QTC, NRL Announce New Partnership

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Published: Tuesday, September 01 2020 12:21

The Quantum Technology Center (QTC)—a joint venture between the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering and the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS)—entered into an Education Partnership Agreement with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) to identify and pursue opportunities related to quantum technology research. 

The new partnership with NRL is specifically focused on advancing quantum technology for applications that are relevant to the warfighter, and will involve exchanges of expertise and samples; collaborations in experimental, theoretical, and educational work; mutual research proposals; and the exchange of researchers.

"The University of Maryland is excited to partner with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory to explore the diverse applications of quantum technologies," said Dr. Laurie Locascio, vice president for research at UMD.

Launched in 2019, QTC capitalizes on the university’s strong research programs and partnerships in quantum science and systems engineering, and pursues collaborations with industry and government labs to help take promising quantum advances from the lab to the marketplace. QTC has a long rooted history of working with the Department of Defense Research Labs, as QTC’s founding partner is the Combat Capabilities Development Command (CCDC) Army Research Laboratory.

Quantum technology is making a huge impact in industry and government sectors, and the partnership between UMD and NRL will help move critical technologies forward.

“Research in quantum information science and technologies has the potential to bring new warfighting capabilities to the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps as well as to provide benefits to society at large,” said Gerald M. Borsuk, Ph.D., associate director of research for the systems directorate at NRL. “We are excited about working with the Quantum Technology Center at the University of Maryland to advance leading edge quantum technologies. We share a mutual commitment to providing students and faculty with high quality educational outreach, knowledge sharing, and research opportunities.”

Both the QTC and NRL aim to build and improve STEM educational and research capacities, and provide resources and equipment for research activities. There have been collaborations and joint proposals between these groups in recent years, particularly in work on solid state systems. Moving forward, future interactions are expected to involve work on quantum dots and defects, and on systems for quantum memory and networking, with a goal to advance the scaling and integration of quantum technologies. 

“Quantum technology is developing rapidly, and many organizations are quickly getting involved. We are thrilled to collaborate with NRL to strengthen the current research and training activities within QTC, expand our research in areas such as machine learning and quantum networking, and notably, accelerate realization of the quantum internet,” said Ronald Walsworth, founding director of the QTC and UMD professor of electrical and computer engineering and physics. Mohammad Hafezi, Alicia Kollár, Norbert Linke, Chris Monroe and Steve Rolston are also QTC members.

The partners are also interested in collaborating on technologies associated with creating and implementing a quantum internet network. This research would involve quantum memory, quantum repeaters and routers, as well as associated classical network theory and associated implementations. Another area of interest to both QTC and NRL include defect states in semiconductors, such as diamond and silicon carbide, for opportunities in networking and in sensing, particularly magnetometry.

“QTC translates quantum science into new capabilities and technologies for real world applications. This partnership gives QTC, UMD and the Navy the opportunity for joint research to advance quantum technology for the Navy and will help prepare a workforce trained in this critical area,” said Walsworth.

Arnold J. Glick, 1931- 2020

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Published: Thursday, August 27 2020 00:01

Professor Emeritus Arnold J. Glick died on Aug. 16, after falling ill two days earlier.

Glick was the only child of immigrants who met and married in Brooklyn and operated a small clothing store. His early interest and acuity in math and science led to acceptance into New York’s renowned and specialized Stuyvesant High School.

After graduation, Glick moved to Israel to work at Kibbutz Gal On at a time of scarcity in the new nation. Undernourished and in receipt of a U.S. Army draft notice, he returned home and was sent to the 82^nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where he worked on radio communications during the Korean War. Near the end of his service, he was charged in a McCarthy-era military court with being a communist. Eventually, it was revealed that the accusation stemmed from his father’s attendance at a lecture by the writer Howard Fast.  Once Glick was cleared and honorably discharged, he earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from Brooklyn College and entered the UMD physics graduate program under the tutelage of Richard A. Ferrell, studying how electrons in metals respond when heated or subjected to electric fields.

Glick received his doctorate in 1961 and accepted a postdoctoral position in nuclear physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. There he did his most recognized work, on many-particle phenomena, including a paper with well over 1,000 citations. He was then invited to join the UMD physics faculty by then-chair John Sampson Toll.

Glick developed a new major focus on the properties of 1D (one-dimensional) polyacetylene, an intrinsically conducting polymer invented in 1958; interest flourished after a landmark 1979 paper showing that it supports solitons. Collaborating with him was postdoc Garnett W. Bryant, now Group Leader of the Atomic-Scale Device Group at NIST. “It was very fun at the time working with Arnie on these projects and having a chance, for the first time, to experience the excitement of working in a high profile, emerging area of physics,” said Bryant.

Collaborating with his student Shyamalendu M. Bose and Prof. Angelo Bardasis, Glick calculated quasiparticle damping in a free-electron gas. With George A Ausman, Jr., he studied many-body effects that occurred near the threshold for core excitations in metals caused by soft x-rays.  Other work included Auger emission spectra in metals with student Amy Liu Hagen, many-body effects in core-level spectroscopy with student Harvey Gotts, fluctuation-induced tunneling in a 1D tight-binding model with student Ronald J. Cohen and soliton contributions with student David M. Mackie.

Glick’s student William R. Bandy, the department’s 2012 Distinguished Alumnus, studied electron tunneling and diagonal disorder with Glick. Bandy recalled “sitting in his office talking through my latest technical challenge, hearing about the latest engine replacement for his aging VW bus camper that he drove to Aspen every summer…. he was always giving me recommendations for good hiking trails in the region.”

Glick's parents taught him to hike as a youngster. The days spent ascending New Hampshire's White Mountains and snacking on mulberries inspired a love of nature that lasted throughout his lifetime.    

Another keen interest was folk dancing, which he enjoyed for decades. Glick also availed himself of UMD’s breadth and studied modern dance, ballet, scuba diving, squash, movies and sculpture. He and his wife Rachel were frequent visitors at the department’s special lectures, retreats and retirement celebrations and enjoyed lectures and performances at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.

In addition to Rachel, survivors include his first wife, Nevet Montgomery; daughters Jody Glick, Jeri Glick (Charles Anderson), and Ora DeMorrow (Shannon Lynch); and four grandchildren.

His obituary in the Greenbelt News Review is here: https://greenbeltnewsreview.com/issues/GNR20200827.pdf

Arnie Glick and Rick Greene at a holiday gathering.

Richard Prange, Ching-Ping Wang, Arnie Glick and Victor Yakovenko.

Physics faculty, 1970s.

Physics faculty, 1977.

Physics faculty, 1975.

Ott Elected Foreign Member of the Academia Europaea

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Published: Friday, August 07 2020 01:53

Professor Ed Ott has been elected a foreign member of the Academia Europaea for his outstanding achievements and international scholarship as a researcher. He is globally known for his pioneering contributions in nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory.

Ott is a University of Maryland Distinguished University Professor and holder of the Yuen Sang and Yu Yuen Kit So Endowed Professorship in nonlinear dynamics. He received the 2014 Julius Edgar Lilienfeld Prize of the American Physical Society, and in 2017, the Lewis Fry Richardson Medal of the European Geosciences Union. Also in 2017, he was selected for the Jürgen Moser Lecture, sponsored by the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM).  

Ott is a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering at The Cooper Union and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrophysics from Polytechnic Institute, then enjoyed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics of Cambridge University. Returning stateside, he joined the Electrical Engineering faculty at Cornell. He left Ithaca in 1979 to join the Department of Physics and Department of Electrical Engineering on this campus. He is a member of the Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics (IREAP), and has held appointments at the Naval Research Lab and what is now the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The Academia Europaea fosters excellence in scholarship in the humanities, law, social and hard sciences.  

Lila Snow, 1927 - 2020

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Published: Friday, August 07 2020 01:33

Lila Snow, a noted local artist and television host, died on July 13. She was the wife of George Snow, a UMD professor of high energy physics from 1958 to 1992.

Lila, a native New Yorker, earned a degree in chemistry from Brooklyn College and studied art at the Corcoran School, American University and the University of Maryland.

In 1972, Lila and George co-taught the first Women’s Studies course on this campus. After her husband’s death in 2000, Lila established the George A. Snow Memorial Award, to acknowledge the paucity of women in the field of physics and encourage greater participation. The award has highlighted exceptional efforts within the department, including outreach, mentoring and innovation.

In 2016, Lila donated two original artworks, Particle Picture and Scienza, for display near the high energy group’s offices in the Physical Sciences Complex.

Other creations grace the permanent collections of Radford University, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American University Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Judaica, as well as locations in Argentina, Italy and Japan.

She hosted The Art Scene on Montgomery Municipal Cable Television for two decades.

The sculpture Bradford near the UMD chemistry building, created by Lila Katzen, was donated to the UMD campus by George and Lila Snow.

In addition to art, Lila was interested in languages, and studied in Geneva, Paris, Rome, Bologna and Sendai. As a child, she was a double dutch jump rope champion; as an adult, a standup comedian at varied venues including physics conferences, nightclubs and the National Museum of Women in the Arts.  She penned a memoir, With A Name Like Tuchmacher..., and in 2003 received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Brooklyn College.

Lila is survived by Zachary Snow, of Rhinebeck, N.Y.; Andrew Snow of Chevy Chase, and Sara Snow of Vancouver, British Columbia; eight grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

Gifts in support of Washington artists can be made in her memory to the American University Museum. Please note “In memory of Lila Snow” in the correspondence.

Arnie Glick and Rick Greene at a holiday gathering.

Richard Prange, Ching-Ping Wang, Arnie Glick and Victor Yakovenko.

Physics faculty, 1970s.

Physics faculty, 1977.

Physics faculty, 1975.

Linke Lab's Work Cited

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Published: Wednesday, July 08 2020 05:33

Research by a team that includes Assistant Professor Norbert Linke, UMD physics graduate student Nhung Hong Nguyen, and visiting graduate student Cinthia Huerta Alderete has been selected as one of the 2019 Top Picks in Computer Architecture by IEEE Micro. The work, which compared different kinds of quantum computers, was a collaboration with scientists from Princeton and IBM.Cinthia Huerta Alderete, Nhung Hong Nguyen, and Norbert Linke.

IEEE Micro evaluates submissions to all computer architecture conferences that take place throughout the year and selects 12 as Top Picks for their novelty and potential for long-term impact. They invite Top Pick authors to prepare an article for the year’s special issue, which was published in May 2020.

The article contributed by Linke and his colleagues, “Architecting Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum Computers: A Real-System Study,” benchmarked seven different quantum computers with diverse architectures using the team’s novel cross-platform compilation tool. The quantum computers tested included superconducting qubit-based implementations from IBM and Rigetti as well as UMD’s own trapped ion quantum computer, which outperformed the other platforms in a series of standard quantum tasks.The team compared the success rate of seven different quantum across different tasks. (Figure courtesy of the authors.)

“The fact that quantum computer architecture and benchmarking is recognized by IEEE Micro shows that this potentially revolutionary technology has reached the mainstream of computer science,” says Linke.

IEEE Micro has selected Top Picks for the last 16 years. This year, the journal received 96 submissions, with only one other quantum computing publication receiving the Top Pick honor.

Original story by Dina Genkina