Chun Jun Cao
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, VA·Physics·Early-career
Quantum computers promise to solve some problems that ordinary computers cannot, but only if their fragile quantum information can be protected from errors. It also matters to know which problems truly need quantum hardware.
- Fields
Physics
Chemistry
Computer Science
- Topics
quantum error correction
quantum error-correcting codes
Quantum Lego
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jul 2031
What they work on
- Develop fault-tolerant decoding and error-correction protocols for holographic codes, which are quantum error-correcting codes inspired by quantum gravity and built from tensor networks.
- Construct new families of quantum codes that support low-overhead fault-tolerant logical operations, using symmetry-based design principles within the Quantum Lego modular framework.
- Establish a general theory and computational tools for building, analyzing, and optimizing quantum codes from small modular tensor-network blocks.
- Define chemically meaningful measures of magic (nonstabilizerness), including non-local and task-oriented measures, for describing how hard a molecule's electronic structure is to simulate.
- Build classical simulation methods that exploit low-magic structure, including stabilizer state expansions, Pauli propagation, and hybrids, and use them to track magic along reaction coordinates and compare it with radical character.
More about the research
This research brings ideas from quantum information science to two questions. First, how can reliable quantum error-correcting codes be designed from simple building blocks? Second, what makes a molecule hard for a classical computer to simulate?
Why it matters
More efficient error-correcting codes could lower the hardware cost of building fault-tolerant quantum computers. A practical measure of what makes a molecule hard to simulate could help chemists decide when a problem calls for a classical computer and when a quantum one. It could also offer a new way to think about chemical bonding and reactivity.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Milad Marvian
University of New Mexico, NM·Physics·Early-career
Develop mathematical models describing how errors propagate through quantum circuits, and use them to construct resource-efficient fault-tolerant computing subroutines.
Todd Brun
University of Southern California, CA·Physics
Develop weakly fault-tolerant quantum computing using error-detecting codes that store n–2 logical qubits in n physical qubits, detecting single faults and discarding runs that show errors, for use on near-term processors.
Jean-Francois Biasse
University of South Florida, FL·Mathematics & Statistics
Investigate hard algebraic and number-theoretic problems, including finding short vectors in Euclidean lattices, isogenies between curves, and inverting group actions, as foundations for next-generation cryptosystems.
The school
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University: 35 labs on PI Pages, $657M a year on research, 496 research doctorates a year.
More about Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
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