Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are increasingly helping scientists to write papers, conduct literature reviews and even design laboratory experiments. Now researchers can add optimizing quantum computing to the list.
A team has used an AI model to calculate the best way to rapidly assemble a grid of atoms that might one day serve as the ‘brain’ of a quantum computer. To show just how quickly the model can re-shuffle the atoms, the team also used the system to create a tiny animation of Schrödinger's cat. The work was reported last week in Physical Review Letters1.
Study co-author Jian-Wei Pan, a physicist at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, says the team became interested in using AI to speed up the building these ‘neutral atom arrays’ after one of his former students got a job in an AI laboratory. “AI for science is emerging as a powerful paradigm for addressing complex scientific problems,” he says. One of the big challenges in using arrays of atoms for quantum computing is working out how to rearrange them in an “efficient, fast and scalable manner”, Pan says. AI solved that problem for the team — and did it quickly.
To read more, click here.