Latest news with #LawrenceBerkeleyNationalLaboratory
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Quantum Computers Simulate Particle 'String Breaking' in a Physics Breakthrough
Subatomic particles such as quarks can pair up when linked by 'strings' of force fields — and release energy when the strings are pulled to the point of breaking. Two teams of physicists have now used quantum computers to mimic this phenomenon and watch it unfold in real time. The results, described in two Nature papers on June 4, are the latest in a series of breakthroughs towards using quantum computers for simulations that are beyond the ability of any ordinary computers. 'String breaking is a very important process that is not yet fully understood from first principles,' says Christian Bauer, a physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in Berkeley, California. Physicists can calculate the final results of particle collisions that form or break strings using classical computers, but cannot fully simulate what happens in between. The success of the quantum simulations is 'incredibly encouraging,' Bauer says. [Sign up for Today in Science, a free daily newsletter] Each experiment was conducted by an international collaboration involving academic and industry researchers — one team at QuEra Computing, a start-up company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and another at the Google Quantum AI Lab in Santa Barbara, California. The researchers using QuEra's Aquila machine encoded information in atoms that were arranged in a 2D honeycomb pattern, each suspended in place by an optical 'tweezer'. The quantum state of each atom — a qubit that could be excited or relaxed — represented the electric field at a point in space, explains co-author Daniel González-Cuadra, a theoretical physicist now at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Madrid. In the other experiment, researchers encoded the 2D quantum field in the states of superconducting loops on Google's Sycamore chip. The teams used diametrically opposite quantum-simulation philosophies. The atoms in Aquila were arranged so that the electrostatic forces between them mimicked the behaviour of the electric field, and continuously evolved towards their own states of lower energy — an approach called analogue quantum simulation. The Google machine was instead used as a 'digital' quantum simulator: the superconducting loops were made to follow the evolution of the quantum field 'by hand', through a discrete sequence of manipulations. In both cases, the teams set up strings in the field that effectively acted like rubber bands connecting two particles. Depending on how the researchers tuned the parameters, the strings could be stiff or wobbly, or could break up. 'In some cases, the whole string just dissolves: the particles become deconfined,' says Frank Pollmann, a physicist at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Garching, Germany, who helped to lead the Google experiment. Although simulating strings in a 2D electric field could have applications for studying the physics of materials, it is still a long way from fully simulating high-energy interactions, such as those that occur in particle colliders, which are in 3D and involve the much more complex strong nuclear force. 'We do not have a clear path at this point how to get there,' says Monika Aidelsburger, a physicist at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Munich, Germany. Still, the latest results are exciting, and progress in quantum simulation in general has been 'really amazing and very fast,' Aidelsburger says. Last year, Bauer and his LBNL colleague Anthony Ciavarella were among the first teams to simulate the strong nuclear force on a quantum computer. Approaches that replace qubits with qudits — which can have more than two quantum states and can be more realistic representations of a quantum field — could also make simulations more powerful, researchers say. This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on June 5, 2025.
Scientific American
13-06-2025
- Science
- Scientific American
Quantum Computers Simulate Particle 'String Breaking' in a Physics Breakthrough
Subatomic particles such as quarks can pair up when linked by 'strings' of force fields — and release energy when the strings are pulled to the point of breaking. Two teams of physicists have now used quantum computers to mimic this phenomenon and watch it unfold in real time. The results, described in two Nature papers on June 4, are the latest in a series of breakthroughs towards using quantum computers for simulations that are beyond the ability of any ordinary computers. 'String breaking is a very important process that is not yet fully understood from first principles,' says Christian Bauer, a physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in Berkeley, California. Physicists can calculate the final results of particle collisions that form or break strings using classical computers, but cannot fully simulate what happens in between. The success of the quantum simulations is 'incredibly encouraging,' Bauer says. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. String simulations Each experiment was conducted by an international collaboration involving academic and industry researchers — one team at QuEra Computing, a start-up company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and another at the Google Quantum AI Lab in Santa Barbara, California. The researchers using QuEra's Aquila machine encoded information in atoms that were arranged in a 2D honeycomb pattern, each suspended in place by an optical 'tweezer'. The quantum state of each atom — a qubit that could be excited or relaxed — represented the electric field at a point in space, explains co-author Daniel González-Cuadra, a theoretical physicist now at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Madrid. In the other experiment, researchers encoded the 2D quantum field in the states of superconducting loops on Google's Sycamore chip. The teams used diametrically opposite quantum-simulation philosophies. The atoms in Aquila were arranged so that the electrostatic forces between them mimicked the behaviour of the electric field, and continuously evolved towards their own states of lower energy — an approach called analogue quantum simulation. The Google machine was instead used as a 'digital' quantum simulator: the superconducting loops were made to follow the evolution of the quantum field 'by hand', through a discrete sequence of manipulations. In both cases, the teams set up strings in the field that effectively acted like rubber bands connecting two particles. Depending on how the researchers tuned the parameters, the strings could be stiff or wobbly, or could break up. 'In some cases, the whole string just dissolves: the particles become deconfined,' says Frank Pollmann, a physicist at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in Garching, Germany, who helped to lead the Google experiment. Fast progress Although simulating strings in a 2D electric field could have applications for studying the physics of materials, it is still a long way from fully simulating high-energy interactions, such as those that occur in particle colliders, which are in 3D and involve the much more complex strong nuclear force. 'We do not have a clear path at this point how to get there,' says Monika Aidelsburger, a physicist at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Munich, Germany. Still, the latest results are exciting, and progress in quantum simulation in general has been 'really amazing and very fast,' Aidelsburger says. Last year, Bauer and his LBNL colleague Anthony Ciavarella were among the first teams to simulate the strong nuclear force on a quantum computer. Approaches that replace qubits with qudits — which can have more than two quantum states and can be more realistic representations of a quantum field — could also make simulations more powerful, researchers say.
Globe and Mail
31-05-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Nvidia and Dell Power the Department of Energy's Next Supercomputer
Chip giant Nvidia (NVDA) and computer maker Dell Technologies (DELL) are combining forces to power the Department of Energy's (DOE) next-generation supercomputer, called Doudna. Named after Nobel Prize-winning scientist Jennifer Doudna, the advanced supercomputer is schedule for launch in 2026. The announcement was made by Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory yesterday. Confident Investing Starts Here: Easily unpack a company's performance with TipRanks' new KPI Data for smart investment decisions Receive undervalued, market resilient stocks right to your inbox with TipRanks' Smart Value Newsletter The Doudna supercomputer will use Nvidia's latest ' Vera Rubin ' chips and will be built into Dell's advanced liquid-cooled servers. The supercomputer is designed to help roughly 11,000 researchers across the U.S. drive 'scientific discovery, from chemistry to physics to biology.' Here's What Doudna Is Expected to Do Typically, the DOE's supercomputers enable scientists to carry out fundamental scientific research and are also used for designing and maintaining the U.S. nuclear weapons store. Doudna is designed to integrate simulation, data, and artificial intelligence (AI) into a single platform. Scientists across the U.S. will be able to seamlessly steam data into the system and analyze real-time results. Doudna is expected to drive breakthroughs in fusion energy, materials science, accelerate drug discoveries, process real-time data from space, and support quantum workflows. The supercomputer is expected to be 10x faster in scientific output than its predecessor, Perlmutter, while using only 2x-3x more power. Nvidia's Crucial Role Amid Export Challenges Nvidia's involvement in this mission-critical project reflects the semiconductor giant's valued expertise and its importance to the U.S. administration. The news about Doudna comes amid Nvidia's ongoing struggle with chip exports to China. Recently, CEO Jensen Huang praised U.S. President Donald Trump for his 'vision' to boost domestic manufacturing, while also criticizing the stringent chip export restrictions on Nvidia, which have cost the company billions of dollars in lost revenue. The company has also drawn bipartisan criticism for its plan to open a research and development facility in Shanghai, with lawmakers citing national security concerns and warning of potential risks. Which AI Stock Is Better: NVDA or DELL? We used TipRanks' Stock Comparison Tool to determine which of the two companies, Nvidia or Dell, is currently favored by analysts. Investors can choose to invest in either stock after thorough research. Currently, both NVDA and DELL have earned analysts' 'Strong Buy' consensus rating, with NVDA stock offering higher upside potential compared to DELL.
Yahoo
30-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
AI supercomputer coming to the Bay Area
The Brief The U.S. Department of Energy plans to build a new flagship supercomputer at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The new machine will be ten times more powerful than the current supercomputer. The supercomputer is planned to be completed by the end of 2026 and ready for users by 2027. BERKELEY, Calif. - U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright wrapped up a week of visits to three national labs in the Bay Area, with a big announcement Thursday, saying the Department of Energy plans to build a new flagship supercomputer at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in partnership with Dell and NVIDIA. "It will advance scientific discovery from chemistry to physics to biology and all powered, unleashing this power of artificial intelligence," Secretary White said. The new supercomputer is being named after UC Berkeley Professor and Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna. Doudna said she's honored to have the new supercomputer bear her name. She added her own ground-breaking CRISPR research started with a small grant from the DOE, and hopes funding will continue to advance basic research. "I've always valued fundamental research. I think it does lead to great truths that we can't predict, and CRISPR is a great shining example. It was a small DOE grant that allowed us to work on CRISPR in the beginning," Doudna said. The machine NVIDIA CEO Jenson Huang and Dell Senior Vice President Paul Perez said the Doudna computer will be ten times more powerful than the current supercomputer and utilize cutting-edge Dell servers with the latest NVIDIA AI technology. "What truly sets this system apart is the seamless integration of high performance computing and AI capabilities," Perez said. "It's going to unify three ways of doing computing," Huang said. "Principle simulations, artificial intelligence and quantum computing. So we can simulate electrons using quantum computing, take the ground truth from that simulation and train an AI model at a very large scale. These will be possible for the very first time. Here." The Berkeley National Lab directors gave a rare tour of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC), showing the space already designated for the new Doudna supercomputer. What they're saying The announcement comes as the Trump administration has been scaling back research funding. In April, the Department of Energy announced more than $400 million dollars in cuts to research administrative support funding. "I think it's important to understand that science requires infrastructure. It requires administration. There are costs associated with that so we have to figure out the right way to pay for that," Doudna said. KTVU asked Secretary White whether his visit this week to Berkeley Lab, Lawrence Livermore Lab, and the Stanford SLAC Lab comes with any takeaways or commitment to funding. "AI and fusion are things you will see supercharged over the next four years, and if I can add a third one, quantum computing," White replied. Secretary Wright says the plan is to have the Doudna supercomputer completed by the end of 2026 and ready for users by 2027. "I think the Secretary said the right words, and now we have to see if the right things happen to maintain the real prominence of American science," Doudna said. The Source Original KTVU reporting
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
It's time to rethink geothermal energy as a key player in renewables
Industrial geothermal energy has been used for nearly two centuries. It's not a new concept, but in the United States, it's taken a backseat to other renewable energy sources like wind and hydropower. One company is trying to change that. Founded in 2017, Texas-based Fervo Energy is making groundbreaking moves in the clean energy landscape, and they're doing it in Utah's desert. 'We were founded with a simple idea that geothermal has been around for a long time, but if you could bring in more innovative drilling practices — like horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing, better fiber optic, sensing and data analytics to the field of geothermal,' Tim Latimer, CEO of Fervo Energy, said, 'we could have a differentiated result that took it from being an energy resource that people think of most often as something that you'll only find in Iceland or New Zealand to something that we could do in way more locations.' Below southern Utah's rugged red landscape lies a geothermal gold mine, which Fervo has been exploring since 2023. 'Utah is blessed with beautiful geothermal geology, which is why we're here now. And we can even make this project economic, even though we're really early in our journey,' Latimer said during a tour with U.S. lawmakers of the company's private Cape Station enhanced geothermal systems project located in Beaver County, Utah. Notably a leader in the current geothermal energy landscape, Fervo is working against the clock to make the renewable energy a household phrase — when people turn their light switch on, they'll know the energy source it came from. When people hear the phrase 'geothermal energy,' hot springs and geysers usually come to mind, or virtually anywhere hot, steamy water is present. The dry desert may not be what people visualize when they hear about geothermal energy. But it's what happens hundreds of feet below the surface where Utah's geothermal geology shines. Before breaking ground in Utah, Fervo worked with the federally funded Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to create the tools and technology needed to withstand the high-temperature environments deep under the Earth. The research set the preliminary work for Fervo's first pilot project, partnered with Google, in 2021. There, engineers discovered that the 'fervo design' of a two-well horizontal drilling for geothermal was successful. 'We drilled a deep horizontal injection well, about 10,000 feet down and 5,000 feet over, (then) hydraulically fractured it to connect it to a parallel deep production well, 10,000 feet down (and) 5,000 feet over,' Latimer said. 'And at the site in Nevada, that was about 350 degrees Fahrenheit.' 'That was the first ever project that showed that horizontal drilling could work to unlock a massive geothermal resource the same way it did for the oil and gas industry.' That project only produced three megawatts of power. One megawatt can power nearly 700 homes in a full year, which is not necessarily an economic success. Project 2, Utah's Cape Station, will produce 500 megawatts in its combined two-phase project. The area in Milford, Utah, consists of both private and public land leased by the Bureau of Land Management, and is surrounded by windmill turbines. The geology, combined with the transmission line from the turbines, established an ideal setting for the project. 'What we found since day one, when we showed up, was people who were very collaborative, wanted to work with us, and so it checked all the boxes,' he added. 'We had great local support, great policy support, hot rocks and good transmission.' The deepest Fervo has drilled reached temperatures up to 440 degrees Fahrenheit and after 'throwing a bunch of new tools and equipment at it' reached 520 degrees. 'We still have to work through a bunch of stuff to make 500 degrees Fahrenheit work,' Latimer said, but the deeper it gets, the hotter it gets, the more efficient energy you get. 'So we've gone from 350 to 440 degrees Fahrenheit just in the last three years. Our goal is within two or three years, we go down to 500 degrees Fahrenheit. We're not there yet. There's still a lot of innovation we need to do to get to those temperatures. ... It's a bit of a race for us,' he said. Twenty wells have been rigged in Phase 1 of the Cape Station project. This phase will produce 100 megawatts of power and is expected to be commissioned next year. Phase 2 will produce 400 megawatts of power and will come online in 2028. '500 megawatts is big enough to make an impact all on its own,' Latimer said. But it's only the beginning. 'What we're doing here is proving that a new kind of geothermal works, and this is basically ground zero for what technology we think is going to transform the energy sector here in the United States and then around the world.' The cost of geothermal drilling previously dampened the aspirations of geothermal energy as an economically sound energy source. Operating the drilling site costs Fervo more than $150,000 per day. The first project in Nevada took 75 days to complete, which Latimer said was great at the time. 'But if that's all we could do from a drilling performance, geothermal would never (make) economic (sense).' The first well drilled in Utah took 43 days. A few months ago, a new record of 17 days was set, which they believe they can surpass. With a background in oil and gas, Latimer said it 'boggled his mind' when he looked into geothermal engineering and realized that no one in the industry was utilizing the latest technology. He said the response he often got was that they couldn't afford the 'fancy rigs.' 'The oil and gas industry isn't paying for high-spec, high-technology rigs because they're charitable or you get a warm and fuzzy feeling. They're paying for it because it delivers a performance that makes it worth it, even though you're paying the expanded technology cost,' Latimer emphasized. So, the company made the investment. It was the first time drilling rig contractor Helmerich & Payne, Inc. had used its modern rigs on a geothermal site. 'The first drilling rig I ever worked on in my career was an HP flex three rig, and it's the exact same stack of rig that we have out here on site,' Latimer said. 'When we started this company, a lot of people told us, 'those guys don't know what they're doing. Look, they're using those expensive rigs on geothermal.'' 'But, you know, we got the last laugh.'
