Symposium: QUANTUM THEORY, QUANTUM MATERIALS, QUANTUM COMPUTING

After celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2020, the Sanibel Symposium was forced into an unprecedented hiatus in 2021 by the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, the second year of the planned five-consecutive-year thematic program, Quantum Theory, Quantum Materials, Quantum Computing (the Q3), is set for 2022. The big vision is for physicists, chemists, materials scientists, computer scientists, and applied mathematicians to exchange ideas and provocative questions critical to advances in quantum information sciences (QIS) over the extended half-decade (2020-2025).Quantum mechanics determines the behavior of electrons. That governs chemical reactions, determines material properties, and, therefore, digital technology as we know it. But doing quantum mechanics with software based on algorithms optimized for quantum computers, rather than today's conventional machines, promises greater advances. Achieving that requires practical QIS hardware and algorithms for its use, as the current quantum computers from Microsoft, Google, IBM, IonQ, D-Wave and others demonstrate. What are the best materials for making qubits or qudits or elements for error correction, especially given the need for integration with the existing conventional silicon-based digital technology? In algorithms, are today's many-electron quantum mechanical approaches and approximations best suited for quantum computation or do neglected formulations have higher potential payoff? Are developments in QIS being conveyed to graduate students and post-doctoral associates with the clarity, swiftness, and depth needed for essential workforce development?The Q3 thematic program was introduced to meet this class of questions by taking advantage of the Sanibel Symposium's unique focus on theory and computation and its intrinsic, carefully fostered interdisciplinarity. The programming is adaptive to recent and emerging science. For Year 2, the plenary speaker program will consist of five sessions (fifteen speakers) devoted to aspects of QIS including quantum materials and QIS-relevant chemical and physical phenomena. Contributed papers that focus on these issues will be selected by the organizers for 'hot topic' oral presentation sessions. The funding sought in this proposal is directly for the workforce development.The Sanibel Symposia have an unbroken tradition of no-parallel sessions, senior faculty presenting posters right next to graduate students, intense, productive informal discussions, and cutting edge plenary speakers. The 60-year history is marked by innovation, advancement, and barrier-breaking between theoretical and computational chemists and physicists, computer scientists, and engineers. The Symposia have driven progress in methods and algorithms for materials, nanostructures, and their molecular constituents, thus are well-suited for advancing the QIS thrust in the Office of Basic Energy Sciences.