Harvard Researchers and Amazon Collaborate to Launch Boston’s First Quantum Network
Harvard physicists took a giant step towards full-scale quantum internet networks this month, creating the longest quantum network so far with cables running between Boston and Cambridge.
In collaboration with Amazon Web Services, researchers led by University Professor Mikhail D. Lukin successfully transmitted qubits — bits of quantum information — between two quantum nodes in the Laboratory of Integrated Science and Engineering. The nodes were connected by 35 kilometers of existing telecommunications fiber running in a loop through Boston and Cambridge, according to the Harvard Gazette, a University-run publication.
The work, led by Lukin — a co-director of the Harvard Quantum Science and Engineering Initiative — and Can M. Knaut, a researcher in Lukin’s lab group, was done alongside Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics professor Marko Lončar, Chemistry professor Hongkun Park, and Bart J. Machielse, a research scientist at AWS. The group’s findings were published in Nature in May.
These advancements have the potential to revolutionize various fields, according to Knaut. For instance, quantum networks could enable ultra-secure data transmission, protecting sensitive information on quantum computers. They could also transform astronomical observations, allowing telescopes to extract “exponentially more information” from light.
“There’s a wide variety of applications in this technology for long-distance communication, which is sort of long-distance ultra-secure communication, which is really what we were trying to prove out of here,” Machielse said.
The research, though, has been years in the making.
“This idea of actually using multiple network nodes and connecting them via deployed fiber is something we’ve been working on for a long time. And it’s just a very important demonstration of the fact that this technology works in real-world environments,"”he said.
Lukin — who began working on quantum networks nearly 25 years ago — wrote in a statement that the work is “necessary and important” because “as quantum computers are becoming a reality, there is a need to wire them up into a quantum network.”
“Showing that quantum network nodes can be entangled in the real-world environment of a very busy urban area is an important step toward practical networking between quantum computers,” Lukin told the Gazette.
Knaut said that the fact that the experiment was conducted in the real world — as opposed to a controlled lab environment — meant that the researchers had to approach their work differently.
“We had to basically work with what we were given,” Knaut said. “You have to really relinquish a little bit of your ability to control every small aspect and more focus on optimizing the final output you care about — and that was a change in operations as compared to other experiments in the lab where you can at least try to control every single aspect.”
Machielse — who was a doctoral student under Lukin — said that doing the experiment “in the real world” was crucial to showing the success of the technology.
“In principle, the fundamental science, we always knew that it was there,” Machielse said. “But really the novelty of this experiment is actually been stringing all of this together and showing that it works when you actually do this in the real world, because it wasn’t clear that would come together.”
The experiment came with challenges, including preventing environmental disturbances and ensuring precision “up to the nanosecond,” according to Knaut. The setup, which mimicked realistic network operations, faced additional difficulties from noise sources introduced by the deployed fiber.
With a successful demonstration in Boston, the researchers are now planning to improve the technology and expand the size of the network.
“The key technology that would be necessary to build these large quantum networks is being built,” Knaut said, adding that a demonstration could be possible “in the next couple of years.”
But while Lukin wrote that the research “is still in the early stage,” he added it had the potential to change modern-day communication technology.
“This approach can result in a new way of communication that is both secure and equitable,” he wrote.
—Staff writer Mandy Zhang can be reached at mandy.zhang@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @mandyzhang08.
Harvard Will Refrain From Controversial Statements About Public Policy Issues
Updated May 28, 2024, at 12:34 p.m.
After months of grappling with a campus fractured by a polarizing debate over the Israel-Hamas war, Harvard announced on Tuesday that the University and its leadership will refrain from taking official positions on controversial public policy issues.
The University’s new stance followed a report produced from a faculty-led “Institutional Voice” working group, which advised leadership to not “issue official statements about public matters that do not directly affect the university’s core function.” Interim Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 wrote in an email that he accepted the working group’s recommendations, which were also endorsed by the Harvard Corporation, the University’s highest governing body.
“There will be close cases where reasonable people disagree about whether a given issue is or is not directly related to the core function of the university,” the report stated. “The university’s policy in those situations should be to err on the side of avoiding official statements.”
The policy will apply to all University administrators and governing board members, as well as deans, department chairs, and faculty councils, according to the working group.
The new guidelines come just months after former Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned following fierce criticism over her initial statement after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, a scenario that the University hopes to never repeat with this new stance.
The “Institutional Voice” recommendations bring Harvard closer in line with peer universities that have adopted stances of institutional neutrality, but the working group’s report and Garber’s announcement were careful to highlight that the University will not be neutral.
“Our report argues that the University is fundamentally committed to a non-neutral set of values specifically, getting to the truth by experiment, open inquiry, and debate,” said Noah R. Feldman ’92, who co-chaired the working group and serves as a Harvard Law School professor.
“The University is regularly under attack today, as truth itself is under attack,” Feldman added. “This report says the University should not be neutral in that important matter of the future of universities.”
The announcement is part of a broader effort by Garber to guide Harvard out of crisis and safeguard the University against the type of attacks it faced last fall. Garber also established a working group on open inquiry and twin presidential task forces to combat antisemitism and anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias.
The “Institutional Voice” working group’s report never mentioned the controversy that contributed to Gay’s resignation or mentioned her by name. Still, the report contained several thinly veiled references to the events of last fall, when more than 30 student groups signed a statement that held Israel “entirely responsible” for Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on the country, which forced Gay to publicly distance herself and the University from the statement.
“Individuals within the university, exercising their academic freedom, sometimes make statements that occasion strong disagreement,” the report stated. “When this happens, the university should clarify that they do not speak for the university and that no one is authorized to speak on behalf of the university except the university’s leadership.”
Just like Gay faced backlash from both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine Harvard affiliates, the group noted that any statement on a controversial public issue will likely anger somebody.
“Because few, if any, world events can be entirely isolated from conflicting viewpoints, issuing official empathy statements runs the risk of alienating some members of the community by expressing implicit solidarity with others,” the group wrote.
In his Tuesday email, which was co-signed by 17 other top administrators, Garber wrote that “the process of translating these principles into concrete practice will, of course, require time and experience.”
The group, overseen by interim Harvard Provost John F. Manning ’82 and led by Feldman and Philosophy professor Alison J. Simmons, came to the conclusion in less than two months that Harvard officials should default to not making statements, although the University had been planning the effort to consider institutional neutrality since at least February.
Though the report will serve as a document that Garber and future University leaders can refer to when they are pressured to release a public statement, the report’s carefully worded language also provides administrators with enough flexibility to issue statements when they deem necessary to do so.
While administrators should not make statements on behalf of the University regarding external events, the statement clarified that some centers and clinics which advocate specific policies should continue to do so, but should not “purport to speak on behalf of the university or beyond their domain expertise” or “extend their zone of expertise unreasonably.”
The institutional voice group is the first of four task forces deployed by Garber to address controversies surrounding the University to issue recommendations. While the co-chairs of the task forces to address antisemitism and anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bias said they would release their recommendations in the spring, the groups later pushed their timeline to the fall.
Implementing an effective statement of neutrality is Garber’s first major policy change since he clarified protest rules and restrictions in January. The relative speed of the working group’s deliberations suggests that the policy to refrain from statements enjoyed broad support from the University’s stakeholders.
The statement notably does not address decisions surrounding University investment and divestment decisions, the issue at the heart of a wave of pro-Palestine campus protests and a 20-day encampment in Harvard Yard.
In 2020, then-Harvard President Lawrence S. Bacow committed the University to gradually phasing out its investment in fossil fuels on the grounds that “climate change is a defining issue of our time.” At an April 30 town hall meeting, Garber told faculty that divesting from weapons manufacturing was different from fossil fuels because there was less of a consensus around that issue.
“There is a big difference between an issue in which there is close to unanimity about whether or not we should invest in an asset class, which was the case around fossil fuels, and the situation we are in now,” Garber said, according to a transcript from an attendee.
Feldman said the working group did not consider financial decisions a “statement in words” and that the University could still choose to divest under the new policy.
“It’s totally appropriate for the University to explain its position on investment or divestment,” Feldman said. “But we don’t think that our recommendations on institutional voice dictate an answer.”
“That's an independent decision for the University,” he added.
Institutional neutrality became a serious topic of conversation in October, with many affiliates pointing to the University of Chicago’s 1967 Kalven report as a model to avoid future controversy.
Feldman said that because the Kalven report is more than 50 years old, it does not accurately reflect “the way that that issue ought to be considered today.”
“Most people today don't believe that it's possible or desirable for a university to be genuinely neutral,” Feldman said. “The University, just by its mere existence, and by doing the things it does, is necessarily invested in certain non-neutral beliefs and values.”
“The University is not value neutral,” Feldman added.
—Staff writer Emma H. Haidar can be reached at emma.haidar@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @HaidarEmma.
—Staff writer Cam E. Kettles can be reached at cam.kettles@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @cam_kettles or on Threads @camkettles.