Quantum computing in the 21st Century - with David Jamieson

Join David Jamieson as he explores his work in quantum technology and looks at how we plan to build the first quantum machines.
Watch the Q&A for this video here: • Q&A: Quantum Computing...
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Einstein's most revolutionary idea, the light quantum, led to the concept for a radical new type of computer. This computer would use the strange rules of quantum mechanics to process information encoded in quantum bits, otherwise known as qubits.
In this talk you will find out more about how these large-scale devices may be able to solve important problems that cannot be solved by classical machines. And about some of the formidable scientific and technical obstacles that would need to be overcome, through the use of unprecendented precision to manipulate and interrogate single atoms.
This lecture was filmed at the Ri on 5 July 2022.
00:00 Lecture outline
3:23 A retrospective of the computer age
11:29 The first quantum revolution
16:58 Demonstrating Einstein’s photoelectric effect
23:30 Discovery of the nucleus
27:41 Discovery of spin
35:28 ‘There’s plenty of room at the bottom’
39:36 The start of a second quantum revolution
51:15 The spooky quantum state
54:17 Maintaining order in a large-scale device
David Jamieson is a Professor of Physics at the University of Melbourne. He has a PhD from Melbourne and held postdoctoral fellowships at Caltech (USA) and the University of Oxford (UK).
David has served terms as Head of School and President of the Australian Institute of Physics. His research expertise in the field of ion beam physics applied to test some of the key functions of a revolutionary quantum computer constructed in silicon in the ARC Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology.
In 2020 David received a Royal Society Wolfson Visiting Fellowship to work on new ideas for engineering silicon with single atoms. He is also a Fellow of both the Australian Institute of Physics and the Institute of Physics (UK).
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[@louisesmalling]

Plain (non-math) person here, who loves the promise of physics. Your historical review and your comparison of classical to quantum behaviors helped me to almost completely understand your talk. I'm sure we all are not your target audience, but I surely appreciate it.

[@Life_42]

Same here! Great to see others understand most of the video!

[@michaelandrews4783]

you are the target audience...

[@jonaswox]

this is very much intended for the masses :)

[@shanedavenport734]

First lecture on anything quantum that was easy to follow and understand. Thank you so much. Time well spent.

[@alessandroscarciglia4954]

His enthusiasm for such an interesting - yet complex - subject is overwhelming.

[@normanshelley5315]

Thoroughly enjoyed this. One of the few lectures on this subject that held my attention all the way through. Thank you.

[@SuperCarlo666]

Thank you for an interesting and enlightening lecture delivered perfectly. All the very best of luck with your continued work in this field. We will all look forward to seeing this progress

[@HakWilliams]

Amazing teacher. He's really taking his time to slowly introduce the meaning of "quantum " as it relates. He wisely decides not to explain all the other important aspects of quantum computing.

[@danielkanewske8473]

Fantastic and a welcome break from the all too often stop on the book promotion tour we have all come to expect from the RI lecture series.

[@dickinaround87]

Lectures in the hall are 100x better than the zoom calls!

[@allynmoore2829]

The best lecture I have heard at the you tube collage. Giving the average man access to all interests. Wish I hade this resource when I was young.

[@pianolabs9490]

One of the best explanations of quantum mechanics, thank you!

[@STali37]

I love listening to the lectures of Professors of the Royal Society.

[@137limon8]

Electro-active Bubble?

[@137limon8]

99.9% valence shell can be filled

[@Stretch213]

Me too

[@jimsmind3894]

An excellent explanation of a very hard to explain topic!

[@kdog290]

Great explanation and analogy of wave function collapse. A completely new perspective that is rather interesting!

[@goldnutter412]

This is the OLD perspective. It's misleading to say "two places at the same time" and "both in the same place at the same time" we know this is not actually true The concept of "virtual particles" is ideal, they aren't anywhere and are just a waste of computation until some observer needs the data. The ideal example is the delayed eraser variants of the double slit and half mirror experiments - they work that way not because there is reverse causality, but because it is the most efficient way to configure this computed reality; someone MIGHT look at the data before it is erased.

[@mspeachpeach5651]

An interesting lecture given in a very clear, instructive way. Excellent.

[@actsims]

The explanation of the nature of the duality of photons is quite remarkable and straightforward. It made me visualise the wave function collapse phenomenon like this: a widespread cloud makes a bolt of lightning hitting a single point randomly on the face of the earth. Still, when we use a lightning rod to detect it, the lightning bolt will be attracted to the very specified target. (here, it is downpouring heavy this week 😄). I am still pondering this idea.

[@Xpandale]

One of the best lectures I have ever seen

[@aussiebloke609]

A lovely lecture - but the cherry on top for me was the tangential train station joke about spreading out. 👍 Good one, mate! 😁

[@hrdowns9464]

Great lecture. Thanks!🙏🏽

[@austenpowers]

Amazing. Thanks for posting. Where can we get tickets to a live lecture?

[@TomiTapio]

Content related to the title, begins at 42:00, before that it is recap of older stuff and spin.

[@jarisoderholm919]

That was very interesting lecture. The best i have seen about the subject.

[@deepuc5376]

Thank you very much. Thouroughly enjoyed this. Wonderful presentation.

[@satyavanu]

Thanks for the video, and very informative. Is there any video that explains how a complex calculation is being performed?

[@DiowE]

At 21:27, I recognised we have a man of great character, compassion & intelligence at our hands. I salute you Mr. David Jamieson. [DiowE]

[@taffbanjo]

great lecturer - superb lecture!

[@Life_42]

Amazing video!

[@zeroonetime]

Totally amazing description. Quanta ~ Ion ~ Time ~ Timing relativity Everything relative @ relative spin, up ~ down ~ right ~ left ~~~ Timing

[@Mountainmonths]

excellent lecture in every way

[@peterlemon1385]

Great talk, always wanted to catch up on this stuff & he explained it really well! I am interested as to why the best supercomputers can't calculate more than 30 spin cycle interactions in a molecule... Did he mean in real-time as surly it would be able to be calculated over a longer time at least, or is it one of those things where so much storage (RAM) is needed it gets out of hand?

[@cryptonitor9855]

Wish it was longer. Just getting to the good bit

[@glenwoofit]

Interesting lecture

[@60pluscrazy]

Unbelievable explanation, thanks very much 🎉🎉🎉

[@dilipdas5777]

Please let this man more time to talk. He is great

[@Angels_Are_Vengeful]

I'm glad he clarified that he was being metaphorical regarding the photon 'tasting' the zinc.

[@KiranYadavOG]

Just Incredible!

[@dilipdas5777]

The SLR camera he mentioned had cds lightmeter technology. It was quantum nano electronics technology

[@finchisneat]

Great. Which he explained more terms though like what a gate set is

[@jeffwyss]

Excellent talk. However in showing the schrodiger equation he should have used the K=p^2/2m expression for kinetic energy. It would have much more strongly shown relation with classical expression.

[@firstnamelastname2669]

Great, but during the abacus analogy I was hoping to hear how a (very) simple quantum computation would (in principle) work. There is apparently some confusion over the description of "0 and 1 at the same time" versa more accurate "any 0 and 1 combination which sum to the sphere surface value" that I don't pretend to follow.

[@cinemaipswich4636]

This is remarkable. Being able to manipulate INDIVIDUAL Electrons and Photons to gain an exact outcome is profound. This steady-state construct is fast approaching the required results needed for Quantum Mechanical Devices. There is more space down the bottom, for Quantum particles exist below this threshold.

[@MWSCologne]

Brilliant

[@jessstuart7495]

Bravo!

[@joeviolet4185]

To me the most interesting lecture since the one on exhuming and identifying king Richard III.

[@Ripen3]

I've only watched 5 minutes and it's already a ton better than the last one on quantum computers, "Untangling the hype".

[@sntk1]

Dirac: When a state is formed by the superposition of two other states, it will have properties that are in some vague way intermediate between those of the original states and that approach more or less closely to those of either of them according to the greater or less 'weight' attached to this state in the superposition process. The new state is completely defined by the two original states when their relative weights in the superposition process are known, together with a certain phase difference, the exact meaning of weights and phases being provided in the general case by the mathematical theory. When a state is formed by the superposition of two other states, it will have properties that are in some vague way intermediate between those of the original states and that approach more or less closely to those of either of them according to the greater or less 'weight' attached to this state in the superposition process. The new state is completely defined by the two original states when their relative weights in the superposition process are known, together with a certain phase difference, the exact meaning of weights and phases being provided in the general case by the mathematical theory.

[@sntk1]

Feynman: It is just like the mathematics of the addition of vectors, where (a, b, c) are the components of one vector, and (a', b', c' ) are those of another vector, and the new light Z is then the "sum" of the vectors. This subject has always appealed to physicists and mathematicians. In fact, Schrödinger wrote a wonderful paper on color vision in which he developed this theory of vector analysis as applied to the mixing of colors.

[@las97531]

Thank you! Very interesting.

[@kniix]

It took me 34 years on this planet to understand why a photon can not be "observed", thx for this lecture

[@leonidas6134]

A matter of fact, photons are the only things that humans can directly see. A photon is a bit of light. Human eyes are specifically designed to detect light.

[@SimonSozzi7258]

9:10 "The algorithm to decode these nine bits has been lost." 😅 I love that.

[@jurassicmark5403]

He's wrong about the abacus....the bead is counted when it touches the bar. Guess we can skip the basics though?

[@mm0960]

Sir, how pure the Si matter (acceptable impurity level) must be to make it suitable for large scale quantum computing purposes?

[@coolblue5929]

After listening to this, I still have no idea how a quantum computer would work.

[@schmetterling4477]

Imagine a high dimensional Rubik's Cube that is perfectly slippery. That is quantum computing. ;-)

[@DungeonBricks]

The one sole laugh tha went along mine at the "not take literally" joke

[@Astrophilemedia]

Algorithm this is good stuff !!

[@Hulker69]

If you found this interesting go watch the EEVdiscover interview with Prof. Andrea Morello from UNSW where he shows an antimony atom acting as a 3 qubit embedded in Silicon-28 wafer

[@mrpopo8298]

Give this man a drink of water!

[@JohnJonelis]

Wow! If I'd had this professor in 1970, perhaps I'd have gone into a career in physics!

[@scott32714keiser]

i want to try to make a micro magnetic focused plasma toroid and calculate the mass of a electron and try to speed up the electrons up and make a gravitational wave im doing it at home but i could use some funding or tools

[@thecondescendinggoomba5552]

Another great talk

[@lebojay]

This talk on quantum computing starts talking about quantum computing about 35 minutes in…

[@NoNameAtAll2]

@D R I mean... Einstein got his nobel prize for quantum, not for relativity

[@LeonidKornikov]

Thanks, very interesting!

[@leeFbeatz]

Regarding the demonstration of the leaves, light and Zinc plate….Could the collapsing of the wave function to one point be due to the charge associated with those leaves prior, if the charge is negative and positive charge is introduced through the photons from the strong light source needed, do the leaves only need to take the different charge introduced at one point to change the charge of its whole system?

[@leeFbeatz]

Resulting in the leaves moving back together at neutral charge from the collapsing of the wave function

[@semorgh2854]

Excellent presentation. Does Plasma have the same quantum property as Electron? If Plasma is another type of PARTICLE from an Atom then it should have the same Quantum property as Electron. ( I hope somebody ans this question).

[@TheMaxwellee]

Radical!

[@travisfitzwater8093]

A quantum of energy, such as in a particular Photon, Electron, Neutrino, and the like: is one thing; it's a string/amount/corpus/micro-totality, etc. You could conceive of these things as being wholes of constituent parts (even if for now it is easiest for you to conceptualize them as being theoretically divisible into parts, by a process like quantum cutting, like if you had a Neutrino Knife or something like it and you simply took a photon or an electron and you shaved it into slices (presumably after freezing it into a cuttable phase of its being. But, we don't possess the ability to do that, yet. Anyway, in the absence of cutting these things up their totality is stuck together such that as a 5% amount goes, so similarly does the remainder follow. Think of a gooey glob of something like jello. If one part of it starts to spill out of a crack in the bowl the rest must follow. Not the best metaphor but it beats spending years trying to perfect some equally conjectural set of an applied in an effort to conceptualize difficult propositions (that is likely to be proven incomplete in the future.) At least, in my opinion.

[@Operakid]

Definitely one the better lectures to come out of The RI. Also, 22 mins 40 secs, 🤣Ha ha. when I'm guessing he was on his way to see Jim Al-Khalili.

[@solophysics4359]

Interesting lecture on Quantum computer but in 21st century before inventing Quantum computer we need to discover the behaviour of nucleus and electron Atoms and molecular. Atoms are more complicated and elegance than we ever imagine

[@gbail9566]

Einstein, that guy again

[@frogz]

first comment isnt someone loudly shouting FIRST!!! these are ALWAYS so interesting, thanks royal institution!!

[@joebovovitch7803]

One particle comes out the electron gun at a time?

[@rochesterjezini317]

Max Planck and Louis de Broglie!

[@scott32714keiser]

i would love to come over and work with you guys

[@freddyjosereginomontalvo4667]

I love this channel the best of the best

[@sntk1]

Einstein: We are accustomed to regarding as real those sense perceptions which are common to different individuals, and which therefore are, in a measure, impersonal. The natural sciences, and in particular, the most fundamental of them, physics, deal with such sense perception. Weyl: To monochromatic light corresponds in the acoustic domain the simple tone. Out of different kinds of monochromatic light composite light may be mixed, just as tones combine to a composite sound. This takes place by superposing simple oscillations of different frequency with definite intensities.

[@sntk1]

Schrödinger: If you ask a physicist what is his idea of yellow light, he will tell you that it is transversal electro-magnetic waves of wavelength in the neighborhood of 590 millimicrons. If you ask him: But where does yellow come in? he will say: In my picture not at all, but these kinds of vibrations, when they hit the retina of a healthy eye, give the person whose eye it is the sensation of yellow.

[@recklessroges]

I had presumed that the level of technology to insert individual atoms was considered common place by now. Even if you aren't using a "big gun" you could just deposit them on the surface and then cover them with a deposition of the substrate.

[@schmetterling4477]

Atoms on surfaces are simply "dirt". They don't automatically make a working quantum computer.

[@rknaik76]

Ibm has taken video of live atoms and is there in youtube and humanity has managed to slow down photo frames to femto range to take pic of moving light. So why not see the double slit experiment with using those tech ?

[@liamlienhard8693]

I don't know anything about science and quantum mechanics, but can it be that dark matter actually is the state of the atom the moment it is flipping around? (kind of like when it's not in a "set"state). I mean... it probably could be, but idk if atoms have mass; but if they do it could be that all the mass of the "dark matter" is actually the mass of the atoms when they are flipping. And idk if that's how they did it but, if they measured the universe's mass with calculations and parameters, the "unknown" mass could be us not knowing that in reality a LOT of atoms were just flipping during the moment we were taking parameters for the math, in other words; if we can calculate the universe's mass with parameters, the final result would always be different, "proving" so that dark matter is "simply" the mass of an undefined state of an atom (that we can't individually/generally observe, so we also can't define its singular/general mass). But that is just a theory that I came up with and thus can (probably) never be accepted or denied until we can't observe the undefined state of an atom (including the mass).

[@petereriksson7166]

The danish was Nils Bohr

[@sonarbangla8711]

If quantum and classical states were so easily demonstrated Schrodinger could have been proud instead of rejecting his equation, so even now the unitary evolution of the wave function fails to demonstrate how all the process in the universe permit Maldacena to conjecture that the whole universe is a quantum computing function, deterministic and error correcting.

[@creatorsteven]

It makes it seem like the way that the fundamental particles interact with each other is emergent behavior that we call particles, but is rather something like a function collapse, that is seen through the lens of useful misinterpretations we made discovering physics.

[@schmetterling4477]

Dude, there are no particles. There are plenty of people who don't understand physics, though. ;-)

[@creatorsteven]

@@schmetterling4477 for sure for sure. Makes me wonder if even modern scientists understand physics or if everything we know is more misinterpretations yet to be uncovered.

[@schmetterling4477]

@@creatorsteven I understand physics just fine. If you have done something for over 50 years it comes rather easily. Too bad that you couldn't even pay as much as 5 minutes of attention in high school science class. ;-)

[@creatorsteven]

@@schmetterling4477 Bro - what are you on about? I'm not sitting here positing that this comment was fact as you can tell by my clearly open lined language, or that scientists are wrong. If you have been a scientist for 50 years then you should realize that in many respects in physics, one discovery can make us throw a theory out of the water. So you're telling me that my comment about the possibility (not probability, listen to my choice of words) of physics being wrong in a philosophical sense is non-scientific? Are you saying that all of Physics should be regarded as fact and never once challenged in perpetuity? Regardless of any discovery that could be made? You're insane. Trying to sit there on some pedestal and talk down on someone who is throwing inconsequential hypothetical questions into the abyss of a KZbin comment section that would have otherwise sat undisturbed. Your closed minded thinking, regardless of if I'm wrong in a HYPOTHESIS, and insulting nature makes you a terrible scientist if that's your approach to life and the unknown and unknowable.

[@schmetterling4477]

@@creatorsteven The principles behind quantum mechanics have not changed by even a iota since the 1920s. Neither has the fact that it can explain absolutely everything that is known at this time about the structure of matter and radiation. That you don't understand why it is such a good theory is simply a failure of your education. That's for you to correct on your own time. Get started, kid. ;-)

[@nickisnyder3450]

I can't believe that this computer expert is unaware that the first Apollo Landing had less computer power then today's wristwatch and I'm not talking about a smartwatch. It also landed completely manually it was not a computer Landing. Anyway I agree with his point that computers are completely involved in all of our space exploration today

[@tristanboyle4450]

once i started listening i had to start managing my tolerance to a little "tsssa" sound after 90% of every sentence David makes .. as most of them are facts.. "tssssa" .. urrrg such an interesting lecture.... maybe ill see if GTP3 can process the audio to remove the "tsaa". Maybe i could get AI to generate a learning process in which i could subject my self to fix my current state of mind... or maybe that sound "tsssa" is not really there.. and the current state of my cellular quantum processors are causing a protons uncertainty in a small molecule somewhere to appear in a new and unwanted place - producing a cascading effect emerging to the cellular level resulting in unwanted depolarisation of clusters of neurons to burst into existence. result: i'm hearing things. ( But i don't think i am....."tsaa") sorry David.

[@empatikokumalar8202]

örnekte göstermiş olduğunuz elektronların kuantum yönünün sadece aşağı ve yukarı olması içinde bulunduğumuz galaksinin toplam çekimiyle ilgilidir. Bu durum yer çekimi denilen durumla da ilgilidir. Bizim galaksimiz referans alırsak diğer galaksilerde yön farklı olabilir.

[@trustgreen2948]

Finally quantum mechanics can be understood. “Entanglementsolved”

[@archersterling4044]

This is great

[@vansf3433]

The idea is desirable, but how to realize it have been mere speculations

[@muradmuradov4522]

Füzulili Cəbrayıllı igidler

[@realcygnus]

The RI doesn't have a dime per dozen violet laser pointer handy ? 🤔

[@DeLiverpool]

I habitually hit Like even before properly listening to a Royal Institution lecture. It's only been up for 16 seconds now so I was lightning, or better yet, quantum fast to the whiteboard. Thank you for these wonderful classes. Will return to attend later this evening.

[@Noone-no3or]

We have 2 eyes yet we see one picture. Both eyes are capable of performing said task individually as well but function naturally in unison. This is like having your eyes closed but because the objects you could see are technically still there you can still see them. We endure quantum all the time every day we wake up. Our memories linked to nature we could reimagine a tree that was chopped down and because the tree was at some point in time witnessed by an observer another one will take its place as long as no one is around to observe it until it is in the exact same state as previously witnessed in real time in the past. That's borderline power of creation through manifesting thought. OK I'm legit sounding like a lunatic

[@joemaselli9873]

37:50 if someone could inform me how one reads the equation on the right, id be very appreciative. psi = a "something" 1 + b "something" 0

[@s13driftlove]

It would be "times" if anything, otherwise just litterally a 1 plus b 0. It's just an ordinary scalar multiplication, albeit involving the abstract concept of a quantum state vector (that's what |1⟩ and |0⟩ mean). But it isn't really that abstract it's just linear algebra.

[@Thedudeabides803]

9:08 not from chopping the meat off?

[@Deipnosophist_the_Gastronomer]

Only in Australia is the light dangerous enough ... 😅

[@SisavatManthong-yb1yn]

Ai the age in seenors are helping the new generations on to see if he balances on age groups also 🌌✨ the energy is obituary

[@davidwilkie9551]

"The easiest person to fool is yourself", so the best and only available person to un-fool is your own self, embedded in Eternity-now Actuality Interval Totality of Self. I am you and you are me and we are all together in unity of QM-TIME Completeness Actuality.

[@Leonardo-ql1qu]

From now on, let's call them QUMPUTERS. Much better than the tongue twister 'Quantum Computers'!

[@ABrit-bt6ce]

Topic a tasty chocolate hazel and nougat bar. But continue. ;)

[@muradmuradov4522]

Salyan rayonunda döyüscü qardaslarima salam

[@muradmuradov4522]

Sabunçu rayonu qardaslarim

[@muradmuradov4522]

Şamaxı rayonu ərazisində yerləşən mövqelərindən qardaslar

[@petereriksson7166]

Use a dice