Tag: quantum computing

Quantum Modalities – Ai Tosh – Three Cats Dreaming 27-09-2025

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Here is last night’s dreaming. The first part came from a sleep which lasted through to ~6 AM. Given the current state of my body this length is nigh on unheard of!

The dream starts with me pulling up by car at some huge generic modern science park with start-ups and conference facilities. There is much new building work evident. I park outside the conference centre and go in. The front desk directs me to the workshop on “Quantum Modalities”. It is in a suite of purpose built smaller conference rooms.

I arrive at the reception where there is a man and two female administrators. They are handing out badges on lanyards and marking attendance. The man is mid-thirties, the women slightly younger. They are professional and slick. The man takes me by the arm and leads me to a session. He explains that it is by way of think tank for kicking around ideas and concepts. No limits. He says that there are several teams, focus groups. He leads me to one team sat around a table arranged in a square, with a gap in the middle, like a square polo mint. The people are mostly men and all forty or younger. They are smart, well paid, vocal and energetic. My age and demeanour is in very marked contrast. The man introduces me to the group lead who is an Italian with excellent English. He is from the European grouping. He looks at my lanyard and welcomes me. He asks my background and I say that it is lasers and diverse types of optical spectroscopy. The others largely ignore me. I am not one of the “gang”.

A discussion starts about which modalities can be ruled out for optical quantum computing. These include infrared and solid state absorption due to decoherence. I say that my best bet is on background free ion detected stimulated Raman. They nod and slightly ignore my suggestion. I am after all the dinosaur. It is clear to me that they are fixated on the traditional notion of computing based around a microprocessor core and conventional binary type computation. Their thinking is generic and almost clone like in its similarity. They can only envision a static computer. I can see a visual image of a shiny microprocessor lit from above. It holds their minds. They go on largely talking among themselves. I get up and leave. Nobody notices.

In the main auditorium there is a talk on the future of AI. On stage is a smart young woman late thirties in a skirt suit with blue shirt. She is CEO grade. She has a headset with earphones and a microphone on, TED like. She has an accent from the USA bay area conurbation. She is speaking jargon buzzword tosh and not actually saying anything other than buzzword mantra. I know that the reason AI is popular is because the end of Silicon miniaturisation is nigh. They are reaching the atomic limits of processing. The industry is bricking it because they do not know what comes after Silicon. I find the talk yawn-some so I get up and leave.

I go to the bathroom and am very surprised that the large numbers on our “nanna” clock say 6 AM.

Back in bed I have to make a deliberate effort not to think about quantum modalities because I want to go back to sleep. I keep coming back to the idea that the “processor” cannot be a static thing. And that a totally genuinely radical re-think is needed to implement and optimise how to use quantum efficacy. They are currently at a conceptual dead end, blocked.

I manage to drift off.

The next segment has me arriving at another meeting this time held at a British governmental lab facility. It smacks of the tea and cake, white bread sandwiches canteen. It is an adjoint facility to a secure defence establishment like AWE. It is outside the fence. Nevertheless there are security {military police?} there. I go into reception. I am very early for the afternoon meeting I have been invited to. I am not on the lists that the reception has yet. I say that I am there for the afternoon meeting. He ushers me to a table where I can set up my laptop. I do this and get bored.

I go outside onto a grassy space with a slight slope. Lying on the upsloping ground I boot up the lap top. I am joined by the three cats, Bibi, Gandalf and Felix. Felix {now presumed dead} looks young and clean. The cats sit around the lap top and we are serene enjoying the outdoors in the autumn sun.

A young man and woman are nearby and they say hi. They are going back to London. I offer to give them a lift. I cannot be bothered to wait for the afternoon session. We head back towards the car. Bibi darts across the road stopping traffic. She is unhurt. Gandalf has climbed on my shoulders and Felix lies in the gutter playfully. The so-called wild cat offers me his belly to tickle which I do. I then pick him up and place him on my right shoulder so that I have a cat on each shoulder. Together with the couple we cross the road on a zebra crossing. We are joined by Bibi on foot. We make a slightly odd sight

We are nearing the site canteen and it is very busy. People are chatting on their way to lunch. Bellies are rumbling. There is a hub-bub. I try to remain inconspicuous looking to avoid anyone I might know. There is nobody. We make it to the car park and we all get into the car, three cats, me and the young couple.

The dreaming ends.

Investor Incognito – Quantum Modules – Sociopolitical Problems Dream 19-08-2025

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Here is last night’s dreaming sequence.

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“If you want my future, forget my past
If you wanna get with me, better make it fast”

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The dream opens in a splendid mansion and grounds of Italianate design situated somewhere like Lake Como or Lake Maggiore. It is upper class, rich and very swanky. It is an investor event for high net worth individuals and venture capital (VC) funds of diverse type and scale. It is late evening drawing into night. There is a string quartet and finger food. Presentations will be given in an outdoors setting once it has become fully dark. There is a stage and seating. Seating is round “ten” seater tables. In the meantime a pre-event wine tasting is going on. It feels European.

I am working incognito as one of the wine waiters. I am in black and whites with a white wine apron. I am opening a bottle of vintage red wine and offering to taste before decanting. I then fill a decanter with the rest of the wine. The idea being that they also taste after half an hour. I pour a taster around the table. Each in turns swirls the bright red wine and tastes. I move onto the next table who are trying an ice cold New Zealand white. In general the interaction is professional but I can tell that I am “staff” and not one of them. I am of no significance. I am not the main event.

Heading back to the kitchen an American woman who is a VC accidentally bangs in to me, she is partially drunk and is very rude to me. I apologise even though it is her fault. She is brash and convinced of her own importance. The event suggests to me that these are not the kind of people I seek.

The scene changes and I am at a booth in a trade show and technology event. On the table in front of me is a quantum module. It is a slot in for a 19 inch electronics frame wider unit. I have the side panel off the module. In it I can see a photonic circuit processor which is air-cooled by fan. Connected to it are several tight circle bundles of fibreoptic cable. These are cable tied and attached to the motherboard. A number of them lead to optical-optical low loss interconnects on the rear of the module. To the top of the board is a diode pumped fibre laser which I know to be single mode. The whole unit is a modular quantum logic gate, a plug and play module for an in-principle demonstrator. With me in the booth are Geri Horner and her husband. As a hobby he has led the engineering team and has managed to attract some not standard funding from Red Bull. I replace the side panel to the module and screw it in using a jeweller’s screw driver. I slot the module into the wider 19 inch parent rack. I then mount the whole unit into an electronics rack and attach the computer interface. Geri is excited and waiting for people to visit our booth. There is a Red Bull logo. The module is a large-scale building block prototype for a room temperature quantum computer. I have had to seek non-standard funding, hence Geri and Red Bull.

The scene changes and I am in my workshop / shed on top of a low rise several storey building. To my surprise a text message arrives on my ‘phone. The message asks “why, why am I packing it in?” I am very surprised that there is both a ‘phone and a text message in the dream. {A very rare thing} As I am dealing with this surprise a man appears at the door of my shed. He is older than me, very English and of the UK science hierarchy. I let him in. He wants to know why I am dropping this line of research / investigation. I explain to him that the establishment does not accept me and has difficulty interacting with me because I am not usual. I do not belong to any famous company / institution. He does not believe me. I explain to him in more depth and he starts to get offended imagining that I am attacking the entire science hierarchy. I ask him if he is personally offended. He says, yes.

“Now do you see the sort of thing I am up against. How resistant to me people are?”

“Yes, OK , I get the idea.”

He then asks me to hang fire for a while. He wants to know who I am working with. I explain that it is just me. On my bookshelf he see texts on superconducting and quantum circuits. He says that he might be able to get someone to work with me. I doubt it. There is no money.

I say to him that there is little which can be done. It is as it is. He does not like this.

The dream ends and I have the Spice Girls “Wannabe” to mind.

Quantum Computing – $1 Billion in Patent Applications

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If you search Espacenet using the key words “Quantum Computing” it returns 155,000 results!!  Clearly, I have not read them all this afternoon. At a very low legal fee of ~ $6,500 per patent that is ~one billion dollars’ worth of fees for the patent attorney community.

Alice, Bob and the Cat have served them well. They have made a quantum leap in income. Would you like some dinner?

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Reason suggests that it is not possible to come up with 155,000 totally original ideas and concepts beyond the state of the art. There must be redundancy and perhaps overly zealous patent agents have awarded their national home grown talent with a facile grant. Some of these applications cannot be worth the paper they are written upon.

Never mind the quality measure the tonnage. No wonder there is a forestry problem…

I have long speculated that the whole intellectual property (IP) / patent arena is due for a big clean out / dose of salts. It is overblown and over stuffed. The inventive steps are often really trivial,  and not “quantum leaps” in understanding.

To generate new IP against the petabyte background already filed might be tricky. When I last looked, I thought many so called unique ideas were very derivative and the inventive step even obvious to me as a non-expert pikey in his shed.

Sooner or later there is going to be some big blow out tests in court. Or you can have a Samsung – Apple  –   “we’ll sell you ours if you sell us yours” swapsies.

Were I an investor looking at that very basic survey of landscape I would not be champing at the bit (excuse the pun).

Following the Quantum Thread…

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As is so often the case the whole world gets to hear about what is going on in the USA. The world, the internet, has a USA based centre of gravity and America likes to tart its wares. The endless self-promotion urge originates there. PR and hype have their home, therein. Understated is not a word in common parlance, not even sotto voce.

As someone who has probably read more patents than is good for them, who has even worked through in detail to understand dozens, it is something of a hobby.

“Old fart in his shed reads patents.”

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Speichergasse 6 Bern

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We have heard a lot about the big American tech companies and their quantum computing (QC) efforts. It is a piss on the street corner type of approach to mark territory. When I last looked in detail at the patent landscape ~2017-8 there were a lot of US patent applications on QC whereas the Chinese were then focussing on quantum communication and key distribution. There were a lot of Chinese applications.

Clearly quantum cryptography is the killer app for quantum computing.

First pass shows that the Chinese are now releasing press notes on their QC chip technologies, there are a few rumblings in Moscow. There are efforts elsewhere like Singapore and South Korea. An issue remains, quantum talent, and for Russia quantum brain drain has been mooted. The USA may worry about training would be Chinese quantum talent.

As mentioned earlier in the blog, I am due to be incapacitated in winter. So I might need somethings to keep me busy.

I wonder has there been any genuine quantum leap innovation since 2017?

What is left of the patent lifetimes?

Is it worth another scooby?

Alice & Bob – Quantum Jobs

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Prompted by the answer to a question on University Challenge, I typed Alice and Bob into the font of paid for promotion previously known as a search engine. The Mecca of product placed wisdom came up with a French quantum start up called Alice and Bob. They have received 100 million series B funding. They also have a fairly extensive job vacancy list. It was a tad French and probably not overly attractive internationally except for those fond of Alice in Paris Francophiles. French job descriptions can be as rigid as a rigid thing. They do not travel well.

Maybe there is a general shortage of quantum savvy job applicants….

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It occurred to me that the Quantum hype has been drowned out by the deafening AI roar. Maybe it has gone submarine like AUKUS.

That Luddite Herr Trump has been threatening the Harvard intellectual property (IP) portfolio. What a great way to ensure the death of US inventiveness and technological superiority, discourage invention and application for patents unless they are handled by MAGA lawyers, toadies and sycophants!! Already the incentive to NOT have an idea whilst at a university is high, because contractually the university owns your IP. Best stifle ideas until you are a free thinker…

Sometimes holes can be difficult to get out of. That can include ways of thinking and playbooks.

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It looks like Herr Trump is going to try again to leverage Ukraine into accepting a fait accompli agreed with Vlad the Impaler in Alaska. This forceful manipulation is an old Trump play. If he keeps alienating people, he may find himself in a hole like increasingly Billy-no-mates Israel. Trump does not understand that “friend” has a different meaning in KGB speak.

Oh look another groundhog…where did that come from….

What is the first rule when you find yourself in a hole?

Human beings can be pig-headed and stubborn. Inventive people do not share the same deal or no deal mentality as realtors. They are easily discouraged and disincentivised. One day the straw goes on the camel’s back, one too many.

Sometimes that tired old play book simply does not work. Thinking the same way that gets you into a problem cannot help to get you out of it.

There is no point in trying to explain this to someone who is vehemently adamant that they know best. Advice is as unwelcome as a dose of antibiotic resistant syphilis.

Some people are obsessed at the notion of a “corporate” solution when none exists. They may get all their ducks in line to present someone with a fait accompli sure that such a thing is irresistible. Even so-called intelligent people like professors can think like this. They can seek within group consensus oblivious that people outside the Olympian Ivory Towers do not think like them. This may not occur.

It is quackers.

People often talk with the monkey and ignore the organ grinder completely…

Anyway…

Has AI killed off the notion of quantum computation?

Where will they put all the server farms?

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Is this what our future looks like?

Hare Brained Patent Ideas

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Following on from the dream mentioning the EPO in Munich, I have been revisiting some of my hare-brained patent ideas.

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Assuming all goes ahead with the operation I am going to be out of action gardening wise for several weeks. In order not to not drive myself and the wife mad, I will need something to do.

In around 2017 when I became very dis-illusioned with the REQUIRED verbatim parrot answers for “A” level chemistry exam questions, I looked into things quantum. As an aside if the physics syllabus back in the early ‘80s was as it is now, with quarks and astronomy etc., I would have tried a physics degree instead of chemistry. The so called right hand and left hand rules were boring and had other meanings. It was pretty soporific.

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I kept wondering when afternoon double physics would end. The teacher had been to the pub at lunch time and kept going off to the prep room mid lesson.

In a previous dream the notion of Quantum Telepathy was raised. I have already ascertained that the number of patent applications pertaining to telepathy are low. There are a few “occult” patents in French. To attempt to get a patent granted referring to quantum interruption of service for quantum computing or quantum cryptography would be fun and a challenge. The media might be interested.

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“Eccentric ex-boffin applies for quantum telepathy patent…”

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French is one of the languages at EPO. To make it even harder I could attempt to write the application in French. The possibility of opening a Pandora’s box lies perhaps therein.

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How deep the rabbit hole might go remains to be seen.

I was struck when looking at the quantum computing literature and patents at how far-fetched some of the claims were like ammonia trapped in buckminsterfullerene as an isolated molecule with a quantum superposition state of permutation inversion levels being the entangled pair. This person was not a molecular spectroscopist.

Other patent applications were longer than a Ph.D. thesis. It has to be a shit patent if it needs a hundred pages to explain. It was pretty obvious that people were getting patent number increase as a means for funding justification. It was also interesting seeing overt public reference go  suddenly “submarine”.

I have not seen data yet for quantum start-up failure rates. It seems some get bought up.

Around that time I had an idea for an entangled pair photon source produced by electric field induced spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC). I submitted that application in May 2019 and with some “discussion” it got granted. I speculated that because I was a “man in his shed” I was taken less seriously at the IPO in Newport. In one letter I mentioned the Imperial magic word and that I already had two patent grants. After that he was less discursive.

In that SPDC in low photon regime, and not parametric oscillator power range, requires that the electric field is quantizable along harmonic oscillator creator annihilation operator lines. I thought to myself there could be some new physics to be explored here….

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I also wondered why not exploit the time domain for quantum computing. Quantum entangled states are known to “beat” under certain circumstances. Working in the time domain before environmental dephasing kicked in could negate the need for extensive and expensive refrigeration.

Given my background in molecular symmetry it occurred to be that certain molecules could be used as a quantum gate. If they were allowed to “operate” on an entangled pair, they would in effect perform a computation on the state information. Molecular symmetry discussions were largely absent from the patent literature.

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A third order hyperpolarizability tensor looks very matrix like. Neo would be happy.

I had a third idea which escapes me now.

A while back I was looking into nuclear fusion reactor design patents. It occurred to me that for Tokamak and torus designs ignition could be enhanced by laser induced plasma ignition procedures. Hence a hybrid laser ignition “Tokamak” design may have benefits. Confinement in high energy laser ignition facilities to sustain fusion was then a known issue.

As a result of a largely NIMBY campaign to prevent an energy from waste municipal solid waste incinerator being installed next to the village, I looked into these. I came up with the idea for a laser induced plasma incinerator for ultra-high toxicity / biological hazard waste. At very high, near solar laser induced temperature, complete oxidation downstream from plasma formation could be ensured with high completion extent. In the cooling plasma reaction with oxygen free radicals could work. I approached Kilburn and Strode who helped me with the EUV patents. They were reticent in case they had a conflict of interests with one of their clients, the start-up I once co-founded!

It turns out that my ex-flat mate is a patent attorney and another from my year at university a patent litigator.

The other idea I had was to get my patent published in Welsh at the IPO in Newport.

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Cyfarpar i gynhyrchu parau ffoton

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Most of the Welsh patent agents I contacted were very supportive. They pointed me in various direction but the show stopper was that an English translation was also required. So much for equal…

Not quite sure why I am in this space this morning…

Qubit Coherence Time Dream 20-03-2023

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This dream came after watching Roger Penrose discus “before the big bang” on YouTube. He suggested that in a thermalized black body compliant universe evidenced by the cosmic microwave background energy spectrum where E=hν = mc2, time or inverse time, frequency, does not exist in the absence of matter. “Time” can be curved to “before” the big bang of our current universe. Similarly at an infinitely expanded universe full only of radiation, photons, time again has no meaning without mass.

The dream starts in the refreshment area or bar off a hall full of poster presentations at a “perimeter” conference on quantum and quantum computing. I am talking with a “famous” prof in his early forties and he is holding court to some post docs and post grads. He is skinny with a beard and unruly hair. He is white. As far as he is concerned, I am a nobody.

I say to him that if I have understood it correctly the biggest drawback for quantum computing is qubit coherence time and thereby quantum fidelity. He says yes.

I say that a qubit is a counter-entropic state artificially manufactured in matter in many systems. In these matter based systems tremendous cooling is required to prevent coupling to the nearby thermal bath states which tend to bring about dephasing and lack of fidelity for the prepared qubit. He agrees.

I say that is why they need fuck off big fridges to get close to absolute zero, which is again a counter entropic state when viewed more than locally. He agrees.

That dephasing happens on a temperature and proximity dependent time scale.

I say that thermodynamics is a property of matter and hence time, without matter entropy as no meaning, nor does thermodynamics.

I ask him why nobody is pursuing fast or ultrafast time domain quantum computing? He does not reply.

I say to him if the prepared qubit state is addressed before dephasing occurs, we can use time to outwit or outpace thermalization to bath. Time domain quantum computing could be the answer.

He nods.

I say that the other problem stems from the cycle time of write to zero of the matter involved in the prepared qubits. It should be possible to use a second pulse similar to the state preparation one to reset the qubit clock on a hundreds of megahertz laser repetition rate. We then have a prepare and subsequent write to zero even if the qubit state has been used or partially used in computation. The matter is then ready for us to contravene entropy by writing a qubit.

As the dream ends, I think that it is a fair way from Guru Rinpoche.

Molecular Quantum Computing Dream 10-07-2024

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Here is this morning’s dream.

The dream starts in the middle of a city. I am to attend a meeting on molecular quantum computing. It is partially at my behest. In the meeting are several people who I once knew around 18 years ago. We are sat roughly in a circle behind two seater tables.

I say that in its current form quantum computing is very environmentally hostile because of the energy needed to build and cool. There is a murmur of scoffing. Ian says that I am right and reels of some figures in terms of tonnage of carbon dioxide. Others concur.

I explain that here, with our hundred trees and land, we are approximately carbon neutral.

I know that the people at the meeting are humouring me and that they are highly sceptical.

I say that history shows that the machines at the early stage of any technology cycle are very different from those of the technology which emerges.

It is likely that quantum computing will become more biological. A way will be found to overcome the high energy burden. It will involve molecular qubits.

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In the dream I make a note to re-read a paper by XXX.

There will be some way as yet unimagined to open up a new way of thinking, a more organic neural form of quantum computing.

The meeting disperses, sceptical.

I go outside with Ant and he points up at a huge crane, they are doing some optical fibre communication experiment on the crane. He expects be to be impressed.

I wander off towards the tube station.

Dream ends.