UNM-LANL Partnership in Quantum Information Science
Northern New Mexico is home to one of the largest concentrations of first-class researchers in the world in the rapidly growing area of quantum information science (QIS). The University of New Mexico’s Information Physics Group (IPG) and Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Quantum Institute (QI) have formed a Partnership in Quantum Information Science, under the auspices of the UNM-LANL Joint Science and Technology Laboratory, to promote collaborative research in the following areas of quantum information science:
- Basic studies of the capabilities, designs, and architectures of quantum information processing systems.
- Studies of open quantum systems, coherence/decoherence, quantum control, and measurement theory.
- Development of quantum technologies based on research in atomic, optical, and condensed-matter physics.
Activities of the Partnership include the following:
- collaborative research between QI staff members and IPG faculty and students,
- sponsorship, along with the Santa Fe Institute, of the Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information (CEPI) Distinguished Lecture Series, held monthly at SFI,
- sponsorship of the Southwest Quantum Information and Technology (SQuInT) Network, a consortium of about fifteen institutions (academic, national laboratory, and industrial), located mainly in the US Southwest, and
- a Graduate Student Research Program, which awards fellowships and research assistantships to UNM students in the Department of Physics and Astronomy or the Department of Computer Science.
LANL’s Quantum Institute (QI) was established in December 2002 to bring under one umbrella LANL’s extensive research activities in quantum information and quantum technologies. It encompasses the research activities of over 30 staff members in C, CCS, MST, NIS, P, SC, and T Divisions.
UNM’s Information Physics Group (IPG) is an informal grouping of faculty in the Department of Physics and Astronomy (P&A) and the Department of Computer Science (CS). In addition to the professorial faculty, the group generally includes two postdoctoral fellows and supervises about ten Master’s and PhD students.