Carlos Ernesto Lopetegui-González works at Laboratoire Kastler Brossel (in Sorbonne Université) with Mattia Walschaers and Nicolas Treps and contributes to Veriqub with Ulysse Chabaud and QAT – INRIA – Università degli Studi di Milano and Chalmers University of Technology.
What is your role in the Veriqub project, and what are you currently working on in the project?
💡I am a first year PhD student in the theory division of the Multimode quantum optics group at Laboratoire Kastler-Brossel. My work is mainly concerned with the development of methods to verify (efficiently) the presence of certain quantum properties in the states that could be prepared in the lab. The kind of quantum properties that we probe are those that in principle are necessary to reach advantages over what can be done with classical resources, in certain families of protocols. Among those, the one that has kept us a bit obsessed more recently is non-Gaussian entanglement, that has been recently identified by members of the project as a relevant property for sampling protocols.
And your background?
🧑🏻🎓My background is mostly on Physics. I did most of my bachelor at the University of Havana and then did my Master in the ENS Paris, in Theoretical Physics. During the first year on the master I did an internship in the Multimode Quantum Optics group at LKB (where I came back for the PhD). In this internship was that I first heard about the idea of using bosonic systems and in particular quantum states of light to perform quantum computations or information processing. In the second year of the master I went to Toronto for an internship in Xanadu Quantum Technologies, a company trying to build a photonic quantum computer within the CV formalism (the ones we care about in this project). These two experiences offered me tools and context that are of relevance for the work that I do within the Veriqub project.
What are the aspects of the Veriqub project that you’re most excited about?
💥For me it is quite exciting that within the project there are the two main alternatives for developing bosonic quantum computers. In one hand the superconducting platform, developed by the team at Chalmers University of Technology, and on the other the quantum optics one, that we work on in our lab here in Paris. For me, with a background mostly on quantum optics, it is exciting to see the kind of things that can be done with superconducting qubits. It is quite interesting for me to look at how the challenges we face within the two architectures are kind of complementary, as they appear in different stages of the development of the final technology.
What is the one thing that you desperately need in your daily work routine?
☕ First of all the morning coffee. Then the day begins and it usually goes the best when I get to interact with people in the lab, be it formally or not. The most creative moments for me are in front of a blackboard discussing with my colleagues.
Is there an activity that helps you release stress after a hard week at work?
🏃🏻I really enjoy listening music, in many forms and colors, with latin rythms like salsa being quite efficient to release stress. I also enjoy, and find very helpful, to run in the afternoons after work (though the winter makes it a bit hard).
