JUNIQ Spring School on Quantum Computing - Gate-based and Annealing Systems

31 Mar 2025, 09:00 → 4 Apr 2025, 17:00 Europe/Berlin

Building 16.4, Room 301 (Rotunda) (Forschungszentrum Jülich)

JUNIQ Team

The Jülich Supercomputing Centre will host the spring school on “Quantum Computing – Applications on Gate-based and Annealing Systems” from March 31 to April 04, 2025. The school focuses on hands-on experiences in developing and implementing algorithms on both gate-based devices and quantum annealers. Therefore the attendees will make use of the cloud-programming platform of the Jülich UNified Infrastructure for Quantum computing (JUNIQ) to access quantum devices located at the Jülich Supercomputing Centre. The hands-on sessions will be accompanied by several lectures covering basic concepts of gate-based and annealing systems, the design and implementation of use-cases, and big-picture lectures, all given by experts from the field. The spring school will be complemented by a poster session in which the attendees can introduce themselves and their interest in quantum computing and potentially present their own research results. Our school is free of charge and will be on-site only this year.

Topics: Introduction to Gate-Based Quantum Computing, Introduction to Quantum Annealing, Introduction to Quantum Simulation, Formulating QUBO Problems and Ising Hamiltonians, Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm, Emulation of Quantum Systems, Classical vs Quantum Optimization, Error Correction.

Participants are asked to prepare a poster about themselves, including their interest in quantum computing or current/past research. Please submit your CV, and a motivation letter stating why attending this summer school will be beneficial for your current and future research. Submit CV and motivation letter in one pdf file to training-juniq@fz-juelich.de with the header "Motivation Letter Spring School 2025". Your application will only be reviewed if CV, motivation letter, and application (follow the "apply now" button) are submitted.

Your registration will only be complete once we review and approve your application. A successful registration means you have been accepted into the school, and will receive further instructions regarding your arrival and stay in Jülich.

Registrations closed.

Monday 31 March

09:00 → 10:00 Registration

10:00 → 10:15 Welcome and Introduction to the JSC

Speaker: Gabriel Fazito (JSC)

10:15 → 11:30 Introduction to Gate-based Quantum Computing

Introduction to quantum bits and quantum gates
Programming and Simulating quantum circuits
Applications: QFT, Quantum Adder, QAOA

Speaker: Dr Dennis Willsch (JSC)

11:30 → 12:30 Introduction to Quantum Annealing

This talk is a general introduction to quantum annealing. It covers:
- how does a quantum annealer work in theory and what can it be used for;
- what are the theoretical and practical limitations;
- how to solve problems on quantum annealers, in particular D-Wave quantum annealers as the one hosted by JSC;
- the basic information about the architecture of D-Wave quantum annealers;
- how to formulate an optimization problem as a QUBO or Ising problem;
- different encoding strategies;
- how to incorporate constraints;
- how to embed a (logical) problem onto the given hardware graph (considering physical connectivity);
- how to send a problem to the quantum annealer using D-Wave's Ocean SDK and how to interpret the response;
Finally, some small examples are presented and the talk ends with a short hands-on exercise.

Speaker: Dr Madita Willsch (JSC)

12:30 → 14:00 Lunch break

14:00 → 15:00 Pen&Paper (Quantum Annealing)

Speaker: Dr Madita Willsch (JSC)

15:00 → 16:00 Coffee Break & Tour JUNIQ

Students will receive a guided tour to JUNIQ and be presented to the D-Wave system.

16:00 → 17:00 Introduction to Neutral Atom Quantum Computing

Speaker: Dr Jaka Vodeb

17:00 → 17:30 Ask me anything

An opportunity to ask questions and talk to the lecturers of the day in a more relaxed atmosphere.

17:30 → 18:00 JUDOOR & Leap

18:00 → 22:00 Finger Food Dinner & Socializing

22:00 → 22:20 Last Bus from FZJ to Jülich

Tuesday 1 April

09:00 → 10:00 QUBO Formulation and QAOA: A Tutorial on Encoding and Solving Combinatorial Optimization Problems - Part I

In this tutorial, we will dive into combinatorial optimization problems and explore how effectively encode these problems using the Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) formulation and how to tackle them using the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA).

Speaker: Dr Jhon Alejandro Montanez-Barrera (JSC)

10:00 → 10:20 Introduction of Hands-on Topics

In this session, the topics for the hands-on sessions will be introduced.

10:20 → 11:00 Hardware & Software Setup

11:00 → 12:00 Hands-on Session

12:00 → 13:00 Lunch break

13:00 → 14:15 QUBO Formulation and QAOA: A Tutorial on Encoding and Solving Combinatorial Optimization Problems - Part II

In this tutorial, we will dive into combinatorial optimization problems and explore how effectively encode these problems using the Quadratic Unconstrained Binary Optimization (QUBO) formulation and how to tackle them using the Quantum Approximate Optimization Algorithm (QAOA).

Speaker: Dr Jhon Alejandro Montanez-Barrera (JSC)

14:15 → 15:30 Hands-on Session

15:30 → 16:45 Quantum Simulation

I will talk about the first experimental signatures of two-dimensional many-body false vacuum decay in a quantum material emerging from microscopic interactions. We used a programmable noisy superconducting quantum simulator with 2008 qubits in order to perform simulations corresponding to our specific experiment on quantum domain reconfiguration in a topical electronic crystal. We carefully chose a simulator with the same measured noise spectrum to ensure the fidelity of the model correspondence between the two systems, thereby presenting a realization of simulating real-world open quantum systems according to the original vision of Feynman.

Speaker: Dr Jaka Vodeb

16:45 → 18:00 Poster session

The first two groups of six will present their posters following a brief pitch.

Wednesday 2 April

09:00 → 10:00 Quantum Annealing Applications

Optimization Problems: Airline Scheduling, TSP, Garden Optimization
Constraint Problem: 2-SAT
Machine Learning Problem: Quantum Support Vector Machine
Sampling Problem: Quantum Boltzmann Machine

Speaker: Dr Dennis Willsch (JSC)

10:00 → 12:00 Hands-on Session

12:00 → 13:00 Lunch break

13:00 → 14:15 Introduction to Quantum Error Correction

Speaker: Prof. Markus Müller (PGI/RWTH)

14:15 → 15:30 Emulating Quantum Systems

Full dynamics of a CLOSED quantum spin-1/2 system: gate-based quantum computer & quantum annealer
Full dynamics of an OPEN quantum spin-1/2 system: gate-based quantum computer & quantum annealer
Solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation numerically
(Part of) our history of emulating quantum computers

Speaker: Dr Vrinda Mehta (JSC)

15:30 → 20:00 Aachen City Tour

Thursday 3 April

09:00 → 10:00 Cooling to Compute: Millikelvin Cryogenics for Quantum Information Processing

Speaker: Dr David Rabanus (JSC)

10:00 → 11:30 Tour JSC/HPC & Cryolab

11:30 → 12:30 Lunch break

12:30 → 15:00 Hands-on Session

15:00 → 16:30 Meta Perspective on Gate-based Quantum Computing

Speaker: Prof. Ioan Pop (KIT/Stuttgart University)

16:30 → 18:00 Poster Session

18:00 → 22:00 Finger Food Dinner & Socializing

22:00 → 22:20 Last Bus from FZJ to Jülich

Friday 4 April

09:00 → 10:00 Tour PGI

10:00 → 12:00 Hands-on Session

12:00 → 13:00 Lunch break

13:00 → 14:00 Feedback Session

14:00 → 15:00 The Future of Quantum Computing

Speaker: Prof. Tommaso Calarco (PGI-8)

15:00 → 15:30 Wrap-up and Goodbye