Britton Plourde, professor of physics, has been awarded a grant from Brookhaven National Laboratory for his work to model physical processes that degrade the performance of superconducting quantum circuits. Superconducting circuits are critical to the future of quantum computing, the field in which researchers are working to develop new computers capable of generating solutions to complex problems that are impossible to solve on the best conventional computers today.

“Understanding the physical processes that cause errors in superconducting quantum circuits can lead to mitigation strategies that could provide a pathway for implementing large-scale quantum processors,” says Plourde. Such processors could impact a wide range of areas, including drug discovery, the development of new materials and logistical optimization.

The project is a collaboration between the Plourde Lab at Syracuse University, physicists at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Tufts University, and machine-learning experts at Brookhaven National Lab.