AVaQus:
Quantum annealers are devices that prepare a ground state of a many-body Hamiltonian. When the Hamiltonian is an Ising model, an annealer can solve Quantum Unconstrained Binary Optimization problems, such as many real-life practical problems—scheduling, traffic flow optimization, factoring, machine learning, and quantum chemistry. Quantum annealers have a huge short-term transformative potential, recognized by European whitepapers and industry as an alternative to universal quantum computers.
The main goal of AVaQus is to demonstrate a fully connected five-qubit coherent quantum annealer with fast and efficient multiqubit readout and control, that acts as a general-purpose quantum simulator of spin models and non-universal quantum computer for variational algorithms.
At KIT, researchers will focus on novel qubit design based on high impedances and connectivity. The other partners in the FET European consortium are IFAE Barcelona (coordination), CNRS Grenoble, Delft Circuits, CSIC Spain, Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech. S. L., Univ. of Glasgow and HQS Quantum Simulations (a Karlsruhe start-up).