Woman leading race to build world's first quantum computer
Sydney, May 11: A team of Australian scientists has made great strides towards building the world's first quantum computer, using mostly standard silicon technology. The team is led by 50-year-old Michelle Simmons, a mother of three.
It is believed that the quantum computing technology could help address major global challenges like climate change and understanding complex diseases such as cancer.
"We're hoping to actually build computers here in Australia that will be able to do calculations in real time that would otherwise take thousands of years," Simmons, Professor at University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney, said in statement.
The winner of the coveted 2018 Australian of the Year award leads a team of more than 200 researchers at eight universities across the country developing a cache of quantum computing technologies.
In the quantum world, every time a quantum bit (qubit) is added, the amount of information is doubled.
"If I can get to 300 qubits, there's a prediction that it's more than all the atoms in the universe working together as a calculation," Simmons said, adding that her team is the only one in the world that can manipulate individual atoms to make atomically precise electronic devices.
The progress made by the UNSW research programme has been possible to a great extent due to its focus on silicon, which is industrially-compatible and forms the basis for the existing computer and electronics industry.
The team focuses on making qubits out of single atoms of phosphorus or quantum dots in silicon.
In 2017, the British-born Simmons established Australia's first quantum computing company, Silicon Quantum Computing (SQC), to develop, by 2022, a 10-qubit prototype silicon quantum integrated circuit -- the first step in building the world's first quantum computer in silicon.
The company is owned by the Australian Government, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), Australian telecommunication Telstra, the UNSW and the New South Wales State Government.
"To be able to create technology that can be useful for humanity, to be able to create technology that can solve diseases, optimise weather patterns -- have all the implications to make the world a better place and understand the world -- is what drives me," said Simmons, who is also Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation & Communication Technology (CQC2T).
In a statement released by UNSW in March, Simmons, said her team's work is inspired by the late American physicist Richard Feynman, whose birth centenary is on Friday.
Feynman is known for his path-breaking contribution to quantum theory -- especially its electrodynamics, which won him the Nobel Prize.
"Feynman said: 'What I cannot create, I do not understand'. We are enacting that strategy systematically, from the ground up, atom by atom," Simmons said.
"In placing our phosphorus atoms in the silicon to make a qubit, we have demonstrated that we can use a scanning probe to directly measure the atom's wave function, which tells us its exact physical location in the chip. We are the only group in the world who can actually see where our qubits are.
"Our competitive advantage is that we can put our high-quality qubit where we want it in the chip, see what we've made, and then measure how it behaves. We can add another qubit nearby and see how the two wave functions interact. And then we can start to generate replicas of the devices we have created," she said.
The team's latest advance - the first observation of controllable interactions between two qubits - was published in the journal Nature Communications.
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Mehul Choksi arrested in Belgium on India's extradition request
New Delhi (PTI): Absconding diamantaire Mehul Choksi has been arrested in Belgium following an extradition request by Indian probe agencies for his involvement in the Rs 13,000 crore PNB bank loan "fraud" case, official sources said on Monday.
The action against the second "prime suspect" in this case, after Choksi's nephew diamantaire Nirav Modi, was taken on Saturday based on an extradition request moved by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
Choksi was located in Belgium last year when he went there on the grounds of getting medical treatment. He had been staying in Antigua since 2018 after leaving India.
Sources said the Interpol Red Notice against him for arrest was "deleted" sometime back and the Indian agencies were pursuing him via the extradition route since then.
At least two open-ended arrest warrants, issued by a special court in Mumbai in 2018 and 2021, have been shared by the Indian agencies with their Belgian counterparts as part of the extradition request, the sources said.
Formal paperwork is being done following the arrest/detention as Choksi may seek bail on health grounds, they said.
Choksi, Modi, their family members and employees, bank officials and others were booked by the CBI and the ED in 2018 for perpetrating the alleged loan fraud at the Brady House branch of the Punjab National Bank (PNB) in Mumbai.
It was alleged that Choksi, his firm Gitanjali Gems and others "committed the offence of cheating against PNB in connivance with certain bank officials by fraudulently getting the LOUs (letters of undertaking) issued and got the FLCs (foreign letter of credit) enhanced without following prescribed procedure and caused a wrongful loss to the bank".
The CBI has filed at least two chargesheets against him in this case while the ED has filed three such prosecution complaints.
Modi, declared a fugitive economic offender, has been lodged in a London jail since he was held by the authorities there in 2019 on the basis of a legal request made by the ED and the CBI in this case. He is contesting extradition to India.
According to the investigating agencies, officials at PNB's Brady House branch in Mumbai issued 165 LoUs and 58 FLCs during March-April 2017, against which 311 bills were discounted.
These LoUs and FLCs were allegedly issued to Choksi's firms without any sanctioned limit or cash margin and without making entries in PNB's central banking system to evade any scrutiny in case of a default.
LoUs are a guarantee given by a bank on behalf of its client to a foreign bank. If the client does not repay the foreign bank, the liability falls on the guarantor bank.
Based on these LoUs by PNB, money was lent by SBI, Mauritius; Allahabad Bank, Hong Kong; Axis Bank, Hong Kong; Bank of India, Antwerp; Canara Bank, Manama; and State Bank of India, Frankfurt.
"Since the accused companies did not repay the amount availed against the said fraudulent LoUs and FLCs, PNB made the payment of Rs 6,344.97 crore (USD 965.18 million), including the overdue interest, to the overseas banks, which had advanced buyer's credit and discounted the bills against the fraudulent LoUs and FLCs issued by the PNB," the CBI's supplementary charge sheet in the PNB bank fraud case alleged.
The ED has attached or seized assets worth Rs 2,565.90 crore in the case against Choksi and the court has allowed "monetisation" of all these properties.
