Nikolas Breuckmann
{{Short description|German mathematical physicist}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name = Nikolas P. Breuckmann
| image =
| alt = Nikolas Breuckmann
| birth_place = Duisburg, Germany
| fields = {{ubl| Physics (theoretical) | Mathematics |Computer science}}
| alma_mater = RWTH Aachen University, Germany
| thesis_title = Homological Quantum Codes Beyond the Toric Code
| thesis_url = https://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.01520.pdf
| thesis_year = 2017
| doctoral_advisor = Barbara Terhal
| doctoral_students =
| known_for = {{ubl| Proof of NLTS conjecture | Quantum computing}}
| awards = James Clerk Maxwell Medal & Prize (2023)
| work_institution = {{ubl| University College London | University of Bristol}}
}}
Nikolas P. Breuckmann (born 1988) is a German mathematical physicist affiliated with the University of Bristol, England.{{Cite web |title=Dr Nikolas Breuckmann - Our People |url=https://www.bristol.ac.uk/people |access-date=2023-12-22 |website=www.bristol.ac.uk |language=en}}{{Cite web |title=People – UCL CS Quantum |url=https://quantum.cs.ucl.ac.uk/people/ |access-date=2023-12-24 |website=quantum.cs.ucl.ac.uk}} He is, as of Spring 2024, a visiting scientist and program organizer at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at the University of California, Berkeley.{{Cite web |title=Current Long-Term Visitors |url=https://simons.berkeley.edu/people/visitors |access-date=2024-01-14 |website=Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing |language=en}} His research focuses on quantum information theory, in particular quantum error correction and quantum complexity theory. He is known for his work (together with Anurag Anshu and Chinmay Nirkhe) on proving the NLTS conjecture, a famous open problem in quantum information theory.
Education and early life
Breuckmann was born in Duisburg and grew up in Waltrop, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. He earned a BSc in Mathematics and a BSc, an MSc and a PhD in Physics from RWTH Aachen University. His doctoral thesis was titled "Homological Quantum Codes Beyond the Toric Code" and he was supervised by Barbara Terhal.{{Citation |last=Breuckmann |first=Nikolas P. |title=PhD thesis: Homological Quantum Codes Beyond the Toric Code |date=2018-02-05 |arxiv=1802.01520}}
Career and research
After his PhD, he deferred his University College London Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Quantum Technologies funded by EPSRC for a year to work for Palo Alto-based quantum computing start-up PsiQuantum, which was co-founded by Jeremy O'Brien and Terry Rudolph (among other scientists).
In 2022, he became Lecturer (Assistant Professor){{Cite web |title=Nikolas Breuckmann |url=https://simons.berkeley.edu/people/nikolas-breuckmann |access-date=2023-12-22 |website=Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing |language=en}} in Quantum Computing Theory at the University of Bristol.
In 2023, he was awarded the James Clerk Maxwell Medal and Prize by the Institute of Physics for his "outstanding contributions to the quantum error correction field, particularly work on proving the no low-energy trivial state conjecture, a famous open problem in quantum information theory".{{Cite web |title=2023 James Clerk Maxwell Medal and Prize |url=https://www.iop.org/about/awards/2023-james-clerk-maxwell-medal-and-prize |website=Institute of Physics}}{{Cite web |last=Bristol |first=University of |title=2023: Dr Nikolas Breuckmann awarded the '2023 James Clerk Maxwell Medal and Prize' {{!}} School of Mathematics {{!}} University of Bristol |url=https://www.bristol.ac.uk/maths/news/2023/dr-nikolas-breuckmann-awarded-the-2023-james-clerk-maxwell-medal-and-prize.html |access-date=2023-12-23 |website=www.bristol.ac.uk |language=en-GB}} Quanta Magazine described the proof as "one of the biggest developments in theoretical computer science".{{Cite web |last=Rorvig |first=Mordechai |date=18 July 2022 |title=Computer Science Proof Unveils Unexpected Form of Entanglement |url=https://www.quantamagazine.org/computer-science-proof-lifts-limits-on-quantum-entanglement-20220718/}}{{Cite web |last=Andrews |first=Bill |date=December 21, 2022 |title=The Year in Computer Science |url=https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-biggest-discoveries-in-computer-science-in-2022-20221221/ |website=Quanta}}{{Cite web |last=Bristol |first=University of |title=2022: Nikolas Breuckmann announces proof {{!}} School of Mathematics {{!}} University of Bristol |url=https://www.bristol.ac.uk/maths/news/2022/nikolas-breuckmann-announces-proof.html |access-date=2023-12-24 |website=www.bristol.ac.uk |language=en-GB}} This result built on his introduction with Jens Eberhardt of “Balanced Product Quantum Codes”.{{Cite journal |title=Balanced Product Quantum Codes |url=https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9490244 |access-date=2023-12-25 |doi=10.1109/TIT.2021.3097347 |s2cid=229297848 |date=2021 |last1=Breuckmann |first1=Nikolas P. |last2=Eberhardt |first2=Jens N. |journal=IEEE Transactions on Information Theory |volume=67 |issue=10 |pages=6653–6674 |arxiv=2012.09271 }}{{Cite web |date=2021-02-09 |title=Building the future of quantum error correction |url=https://research.ibm.com/blog/future-quantum-error-correction |access-date=2023-12-23 |website=IBM Research Blog |language=en-US}}
The NLTS conjecture posits that there exist families of Hamiltonians with all low-energy states of non-trivial complexity. It was formulated in 2013 by Fields Medallist Michael Freedman and Matthew Hastings at Microsoft Research. The conjecture was proven by Breuckmann and colleagues (Anurag Anshu and Chinmay Nirkhe) by showing that the recently discovered families of constant-rate and linear-distance low-density parity-check (LDPC) quantum codes correspond to NLTS local Hamiltonians.{{Cite book |last1=Anshu |first1=Anurag |last2=Breuckmann |first2=Nikolas P. |last3=Nirkhe |first3=Chinmay |chapter=NLTS Hamiltonians from Good Quantum Codes |date=2023-06-02 |title=Proceedings of the 55th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing |chapter-url=https://doi.org/10.1145/3564246.3585114 |series=STOC 2023 |location=New York, NY, USA |publisher=Association for Computing Machinery |pages=1090–1096 |doi=10.1145/3564246.3585114 |arxiv=2206.13228 |isbn=978-1-4503-9913-5|s2cid=250072529 }}{{Cite web |date=2023-02-04 |title=Quantum Information Processing 2023 |url=https://indico.cern.ch/event/1175020/timetable/?view=standard |access-date=2023-12-24 |website=Indico |language=en}} This result is a step towards proving the quantum PCP conjecture, considered the most important open problem in quantum complexity theory. {{citation needed|date=January 2024}}
He and his former doctoral student Oscar Higgott are inventors of a U.S. patent titled “Subsystem codes with high thresholds by gauge fixing and reduced qubit overhead”, which concerns a technique to significantly improve the performance of quantum error correction in quantum computers.{{Cite patent|number=20230071000|title=Quantum Computing Error Correction Method, Code, and System|gdate=2023-03-09|invent1=Higgott|invent2=Breuckmann|inventor1-first=Oscar|inventor2-first=Nikolas P.|url=https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2023/0071000.html}} Their related work was included as a major development for computer science in 2023 by Quanta.{{Citation |last1=Higgott |first1=Oscar |title=Constructions and performance of hyperbolic and semi-hyperbolic Floquet codes |date=2023-08-07 |arxiv=2308.03750 |last2=Breuckmann |first2=Nikolas P.}}{{Cite web |last=Wood |first=Charlie |date=August 25, 2023 |title=New Codes Could Make Quantum Computing 10 Times More Efficient |url=https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-codes-could-make-quantum-computing-10-times-more-efficient-20230825/ |website=Quanta}}{{Cite web |last=Andrews |first=Bill |date=December 20, 2023 |title=The Year in Computer Science |url=https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-biggest-discoveries-in-computer-science-in-2023-20231220/ |website=Quanta}}
References
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Category:German mathematicians