Conference: NSF/UKRI Bilateral Workshop on Quantum Information Science in Chemistry

With support from the Division of Chemistry, Professor Greg Scholes at Princeton University, along with a team of US researchers, and partners in the United Kingdom, is co-organizing a bilateral workshop to discuss research challenges and open scientific questions at the interface between chemistry and quantum information science (QIS). Advancements in QIS hold promise for many new technologies, including secure quantum communication, quantum computing, and quantum sensors that provide fundamentally new ways of measuring physical and chemical properties. While there has been progress in the development of these technologies in recent years, many fundamental questions surrounding the principles that underpin QIS (e.g., entanglement, coherence, squeezing, etc.) remain. Chemists are uniquely positioned to address these challenges and provide new ways of harnessing these fundamental processes. The workshop will bring together researchers from the US and UK to explore ways in which chemical systems could serve as platforms for studying QIS phenomena and quantum correlations, as well as how those phenomena could be used to gain new insight into molecular behavior, and it will identify opportunities for scientific partnerships between researchers in the two Nations. Through a series of carefully organized breakout sessions, participants will explore ideas for: 1) new experiments enabled by QIS and new experimental methodologies that give insight into QIS phenomena; 2) the potential for QIS phenomena to affect chemical reactivity; as well as 3) the detection and quantification of quantum correlations. The workshop outcomes will be described in a public report meant to guide the chemistry community in QIS research. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.