Quantum Innovation 2021 (The International Symposium on Quantum Science, Technology and Innovation) will be held as a virtual conference from Tuesday, December 7th, through Thursday, December 9th.
The aim of this symposium is to introduce quantum information processing technology and its trends in practical applications through guest speeches and technical sessions of each field. We expect to share a common view on the current study status including implementation results both in Japan and abroad as well as to promote international collaborations through the meetings with key persons from each country. We look forward to your participation.

NICT proudly announces that Professor Dr. Andreas Dengel*, Executive Director of German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), awarded "the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon" of Japan in the autumn of 2021.

A real-time monitoring system from the geostationary orbit with high sensitivity to possibly track the progress of global warming

A study group consisting of the University of Electro-Communications (UEC), National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Meiji University, National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR), and Kyushu University has devised a method to observe noctilucent clouds (NLCs) appearing at 80-85 km altitude by focusing on the rim of the Earth captured in the disk images from the geostationary meteorological satellite Himawari 8. The group has established a real-time NLCs monitoring system using the satellite data. With the new monitoring method of NLCs or “Climate Canary”, contributions to studies related to climate changes including global warming are expected.

NICT's research paper on nitride superconducting qubit, published on Monday, September 20, 2021, was selected as a featured image highlight at <i>Communications Materials</i> (an open-access journal from Nature Research), so an optical micrograph image of a nitride superconducting qubit circuit is displayed as the main screen view of the journal.

-Contributing to safe data management in the fields of genomic research and medicine-

Toshiba Corporation, Tohoku University Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization (ToMMo), Tohoku University Hospital, and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) have developed a distributed storage technology that combines quantum cryptography communication and secret sharing technologies, successfully demonstrating the world’s first experimental large-scale genome analysis data backup to multiple sites. These technologies will allow data backup that prevents data leaks and tampering over long periods and are expected to contribute to safe data management in the fields of genomic research and medicine.

- New material platform for large-scale integration of superconducting qubits -

Researchers at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: TOKUDA Hideyuki, Ph.D.), in collaboration with researchers at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST, President: Dr. ISHIMURA Kazuhiko) and the Tokai National Higher Education and Research System Nagoya University (President: Dr. MATSUO Seiichi) have succeeded in developing an all-nitride superconducting qubit using epitaxial growth on a silicon substrate that does not use aluminum as the conductive material. This qubit uses niobium nitride (NbN) with a superconducting transition temperature of 16 K (-257 °C) as the electrode material, and aluminum nitride (AlN) for the insulating layer of the Josephson junction. It is a new type of qubit made of all-nitride materials grown epitaxially on a silicon substrate and free of any amorphous oxides, which are a major noise source. By realizing this new material qubit on a silicon substrate, long coherence times have been obtained: an energy relaxation time (T₁) of 16 microseconds and a phase relaxation time (T₂) of 22 microseconds as the mean values. This is about 32 times T₁ and about 44 times T₂ of nitride superconducting qubits grown on a conventional magnesium oxide substrate.

Providing information for Marunouchi Street Park 2021 Summer Event Manager & Visiting Attendees

The National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience (NIED; Haruo HAYASHI, President), the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT; Hideyuki TOKUDA, President), Japan Weather Association (JWA; Ken HARUTA, Chairman), Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Co., Ltd. (Shinichi HIROSE, President), Tokio Marine dR Co., Ltd. (Taizo SHIMAKURA, President & CEO), and Mitsubishi Estate Co., Ltd.(Junichi YOSHIDA, President & CEO) will conduct a proof-of-concept experiment to provide responsive weather forecasts with a 30-min lead time for event managers and attendees during the Marunouchi Street Park 2021 Summer event held from August 2nd to September 12th.

- Hijacking the command neuron governs Pavlovian conditioning -

The group lead by Executive Researcher, YOSHIHARA Motojiro, and Senior Researcher, SAKURAI Akira, at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Kobe (NICT, President: TOKUDA Hideyuki, Ph.D.) unraveled a neural correlate of Pavlovian conditioning. The feeding command neuron, which was discovered by the same group in the brain of fruit flies (Nature, 2013)1, was found to be hijacked by an originally-independent stimulus, leading to the conditioned response. Furthermore, the experimental system of Pavlovian conditioning made possible real-time observation of cell-cell connection for memory formation.
These results were published in Current Biology at 11 AM on August 4 (US Eastern Standard Time) in 2021.

The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: TOKUDA Hideyuki, Ph.D.), Sumitomo Osaka Cement Co., Ltd. (President: MOROHASHI　Hirotsune), and Waseda University (President: TANAKA Aiji) jointly developed the first transparent fiber-millimeter-wave-fiber system in the 100-GHz band using a low-loss broadband optical modulator with direct photonic down-conversion. The developed broadband modulator and photonic down-conversion technology were utilized to successfully demonstrate a high-speed transmission of more than 70 Gbit/s over a wired and wireless converged system consisting of two optical fiber links and a 20 m radio link at 101 GHz.

An international team of researchers from Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Boston University, University of Leicester, Space Research Corporation, and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), led by Dr. James O’Donoghue, found that Jupiter’s intense aurora, the most powerful in the solar system, is responsible for heating the entire planet’s upper atmosphere to surprisingly high temperatures.

– Toward efficient utilization of a new radio-communications resource between microwave and infrared light –

The National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: TOKUDA Hideyuki, Ph.D.) has developed a broadband and high-precision terahertz (THz) frequency counter based on a semiconductor-superlattice harmonic mixer. It showed a measurement uncertainty of less than 1 x 10-16 from 0.12 THz to 2.8 THz. This compact and easy-to-handle THz counter operating at room temperature suits for various THz applications supported by the next-generation ICT infrastructure, “Beyond 5G / 6G”.

- >120 nm signal bandwidth comprising 552 WDM channels and using both-doped fiber and Raman amplification -

Researchers from the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, President: TOKUDA Hideyuki, Ph.D.), Network Research Institute, succeeded the first S, C and L-bands transmission over long-haul distances in a 4-core optical fiber with standard outer diameter (0.125 mm). The researchers, lead by Benjamin J. Puttnam, constructed a transmission system that makes full use of wavelength division multiplexing technology by combining different amplifier technologies, to achieve a transmission demonstration with date-rate of 319 terabits per second, over a distance of 3,001 km. Using a common comparison metric of optical fiber transmission the data-rate and distance produce of 957 petabits per second x km, is a world record for optical fibers with standard outer diameter.