Quantum Key Distribution for the undergraduate curriculum.

Norbert Lütkenhaus

Justin K. Perron, Charles J. De Leone, Shahed Sharif +4 more

Currently, education and workforce training in quantum information science and technology (QIST) exists primarily at the graduate and postdoctoral levels, with few undergraduate efforts beginning to grow out of these. In order to meet the anticipated quantum workforce needs and to ensure that the workforce is demographically representative and inclusive to all communities, the United States must expand these efforts at the undergraduate level beyond what is occurring at larger PhD granting institutions and incorporate quantum information science into the curriculum at the nation's predominantly undergraduate institutions (PUIs). On June 3rd and 4th, 2021 the Quantum Undergraduate Education and Scientific Training (QUEST) workshop was held virtually with the goal of bringing together faculty from PUIs to learn the state of undergraduate QIST education, identify challenges associated with implementing QIST curriculum at PUIs, and to develop strategies and solutions to deal with these challenges. This manuscript summarizes the results of workshop discussions with the hope of assisting faculty at PUIs attempting to incorporate quantum information science into their curriculum.

Juan Rafael Álvarez, Andres Martinez, Alejandra Valencia

We present an educational activity for measuring Wigner distribution functions of quantum states of light in the undergraduate laboratory. The activity was implemented by undergraduate students in different courses of the undergraduate curriculum, and the resulting activity was tested by different students of an introductory Quantum Optics course at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. The activity consists of a two-hour laboratory practice where students work in a pre-aligned experimental setup and then use an open-access, custom made computational graphical user interface that enables the reconstruction of the Wigner distribution function. Since the testing of the activity coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, the possibility of analyzing simulated data was included in the computational user interface. The activity is now running for in-person classes and its virtual feature is now valuable for the implementation of distance learning of Quantum Optics.

Masahiro Takeoka

James Clemens, Perry R. Rice

We review research and teaching experiences with undergraduates using quantum trajectory theory instead of density matrices for open systems. This approach builds on preliminary work in the curriculum on quantum mechanics using wave functions.

Ramona Wolf