Dr Alexis Kirke, a Senior Research Fellow of the ICCMR (Interdisciplinary Centre for Computer Music Research) at Plymouth University, has begun a two-week residency at the University of Southern California (USC) in the Quantum Computation and Open Quantum Systems (QCOQS) group.
Alexis has been invited to collaborate with this world-leading research group to develop a musical performance using its $15m quantum computer – one of only two machines of its kind sold in the world (the other of which has been sold to a Google/NASA partnership).
Quantum computers use the anti-intuitive properties of quantum mechanics, such as entanglement, to achieve speed gains over normal computers of many orders. Google recently demonstrated a quantum computer of the type Alexis is using, to speed up the solution of certain problems by 100 million times.
While at USC, Alexis is working with Professor Daniel Lidar, one of the top 20 authors in quantum computing research for the decade 2000-2009, and the academic with responsibility for the computer at Marina Del Ray in Los Angeles. They are developing the public performance utilising this new D-Wave 2-X computer.
Photo: Professor Daniel Lidar with D-Wave1