Dusseldorf It is perhaps the most exciting technology duel of the decade: superconductors versus ion traps, technology giants versus spin-offs from the universities, “mad news” versus “conservative communication”: At least that’s how Jan Henrik Leisse, co-founder and head of the German quantum computer startup oops Electron.
Almost nobody knows his company, but that could change soon. Eleqtron is one of five companies commissioned by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to build novel quantum computers based on so-called ion traps. It could thus help achieve a breakthrough in a basic technology that has been raising high expectations in industry for decades.
Quantum computers are supposed to solve arithmetic tasks that today’s supercomputers fail to do: find new medicines, break cryptographic keys and solve logistical problems. The IT giants Google and IBM like to give the impression that they will make up the so-called quantum supremacy among themselves. But many scientists question this and rely on completely different approaches.
For many experts, the favorite among the alternatives: the ion trap. Research institutes and investors therefore consider it possible that spin-offs from leading German scientific institutions could succeed in achieving quantum superiority over Google and IBM.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
However, a lot more research needs to be done before quantum computers, regardless of their design, can fulfill their promise. The DLR project is all the more important. From the point of view of Jan Henrik Leisse, the competing superconductor technology has made hardly any significant progress recently.
Christof Wunderlich, Jan Henrik Leisse and Michael Johanning (from left) have secured funding for their work.
(Photo: Electron)
The ion trap is different: “I think ion traps are on the rise. What’s missing is the money: the billions in volume like in the field of superconductors didn’t exist here until now,” he says. But now DLR is investing a total of 208.5 million euros. The selected companies are to build prototype quantum computers based on ion traps within four years.
DLR CEO Anke Kaysser-Pyzalla says: “We are taking a further step towards a programmable, fault-tolerant quantum computer.”
The allocation is a great success for Eleqtron. The company was spun off from the University of Siegen in 2020 and is based on 25 years of research by quantum optics professor Christof Wunderlich. The start-up won two partial tenders in a consortium with the Dutch chip manufacturer NXP and the Austrian technology provider Parity Quantum Computing. The partners will now receive 82 million euros.
At the core of all quantum computing approaches is the realization that elementary particles can assume more than just one state. The physicist Erwin Schrödinger designed his famous thought experiment with a cat that is dead and alive at the same time.
Similarly, the smallest information units of quantum computers, called qubits, can represent not only zero or one like the bits in conventional computers, but also any value in between.
What speaks for the ion trap and why it is so far less well known
The different approaches answer the question of how this condition can be controlled in different ways. With the so-called superconductors, which IBM, Google and the German-Finnish start-up IQM are working on, the computing operations take place on chips that have to be cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero of minus 273 degrees.
The Eleqtron consortium, on the other hand, uses a “trap” for electrically charged atoms. These so-called ions are controlled with the help of electromagnetic fields. According to Leisse, the “huge advantage” over superconductors: “Every atom is the same. On the other hand, as soon as you produce chips and try to map quantum mechanical processes on them, you have man-made errors.”
In this system, the elementary particles are controlled with electromagnetic fields.
(Photo: Electron)
What is also special about the Siegen-based approach: Eleqtron does not activate the atoms with a laser, but with microwaves – and in doing so wants to avoid addressing more atoms than intended: “Imagine you had to shine a flashlight on an atom,” says Leisse . The light would always scatter onto surrounding atoms. “With microwaves you have no scattering.”
Not only DLR relies on this approach, some of which is protected by patents. The three-strong founding team, which includes Leisse and Wunderlich as well as the scientist Michael Johanning, collected more than 30 million euros in funding and investor capital even before the DLR contract.
The well-known venture capitalist Earlybird is involved with six million euros – and is thus betting a bit against Big Tech: “IBM, Google and Co. relied on superconductor quantum computers very early on, and at the same time a lot has happened in research since the turn of the millennium says partner Frédéric du Bois-Reymond. It makes sense to look at younger companies here.
At Eleqtron, he was particularly impressed by the work with microwaves, says the investor, who has focused on spin-offs from universities and research institutes with Earlybird’s Uni-X fund.
The tender is being followed with great interest in the European quantum computer scene. Quantum computers with ion traps are a “very exciting technology,” says Claudia Linnhoff-Popien, who, as a professor at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, deals with the topic, among other things. So far, however, the considerations have mainly been on paper – she hopes that the approach with the “very high research budget” can be made economically viable.
>> Read also: Professors as investment scouts – This is how investor Earlybird wants to find the best university spin-offs
Jan Henrik Leisse, on the other hand, is cautious. “The Americans in particular have presented a neck-and-neck race with insane reports,” says the Eleqtron co-founder – which is unbelievable for the scientific world. “I think there are a lot of demands from investors on the stock exchange behind it. It has to go on somehow, and you’re reaching for the stars more and more.”
His motto: “Communicate conservatively”. It will “take a while” until a result that can really be used by the end user, he says. Nevertheless, he appeals to companies in the fields of medicine, chemistry and logistics to prepare for the quantum age. Otherwise there would be major competition problems as soon as quantum computing becomes usable.
>> Now also read: 30 percent fewer start-ups – only one industry is developing positively
And then he ventures a forecast that could fuel great expectations: “We expect that with 54 qubits on an ion trap-based quantum computer, the advantage over all supercomputers is there.”
A look at the DLR announcement shows that ion trap quantum computers with at least 50 qubits should already be available after the four-year DLR project period. At least as an aside, DLR Quantum Computing Director Robert Axmann promises that these “can be expanded to thousands of qubits.”
More: How Germany wants to catch up in quantum technology