Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

Quantum mechanics is extremely successful at explaining how nature works. It is also the basis of technologies that has revolutionized how information is processed and stored: the laser and the transistor. Despite all of its success, quantum theory is often regarded as strange and counterintuitive. This is because many of its predictions are foreign to our daily experience. However, over the last 20 years it was recognized that some of these strange effects could be harnessed to create computers that would be exponentially faster than current ones. For some tasks, these quantum computers could take a few days or weeks to solve problems that would take todays fastest computers billions of years to complete. Amongst the most promising approaches to realizing quantum information processors are those based on mesoscopic electrical circuit comprising superconducting tunnel junctions. This research program aims at deepening our understanding of these mesoscopic devices exhibiting quantum phenomena on large length scales and to apply this new understanding to quantum information processing. Understanding the complex dynamics of these systems is however a difficult task and, until we have access to quantum computers, requires the help of some of Canada's most powerful computers. The computers obtained through this program will be used to develop tomorrow's quantum computers and, along the way, will help pushing the frontier of our understanding of the quantum world.