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Oak Ridge Quantum Science Center aims to pair quantum computers with supercomputers to advance materials research
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Summary
Travis Humble, director of the Quantum Science Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, described the center’s role within the Department of Energy’s National Quantum Initiative and said its near-term priority is scaling quantum demonstrations by integrating quantum computers with ORNL’s leadership-class supercomputers.
Travis Humble, director of the Quantum Science Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, said the center is one of the Department of Energy’s National Quantum Information Science Research Centers and focuses on using quantum computing to discover new types of materials.
The center, founded under the National Quantum Initiative, brings together industry partners, laboratory resources and computing expertise to run scientific calculations on emerging quantum hardware and compare them with experimental data. "Quantum Science Center is one of Department of Energy's National Quantum Information Science Research Centers," Humble said.
Humble said the center works with several industry partners to run and program quantum devices and to develop new software tools. "Some of the exciting things that QSC has done have focused around using the quantum computers available from our partners and this is our industry partners at IBM, Quantinuum, IonQ, Cuera, and many others," he said. He described that work as including new programming languages, compilers and demonstrations that make quantum computers useful for complex scientific problems.
As an example of how the center connects experiment and computation, Humble said researchers use data from the spallation neutron source located at Oak Ridge to validate and improve quantum calculations. "We're able to use data from the spallation neutron source that's located here at Oak Ridge in order to compare directly with the calculations that are coming out of the quantum computers," he said. The spallation neutron source is the laboratory facility that produces neutron-scattering data used to study materials.
Looking ahead, Humble said a top priority is scaling the capability by integrating quantum computers with high-performance computing. "Going forward, our priority is actually to integrate the quantum computers with our leadership class computing systems that we have here at Oak Ridge. Systems like Frontier and the upcoming Discovery System," he said. He added the long-term aim is to demonstrate material simulations at scales that exceed what can be done on current high-performance systems.
Humble said achieving those goals will require coordinated work across the Quantum Science Center, Oak Ridge’s Leadership Computing Facility and DOE partners. The interview outlined the center’s research direction and partnerships; no formal decisions or policy actions were announced.
