My car ran a quantum computer

I am honoured to have taken part in two world-firsts (I think):

1. A quantum computer running completely off-grid, in the Australian bush, powered by my electric car.
2. The first home-quantum-computer!

An option others don't have: move the lab!

Earlier this year, one of our rack-mount diamond-based room temperature quantum computers (a "QDK"), started registering intermittent noise when reading our qubits. This was a new phenomenon - we had never seen this before in our lab at ANU Research School of Physics , or in the whitespace at the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre .

After a little analysis, we realised that all our lab quantum devices were registering this noise. However whilst analysis showed that some devices were more susceptible than others, there didn't seem to be any correlation in time between the machines. So what could it be?

To start to hone in on what this noise was, we loaded the firmware and software that we were running in the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre onto the QDK: The noise was still present. Damn. No easy solutions there.

So it was real noise, but was it environmental noise? Or something "inside the box"?

One easy way to really isolate an environmental effect is to take the quantum computer out of the lab. If the noise follows us, it's obviously an internal source of noise.

Taking a quantum computer off-grid

My EV, a Huyandai Ioniq 5, has a feature called Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) which essentially turns the 72kWh battery into a 240V 15A socket. So we loaded up the QDK into its packing case and drove it out into the Australian bush.

Then it was a simple matter of plugging it in and powering it on. Being a room-temperature quantum computer, there is no need for massive refrigeration units with huge power requirements and setup times that are measured in days. In fact, the QDK consumes roughly 0.3kW peak and was set up and running within a few hours.

Time to tune it up and collect some data!

Whilst I goofed around in the great outdoors, Mariam Akhtar diligently collected data. Things looked good, but there were still some interesting artefacts. We needed another data point.

The world's first home quantum computer, surely!

We packed up the QDK and took it to Mariam's apartment. Again, the process of pack, move, unpack, and commission went extremely smoothly. Within a couple of hours, we had moved the QDK to two different locations, set it up, and had it running experimental data collection.

Again, the task was to capture data and try to establish a means to evaluate noise within the system (i.e. we're not executing circuits, we're running calibrations for qubit control and readout). The good news: it is even better in the apartment than it was in the van! This gives us some clues to follow up on - There is very probably a source of noise caused by the the lab environment, but there might also be some thermal effects that were felt more in the van than in the apartment.

Onwards

The journey continues, we are yet to move the QDK back into the lab to verify that the noise comes back (and if it doesn't ... oh boy), and then of course we need to make engineering modifications to make our QDK robust to this new type of noise - Quantum Brilliance is in the business of producing the most robust (and transportable) ambient temperature quantum computer on the market. But I believe we've already achieved a couple of world firsts and done some true pioneering science.

• The QDK has proven that it is transportable and can be used "at the edge".
• We ran quantum operations (albeit not executing circuits) completely off-grid.
• We ran quantum operations in someone's lounge room!

Stay tuned for more adventures!