What do scientists do when they run up against a problem too tough for even the biggest and most powerful of modern supercomputers to solve?
You might think the answer lies in building something bigger and better than ever, but in fact, the next major revolution in computing is likely to involve harnessing physical phenomena that operate on the smallest imaginable scales of time and space. This is the realm of quantum computing.
Kate Fenwick, the latest recipient of the NRC Luise and Gerhard Herzberg Postdoctoral Fellowship, is pursuing a research pathway in ultrafast photonics that could one day open the door to building just such a quantum computer.
Supporting research excellence
For Kate, the Herzberg postdoctoral fellowship is an opportunity to continue with the NRC team she's been working with since 2019, first as a master's student at Queen's University, then as a PhD student at the University of Ottawa.
Kate describes her colleagues in the Quantum and Nanotechnologies Research Centre as "brilliant but also incredibly kind people," whose expertise is matched by their willingness to answer questions and share their knowledge with trainees.
"That's a huge driving factor for me," she says, adding that the NRC's outstanding laboratory facilities and dedicated technical support staff have also been indispensable in moving her research forward.
Toward the future of computing
Kate's doctoral thesis on all-optical quantum information processing in the ultrafast regime builds on foundations in ultrafast optics laid over the course of her academic career.
As a master's student supervised by Dr. James Fraser—the Queen's professor who inspired Kate to pursue physics from her early undergraduate days onwards—Kate investigated the dynamics of ultrathin sheets of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), a material known for its ability to act as a direct band gap semiconductor.
While completing her master's, she spent 8 months at the NRC as a co-op student with the ultrafast quantum photonics group led by Dr. Ben Sussman. There, she came into contact with researchers working on the application of photonics to quantum computing, notably through a technique called ultrafast time-bin encoding, where information is encoded in the arrival time of photons.
The experience was a stepping stone to developing her own interest in photonics-based quantum computing, an interest she pursued in her doctoral studies at the University of Ottawa while continuing to work with the ultrafast quantum photonics team.
"The opportunity to explore new applications of ultrafast optics was really why I decided to stay on," Kate says. "I thought the research here was cool. I was able to take what I had learned in the master's and use it in my PhD research."
Scaling up
As a Herzberg postdoctoral fellow, Kate will continue to work on ultrafast time-bin encoding. The next goal is to scale up the platform she and her colleagues have been working on beyond its current single-photon operating principle.
"Operating with more photons is the bigger goal because this is really where the power of the quantum computation comes in," she explains. "The more photons that you add to your system, the more complex it gets. And this is where quantum computers could really start to outperform classical computers."
Kate is also looking forward to making use of the NRC's recently installed photon-number-resolving detectors. These devices with unique capabilities were developed by a Canadian quantum computing company with support from Innovative Solutions Canada.
"These new photon-number-resolving detectors would enable us to tell how many photons arrive in a given time bin, making our information processing protocol more powerful and giving us access to more information than we currently have."
Honouring a scientific legacy
Kate, who hails from Calgary, Alberta, is the second recipient of the Herzberg fellowship, created in 2022 and awarded each year to a recent PhD graduate who identifies as a woman and who has demonstrated research excellence. The fellowship commemorates the contributions of Drs. Luise and Gerhard Herzberg to science. The ultrafast quantum photonics laboratories where Kate works at 100 Sussex Drive in Ottawa are just steps away from the office Dr. Gerhard Herzberg used during his illustrious career at the NRC.
Interested in applying?
Learn more about the NRC Luise and Gerhard Herzberg Postdoctoral Fellowship.