based security against eavesdropping was validated for the deployed system at over 12 km range and 10dB attenuation over fibre optic channel.

Continuous wave laser source was used to generate photons without depolarisation effect.

It uses entangled state of Photons. In an entanglement, both the entangled particles behaves identically irrespective of a distance between them, without needing any median between them, and its instantaneous, without any delay.
Two years back, China had successfully tested the entanglement of photons over a distance of 1204 km. Me, and my colleagues are also working on development of Quantum Gateway based on these principles, which shall secure the Binary systems from Quantum attacks. (Quantum Algorithms, using Quantum Computer can decode any Binary system in less than three minutes, which renders all of the present day Binary Cyber Security applications highly vulnerable to the Quantum attacks, including the 2048 bit Cyber Security, which too is highly vulnerable to Quantum attacks).

The timing accuracy employed in the setup as measured was of the order of picoseconds. (one trillionth part of a second) The Single photon avalanche detector (SPAD) recorded arrival of photons and key rate was achieved in the range of kbps with low Quantum bit error rate.

Software was developed for data acquisition, time synchroniation, post-processing, determining Quantum bit error rate and extracting other important parameters.

The work being done at DRDO will be used to enable start-ups and SMEs in the domain of Quantum information technologies. It will also serve to define standards and crypto policies that can leverage QKD system in a unified Cipher Policy Committee (CPC) framework for more secure and pragmatic key management for current and future military cryptographic systems.

After achieving this success in Quantum communication, the next step is to develop a Quantum Radar, which using the same principles of entangled photons can detect any hypersonic object, and nothing can be stealth before it.. China has already developed a Quantum Radar, and India shall follow suit...!

Kartik Umakant Desai
Chairman of the Board,
Institute of Quantum Mechanics & Strategic Studies.

Nano Diamond Quantum Thermometer :

Quantum Thermometers having Nanodiamonds with Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) defect centres, the magnetic resonances of which change with temperature. The new technique could be important for a range of clinical applications. It can even measure a change in temperature of a worm, less than 1 mm in size !

The temperature within a living organism is a direct measure of the biological activities happening inside. At the submicron-scale temperature range, it provides detailed information on cellular and molecular activities.

This could be important for clinical applications such as imaging brain sub-tissue structures, visualizing tumour heterogeneity and mapping adipocytes, to cite just three examples. The biocompatible thermometers can't be reduced to this small scale.

The emergence of light-emitting nanothermometers – such as thermoresponsive molecular probes and nanoparticles – that could overcome this technical limitation. Most devices aren't good for long-term use and can only monitor temperature changes over relatively long periods (hours). They aren't completely biocompatible too.

The Nanodiamond quantum thermometers employed in this new study are highly promising The probes are made of nanodiamond, which naturally contains defects, known as NV centres. These occur when two adjacent carbon atoms in a diamond lattice are replaced with a nitrogen atom and an empty lattice site.

The nitrogen has an extra electron that remains unpaired and so behaves as an isolated spin. This spin can be “up” or “down” or in a superposition of the two. Its state can be probed by illuminating the diamond with laser light and recording the intensity and frequencies of the emitted fluorescence.

NVs in nanodiamonds are ideal as biological probes because they are non-toxic, photostable, have surfaces that can be functionalized and can be easily inserted into living cells. They are also isolated from their surroundings, which means that their quantum behaviour is not immediately affected by surrounding thermal fluctuations, and can detect the very weak magnetic fields that come from nearby electronic or nuclear spins. They can thus be used as highly-sensitive magnetic resonance probes capable of monitoring local spin changes in a material over distances of a few tens of nanometres. And, in contrast to conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques in biology, in which millions of spins are required to produce a measurable signal, the NV defects can detect individual target spins with nanoscale spatial precision.

Healthy worms vs worms with a fever :
The Researchers, Masazumi Fujiwara of Osaka City University in Japan and their team functionalized the surfaces of the nanodiamonds with polymer structures and injected them into C. elegans nematode worms (one of the most popular animal models in biology). The sensor began by reading the base “healthy” temperature of the creatures as a frequency shift of the optically detected magnetic resonance of the NV defect centres.

Since the nanodiamonds move much more quickly inside a worm than in cultured cells, the researchers developed a fast particle-tracking algorithm. They also included an error-correction filter that takes into account the worm’s body structure, which can cause substantial fluctuations in the intensity of the fluorescent light emitted and can create temperature-measurement artefacts.

Having induced an artificial “fever” in the worms by stimulating their mitochondria with a chemical, their sensor successfully recorded this temperature increase with a precision of around ±0.22°C.

IEEE Quantum Week
QCE 2020 - 12th - 16th Oct 2020.

IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE2020).

Those interested may Register on:
https://qce.quantum.ieee.org/

IEEE Quantum Week is a multidisciplinary quantum computing venue where attendees will have the unique opportunity to discuss challenges and opportunities with quantum researchers, scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, developers, students, practitioners, educators, programmers, and newcomers.

The multi-faceted IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE20) includes a series of keynotes, technical paper presentations, technical briefings, informative tutorials throughout the week, community-building workshops, collocated events, posters, networking receptions, and exhibits featuring the latest technologies and accomplishments from the world’s leading vendors, research organizations, and universities.

IEEE Quantum Week aims to showcase quantum research, practice, applications, standards, education, and training. The extensive topics include quantum programming systems, software engineering methods & tools, algorithms, NISQ, benchmarks & metrology, performance metrics, hardware engineering, architectures, & topologies, hardware-software co-design, software stack & infrastructure, hybrid computing (integrating quantum & classical computing); communications, sensing, cryptography, QKD; simulating chemical, physical and biological systems; quantum photonics & optics; optimization, machine learning, ramping up quantum workforce, nurturing quantum start-ups.

Kartik Umakant Desai
Chairman of the Board,
Institute of Quantum Mechanics & Strategic Studies.

D-Wave 5000 ADVANTAGE
World's Biggest Capacity Quantum Computer :

D-Wave today launched its next-generation quantum computing platform available via its Leap quantum cloud service.

5,000+ qubits, 15-way qubit connectivity, One million variables...

Its Zillions of times greater capacity than the largest of the Binary Super Computer. The 5000 Qubits also symbolises Data storage equivalent to 2^5000 bytes. (Exponential Power).

While a Binary system executes commands in a sequential manner, one after the other, this Quantum Computer can execute over a million commands simulteneously, which makes it zillions of times faster than any of the fastest binary systems.

While the entire Binary computing system is vulnerable to Quantum attacks, (being decoded /hacked), the creation of Quantum Gateway is the need of the hour to primarily safe guard Defence, Security, Banking & Public Distribution systems, Scientific Research etc. We at the Institute of Quantum Mechanics & Strategic Studies have deliberated at the Quantum Gateway concept and simulated its quantum algorithms.

To give an example, a 2048 bit cyber security system, which may take over 150 yrs to be decoded by the biggest super computer of the day, can be decoded by this quantum computer in merely few seconds...! This makes entire binary system vulnerable to quantum attacks.

The company calls Advantage “the first quantum computer built for business.” In that vein, D-Wave today also debuted Launch, a jump-start program for businesses that want to begin building hybrid quantum applications.

More qubits typically means more potential for building commercial quantum applications. But D-Wave isn’t giving a specific qubit count for Advantage because the exact number varies between systems.

Essentially, D-Wave is guaranteeing the availability of 5,000 qubits to Leap users using Advantage. The actual specific number of qubits varies from chip to chip in each Advantage system. Some of the chips have significantly more than 5,000 qubits, and others are a bit closer to 5,000. But bottom line — anyone using Leap will have full access to at least 5,000 qubits.

Advantage also promises 15-way qubit connectivity, thanks to a new chip topology, Pegasus, which D-Wave detailed back in February 2019. (Pegasus’ predecessor, Chimera, offered six connected qubits.) Having each qubit connected to 15 other qubits instead of six translates to 2.5 times more connectivity, which in turn enables the embedding of larger and more complex problems with fewer physical qubits.

The combination of the number of qubits and the connectivity between those qubits determines how large a problem you can solve natively on the quantum computer. With the 2,000-qubit processor, we could natively solve problems within 100- to 200-variable range. With the Advantage quantum computer, having twice as many qubits and twice as much connectivity, we can solve problems more in the 600- to 800-variable range. As we’ve looked at different types of problems, and done some rough calculations, it comes out to generally we can solve problems about 2.6 times as large on the Advantage system as what we could have solved on the 2000-qubit processor. But that should not be mistaken with the size problem you can solve using the hybrid solver backed up by the Advantage quantum computer.

1 million variables, same problem types
D-Wave today also announced its expanded hybrid solver service will be able to handle problems with up to 1 million variables (up from 10,000 variables). It will be generally available in Leap on October 8. The discrete quadratic model (DQM) solver is supposed to let businesses and developers apply hybrid quantum computing to new problem classes. Instead of accepting problems with only binary variables (0 or 1), the DQM solver uses other variable sets (integers from 1 to 500, colors, etc.), expanding the types of problems that can run on Advantage. D-Wave asserts that Advantage and DQM together will let businesses “run performant, real-time, hybrid quantum applications for the first time.

Put another way, 1 million variables means tackling large-scale, business-critical problems. Now, with the Advantage system and the enhancements to the hybrid solver service, we’ll be able to solve problems with up to 1 million variables. That means truly able to solve production-scale commercial applications.

Depending on the technology they are built on, different quantum computers tend to be better at solving different problems. D-Wave has long said its quantum computers are good at solving optimization problems, and most business problems are optimization problems.

Advantage isn’t going to be able to solve different types of problems, compared to its 2000 Q predecessor. But coupled with DQM and the sheer number of variables, it may still be significantly more useful to businesses.

The architecture is the same. Both of these quantum computers are annealing quantum computers. And so the class of problems, the types of problems they can solve, are the same. It’s just at a different scale and complexity. The 2000-qubit processor just couldn’t solve these problems at the scale that our customers need to solve them in order for them to impact their business operations.

The Advantage quantum computer is the first quantum computer designed and developed from the ground up to support business applications.

D-Wave 5000Q Advantage is engineered it to be able to deal with large, complex commercial applications and to be able to support the running of those applications in production environments.

There is no other quantum computer anywhere in the world that can solve problems at the scale and complexity that this quantum computer can solve problems. It really is the only one that one can run real business applications on. The other quantum computers are primarily prototypes. You can do experimentation, run small proofs of concept, but none of them can support applications at the scale that this one can.

Quantum computing leverages qubits (unlike bits that can only be in a state of 0 or 1, qubits can also be in a superposition of the two) to perform computations that would be much more difficult, or simply not feasible, for a classical computer. Based in Burnaby, Canada, D-Wave was the first company to sell commercial quantum computers, which are built to use quantum annealing. But D-Wave doesn’t sell quantum computers anymore. Advantage and its over 5,000 qubits (up from 2,000 in the company’s 2000Q system) are only available via the cloud. (That means through Leap or a partner like Amazon Braket.)

D-Wave has also made its quantum computers available for free to coronavirus researchers and developers. Its indeed a good software, really good tools, really good training. The developers and businesses still need help.

Help understanding what are the best problems that they can benefit from the quantum computer and how to best formulate those problems to get the most out of the quantum computer.

D-Wave Launch will thus make the company’s application experts and a set of handpicked partner companies available to its customers. Launch aims to help anyone understand how to best leverage D-Wave’s quantum systems to support their business.

Kartik Umakant Desai
Chairman of the Board,
Institute of Quantum Mechanics & Strategic Studies.