MQST & AMO
MQST Program Director, Richard Ross and student cohort class of 2023.
From left to right: David Leibrandt, Professor; Eric Hudson, Professor & David Saxon Presidential Term Chair in Physics; Wes Campbell, Professor; Paul Hamilton, Associate Professor
New Master of Quantum of Science and Technology Program Is Just What Industry Needs
Richard Ross is the program director for UCLA’s new Master of Quantum Science and Technology (MQST) degree offered in the department of physics and astronomy. The self-supporting program addresses a pressing need in industry for quantum scientists. In September of 2023 the program graduated its first cohort, which included 22 students, seven of whom are already in full-time quantum related jobs and another seven who went directly into quantum-related PhD programs. Ross, who joined the program after a long career in industry at HRL Laboratories, answers some questions about the importance of a quantum science education and the needs the MQST program addresses.
Your background is in industry working at HRL Laboratories. From an industry perspective, what makes a master’s education in quantum science so important today?
The fields of quantum information science and quantum technology have rapidly matured over the past decade. The vast majority of employees working in this ‘quantum industry’ are either PhD’s or Bachelor’s scientists / engineers, and yet much of the day-to-day work, in particular on the development side, is best suited to non-PhDs that have significant topical knowledge and experience beyond what most Bachelor’s possess. To date, most organizations have had to provide a significant amount of on-the-job training for these employees, which often includes providing theoretical knowledge that most PhDs have acquired during their time in graduate school. Hence there is a real and growing need to augment the education of traditional Bachelor’s with graduate level work relevant to quantum, and Master’s programs like MQST are designed to optimally satisfy that need.
What are the unique aspects of this program which make it well-positioned to address the needs of society today with regard to quantum science?
The MQST program was launched with a focus on developing ‘quantum hardware engineers,’ that is to prepare students for jobs in which they would work directly with qubit or other quantum hardware or associated instrumentation such as software systems. A unique feature of our program is the full year of instructional laboratories in which our students put into practice all of the theory they learn in their core academic courses on quantum physics and quantum programming and algorithms. Our graduates are and will be prepared to enter industry jobs and immediately address an urgent need those companies have.
As you said, Quantum Science has matured to the point where professional degrees in the field are in demand. What are some of the ways we can expect quantum science to begin impacting the real world in the near future and how does this program address those needs?
Quantum computing hardware systems now have dozens, indeed hundreds, of high-fidelity ‘qubits’; sensing and metrology techniques displaying super-resolution and quantum-limited behavior; and a variety of quantum-based technologies and algorithms which have enabled demonstrations of ‘entanglement’ over very long distances. This process is referred to as Quantum Secure Communications. The MQST curriculum has been thoughtfully designed to provide a foundation in the field and highly transferable skills that will enable our graduates to contribute to each and every one of these areas of application.
As someone who has had a long relationship with UCLA researchers in this area, what makes UCLA, and the Physics department in particular, well-suited for this program?
Research in quantum science and quantum technology has been going on at UCLA for a very long time and a significant effort has been made over the past decade to build on this legacy across campus. The MQST program is one piece of this larger effort and relies critically on the availability of world class faculty and facilities to make this a truly unique and effective program. The Physics Department is a natural home for the program given the quantum hardware focus of the program and the sheer number of leading quantum research groups in the department.
UCLA AMO Group Pushes the Boundaries of Quantum Science
Today, quantum science stands at a precipice. From familiar concepts like quantum computing, AI, and secure communication, to less mainstream areas such as precision sensing and timing, quantum science could very well soon change the world. But despite the excitement over potential applications, much work still needs to be done. Although we know more about how the quantum world works today than ever before, there is still so much to understand before we achieve these goals.
UCLA’s Atomic-Molecular-Optical Group (AMO) is at the forefront of that mission. The group consists of four researchers, Wes Campbell, Paul Hamilton, Eric Hudson, and David Leibrandt. They develop novel methods to bring new forms of quantum matter under control to develop new technologies. While the professors are working on a variety of research helping us to better understand quantum mechanics, there is one area that makes AMO at UCLA especially unique: trapping ions.
“It’s rare for a university to have more than one researcher working on trapped ions,” says Campbell. “Here at UCLA we have four, and we are all in just one department - Physics and Astronomy.”
The process of trapping and isolating ions is essential to quantum mechanics. To conduct work in the quantum arena, researchers need ions to be cold. This is achieved by isolating individual ions and levitating them in place. As the particles become more isolated from the room-temperature environment, lasers can be used to cool them down. And that’s when some of the best research into quantum physics can be conducted.
The AMO Group collaborates closely to use trapped ions in research related to quantum information processing, quantum clocks, and quantum sensing. In one experiment, Campbell and Hamilton designed a novel quantum rotation sensor. The device has the potential, with more work, to allow for navigation without the need for satellites. This could greatly improve navigation in space or deep underwater such as in submarines.
In another project, Hudson and Leibrandt are working towards building a nuclear clock - something that has never been done before. The idea is to trap a specific type of ion with a unique physical attribute which could allow for a nuclear clock to be built around it. “People have been searching for this particular transition for decades, and only found it a couple months ago,” says Hudson. “We hope that with more progress, we could one day see a quantum clock that is much more accurate than anything we have today.”
Hudson has also teamed up with Campbell on a project related to quantum computing. They used a synthetic ion that had not been used for quantum computing before. That ion, Barium-133, has proven even better than they had hoped. Because Barium-133 is radioactive, it had not been looked at closely for this type of work before. But Hudson and Campbell realized that at the quantum scale, so few atoms are needed that the radioactivity wasn’t something to worry about. In fact, this ion has proven more effective when it comes to quantum computing than even the most advanced tools used in the private sector. “We still need to conduct more research with this approach, but we hope that our model could bring quantum computing one step closer to an everyday reality,” said Campbell