'Wrong idea' of Korean scholars, 0.5% of American scholars

A Korean female scholar who played an important role in ushering in the era of quantum computer commercialization was recognized for her achievements by the American scientific community.

According to American academia on the 24th (local time), Dr. Baek Han-hee (45) from the IBM Watson Research Center located in Yorktown Heights, New York, was recently selected as a scholar member (fellow) of the American Physical Society (APS).

Fellows are only awarded to the 0.5% of scholars with outstanding academic achievements out of 50,000 members of the American Physical Society.

Back in 2011, Dr. Baek is evaluated as having solved one of the early difficulties of quantum computers with his 'wacky idea'.

At the time, the main concern of academia was to increase the fixation time of the unstable quantum used in qubits, the heart of quantum computers.

Quantum fixation time, called 'coherence time', was only one microsecond (10 millionths of a second).

The direction of research at the time was to reduce the size of the superconducting circuit that implements qubits to stabilize the quantum, and to maximize the purity of the material used in the circuit.

However, Dr. Baek presented the exact opposite solution of increasing the size of the circuit.

This was based on the calculation that a larger circuit surface area would reduce noise.

Although the academic community responded that it was "a bizarre idea," in fact, in the superconducting circuit newly designed by Dr. Baek, the fixed time of the quantum was increased by 60 times.

Academia evaluates the impact of the superconducting circuit designed by Dr. Baek on quantum computer research on a level similar to that of vacuum tube computers that ended the mechanical relay computer era.

The following is a Q&A with Dr. Baek.

He studied superconductors until he received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Yonsei University. In 2000, I came to the University of Maryland for a doctoral program to study superconductors further. However, I got interested in quantum computers after being introduced to them by my doctoral advisor.

It was a simple idea, but nobody thought of it at the time. The coherence phenomenon was affected by the microscopic noise formed in the film on the circuit surface. Because of this, until then, I thought that the larger the circuit, the greater the noise would be. However, in my calculations, making the circuit bigger reduced the noise. Later, I heard from a colleague that I wouldn't be able to come up with such a crazy idea without me.

10 operations can be performed in 1 microsecond of coherence time. With the circuit I designed, this time increased to 60 microseconds, which means that 600 operations are possible. Then quantum computers can do much more complex calculations. Algorithms can also be implemented. Since then, the circuits I have designed have become the industry standard.

Korea can be seen as the birthplace of quantum computers.

It lags far behind not only the United States and China, but also Germany and Japan, which are rapidly gaining momentum in the field of quantum computers.

Looking at the published papers, it seems that the quantum optics field is strong in Korea, but there are few papers on the quantum computer field.

Hardware is important, but applications and software seem to be important.

Computers are a means, not an end of research.

In the future, the field of application of what problems can be solved with quantum computers will become important.

In particular, Korea is an information technology (IT) powerhouse, so it can be learned quickly.

If so, the government should focus on nurturing talent.

While raising experts, you need to fund universities and startups.

(Photo = Yonhap News)