The QSE Roadmap and Journal is undergoing a major upgrade this week (Dec. 18-25) to a new graphical interface. Some of the Roadmap entries may be temporarily truncated: they will return after they have been converted. Happy Holidays to all!

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To apply for the UW ME Department's tenure-track faculty position(s) in quantum system engineering, please see this advertisement.

The ME Department encourages any and all qualified applicants, from both theoretical and experimental backgrounds, who seek to create and teach new technologies that push against the bounds that quantum mechanics imposes on the speed, accuracy, sensitivity, size, and power consumption of modern mechatronic devices.

This position provides a wonderful opportunity to participate in creating and teaching the new, exciting, strategically important, and rapidly growing engineering discipline of quantum system engineering (QSE).

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Entry #3: Friday, November 24, 2006

Welcome to the UW QSE Group's Roadmap and Journal. Each entry first comments upon our (working) QSE Roadmap, and then describes our recent activities.

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QSE Roadmap Comments

The Frontier of Feynman, von Neumann, and Pauling

Physicists Richard Feynman, John von Neumann, and Linus Pauling all worked on atomic-resolution microscopy, which they conceived as a vast new frontier for exploration and enterprise.

For links to original source material, please visit our web page Atomic-Resolution Microscopy: Roadmaps from the 1940s and 1950's.

High-resolution PDF versions: (top level), (lower level), (entire roadmap)

A central theme of the QSE Roadmap is that accelerating advances in nanotechnology, information theory, and quantum physics are now making it feasible for our 21st Century generation of scientists and engineers to finally achieve what the previous generation of Feynman, von Neumann, and Pauling—-and many preceding generations too—have dreamed of achieving: comprehensive atomic-resolution microscopy.

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Journal entry for Friday, November 24, 2006

Simulation Methods in Quantum Spin Microscopy

An emerging transformational capability—central to the QSE Roadmap—is that recent advances in quantum physics are making it possible, for the first time, for scientists and engineers to emulate with great accuracy even the subtle quantum effects that occur when MRFM devices observe single spins.

We will have a great deal more to say about quantum system emulation in the QSE Journal! To anticipate, click here to observe an end-to-end emulation of IBM's first single-spin MRFM experiment.

HWIL Control and Emulation in Quantum Spin Microscopy

The most complex part of any spacecraft is its mechatronic control system; MRFM devices are no different. Our QSE Group therefore borrows many engineering methods from our mechatronic colleagues.

The phrase Hardware-in-Loop (HWIL) emulation is widely used by mechatronic engineers to describe a powerful methodology that allows the development of complex mechatronic systems to proceed concurrently. This capability is sometimes called functional simulation; it means the numerical simulation of system behavior, coupled to physical actuation of subsystems, at a level of detail and accuracy sufficient to realistically emulate overall system performance.

The central idea of HWIL-based system engineering is to begin technology development programs by emulating all the subsystems of the device being designed. These HWIL emulations are created first, in advance of subsystem fabrication, and it is required that the behavior of each emulated subsystem be indistinguishable from the real subsystem that will eventually replace it.

HWIL Principles in Quantum System Engineering

The central strategic objective of our QSE Roadmap is to bring HWIL methods to bear on the rapid development of quantum technologies. Whenever our QSE Group uses the phrase "quantum system engineering," we are referring to levels of simulation realism that make HWIL-based quantum system engineering feasible.

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