Jeanette Miriam Lorenz

Head of Department @ Fraunhofer IKS

How applications can guide developments in quantum computing

The recent years have seen significant process towards error-corrected qubits, but presently available quantum computers remain limited in their number of qubits and quality. In parallel, significant efforts were put into exploring applications of quantum computing, but without resulting in any practical, industrially relevant quantum advantage yet. In principle, quantum computing is expected to lead to disruptive changes in a variety of different industries – e.g., quantum computing could speed up drug development.
Still, investigating applications of quantum computing already provided us with very important, although mostly theoretical insights. For example, investigating variational quantum algorithms pointed us to the difficulties of controlling their sampling overhead and their stability in general. We also realized that quantum computers are likely to work synergistically as quantum accelerators alongside classical computers, putting us into the situation that we need to control, optimize and improve their interplay. We are also required to understand when and how a prospective quantum advantage will result in an overall benefit for quantum-classical algorithms. This includes topics such as generalization properties of quantum-classical algorithms and how properties of the data will influence the overall performance of a quantum algorithm. Eventually, these findings guide us to both the necessity to advance quantum algorithms, as well as to advance quantum hardware beyond just realizing logical qubits.
This talk will expand on these aspects and will additionally bring forward the idea of systematic benchmarks at all layers of the quantum software stack to be able to also quantify prospective benefits of quantum computing practically.