June 16, 2021.  CSC has created a Technical Committee on Quantum due to increased attention to “quantum” worldwide. As chairs of this new committee, we would like to describe what we had in mind in forming it and solicit interest from CSC members who would like to participate.

Quantum physics has always been one of nature’s most important tools for operating the universe, yet humans have made tremendous strides in the last few years in using quantum information for advancing strictly human interests. The new “quantum 2.0” is based on human understanding of the properties of quantum information and operations on that information. Humans then engineer everything from scientific experiments to products based on deliberate manipulation of quantum information.

Contributed by Tony Przybysz, SNF Co-editor Electronics (digital & quantum computing)

Image credit to https://ictreverse.com/what-are-quantum-computers-and-why-are-they-impor...

Read Full Article by Erik P. DeBenedictis and Elie Track

February 5, 2021 (HP146). Circular Electron Positron Collider, Super Proton Proton Collider (CEPC-SPPC) and Future Circular Collider have been proposed by IHEP-CAS in China and CERN in Europe, for the advanced fundamental physics study in future. The high-energy accelerators for these colliders demand a large quantity of high field magnets with the requirement of significantly lower cost and superconducting materials with the capability of an application in high fields [1].

The iron-based superconductor (IBS), which was discovered in 2008, is a promising candidate for high field applications because of its high upper critical field, moderate critical temperature, strong current carrying capacity, and lower anisotropy. In 2016, the Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IEE, CAS) has successfully manufactured the 1st 100-m long 7-filamentary Sr_1−xK_xFe₂As₂ (Sr122) IBS tape using the low-cost powder-in-tube process [2]. In 2019, the IBS solenoid coils were fabricated and tested successfully at 24 T, indicating the possibility of fabricating practical IBS coils; however, the wire length of the IBS solenoid coil was only about half meter [3, 4]. Therefore, the important issue now is to make sure that the long IBS wires can be adapted to the high field magnets, especially accelerator magnets; furthermore, to find out what needs to be solved in the next step.

Contributed by Herbert Freyhardt, SNF Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Co-editor Materials

Read Full Paper by Yanwei Ma et al