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An hour before the event, at 8:10, he left to head to the airport for today's farewell ceremony for Mr. Yang Zhenning in Beijing. Last night (October 23rd), a "Quantum Night Talk" held at Fudan University's School of Journalism featured Pan Jianwei, a leading figure in quantum technology in China, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the executive vice president of the University of Science and Technology of China.
Pan Jianwei and Professor Zhang Lifen from the journalism school discussed the most "mind-bending" concepts in quantum physics. "Last year, Professor Lifen suggested I come to Fudan to explain quantum mechanics to humanities students. It’s a tough subject, and I've prepared extensively," he opened with a smile.
This year marks the centenary of quantum theory, and once again, the Nobel Prize has turned its gaze towards this field. Just yesterday, Google's quantum computing team announced they had surpassed classical supercomputers by about 13,000 times in detecting "quantum echoes"—making this lecture perfectly timed. Over the two-hour talk, abstract concepts like quantum superposition and entanglement were made relatable and enjoyable by Pan Jianwei, eliciting constant laughter from the audience.
From the "Mozi" satellite to the quantum "Beijing-Shanghai Line," and from "Nine Chapters" to "Zu Chongzhi," Pan Jianwei has led his team to break technological limits repeatedly, producing internationally significant results. This relentless progress is rooted in the team spirit—working in three shifts to compete against international frontiers. When discussing the recently departed Mr. Yang Zhenning, whose impact on him and the Chinese scientific community is profound, he adopted a serious tone.
"A racing car driver took five years to build a 'racing car' with immense effort." On October 18th, upon learning of Yang Zhenning's passing, Pan Jianwei promptly wrote a tribute, stating, "Mr. Yang Zhenning's life exemplifies scientific exploration and serves as a beacon of spiritual inheritance, leaving a brilliant example for future generations."
At Professor Zhang Lifen's suggestion, before the event, the entire audience stood for a moment of silence to pay respects to this towering figure in Chinese science.
Mr. Yang Zhenning once stated, "Perhaps my greatest contribution in life is not the Nobel Prize, but rather changing the perception that Chinese people are inferior to foreigners." This statement has inspired many young Chinese to pursue careers in science, and as one of the beneficiaries, Pan Jianwei feels it deeply.
Since 2008, Pan Jianwei has led a domestic team into the realm of ultracold atomic quantum control and quantum simulation. At that time, the domestic foundation in this field was still weak, and it was Yang Zhenning's accurate insight into scientific frontiers that bolstered Pan Jianwei's team's confidence. They began constructing an ultracold atomic experimental platform in 2010, achieving breakthroughs after six years of hard work. In 2017, they became the first to experimentally verify the quantum criticality of one-dimensional Bose gases in a light lattice ultracold atomic system, a theory framework stemming from Yang Zhenning's earlier model of finite-temperature quantum integrable systems, showcasing a perfect connection between the two generations of scientists.
On stage, Pan Jianwei mentioned that Mr. Yang Zhenning’s assistance extended beyond academia. Early in his return to China, he experienced competition and misunderstandings with his advisor, Professor Anton Zeilinger, who won the Nobel Prize in 2022. Upon learning, Yang Zhenning took the initiative to invite Professor Zeilinger to visit China to facilitate personal communication. This "ice-breaking" journey reignited their cooperation on the "Mozi" quantum satellite project, ultimately achieving the first intercontinental quantum secure communication, maintaining a good collaborative partnership to this day.
As the launch of the "Mozi" quantum satellite neared on August 16, 2016, Pan Jianwei and Professor Anton Zeilinger found themselves at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, further emphasizing the necessity of international collaboration in long-term development despite any push for "de-sinicization."
The field of quantum computing is evolving rapidly, and just yesterday, Google announced groundbreaking results from the Willow quantum chip in *Nature*, demonstrating a new algorithm for "quantum echoes" that outpaces the strongest classical supercomputers by 13,000 times, with results that can be validated repeatedly. Google's statement suggests this algorithm brings humanity closer to building quantum computers that could drive significant discoveries in medicine and materials science. Pan Jianwei lauded this achievement as a "nice piece of work," a natural outcome of technological advancement.
Google's blog detailed a four-step process: forward operation, perturbing qubits, reverse operation, and measuring outcomes. As highlighted by the renowned science magazine *New Scientist*, Pan Jianwei's team has firmly placed China on the quantum computing map. Today, both Pan Jianwei’s team and Google are among the world's leading forces in quantum computing.
Addressing the current challenges posed by equipment embargoes in the international arena, he offered a vivid metaphor: "It’s like having the best racing driver but no race car, so we need to build the race car first." To this end, his team actively leverages China's mature industrial base to tackle key development bottlenecks in equipment and material manufacturing, "holding their breath" to resolve hardware limitations hindering advancement.
Responding to a journalism student's inquiry about the potential limitation of theoretical development amidst scientific progress, Pan Jianwei reflected on Yang Zhenning's question: "Why did modern technology not emerge in China?" He argued that ancient Chinese thinkers tended toward one of two extremes: purely philosophical speculation or practical application without consideration for scientific principles, a gap that still exists today, inhibiting scientific development. "Theory and technology are inseparable. Bridging the gap between them allows for limitless possibilities in science, which is the greatest innovation."
The intersection of physics and philosophy suggests quantum mechanics may exemplify the existence of autonomous consciousness. Where do we come from? Where are we going? In addressing this eternal question, religion weaves beautiful myths, while science offers rational thinking and quantifiable methods. From historical and philosophical perspectives, Pan Jianwei shared his understanding of quantum mechanics and future technologies.
Reflecting on the history of classical physics, he noted that after Newton established mechanics, humanity gained the ability to calculate celestial movements; Maxwell unified light, electricity, and magnetism into a single equation, reshaping our understanding of the world. This marked the first scientific revolution, leading to both the first and second industrial revolutions.
However, classical physics posits that knowing the initial state allows precise predictions of all future states of particles. Does this imply a mechanistic determinism? "Are all events, including my lecture today, predetermined since the universe's inception? Does personal effort still hold meaning?" Pan Jianwei questioned the audience, "Time flows uniformly, with no beginning or end; how do we explain the universe's origin and future?" Quantum mechanics might provide the answer.
During the talk, Pan Jianwei demonstrated key experiments in the history of optics and quantum mechanics: the double-slit experiment, where photons create different interference patterns on a screen after passing through two slits. This seemingly simple experiment harbors astonishing mysteries regarding the microcosm: Why does the indivisible photon "simultaneously" pass through both slits? Which slit did the photon actually pass through?
"Schrödinger and Born provided explanations for quantum mechanics using wave function theory. Before detecting photons, their positions are entirely uncertain, with probabilities governed by the coherent superposition of the two wave functions. Einstein held that a photon's path could be predetermined," Pan Jianwei elucidated.
Both the viewpoints of quantum mechanics and Einstein's locality realism could coherently exist at the time, sparking debates at the famous 5th Solvay Conference. To further challenge quantum mechanics, Einstein and others proposed the concept of quantum entanglement in 1935, calling it "strange interactions between distant locations." In 1964, Bell proposed the Bell inequality to test these two views experimentally: if locality realism is correct, the inequality holds; otherwise, it does not. In fact, Chinese physicist Wu Jianxiong first observed quantum entanglement in 1950, before Bell's inequality was introduced. Since the 1970s, numerous physicists, including 2022 Nobel Prize winners Clauser, Aspect, and Zeilinger, have engaged in extensive Bell inequality experimental tests, ultimately affirming the correctness of quantum mechanics to some extent.
Pan Jianwei posits that quantum mechanics has revolutionary implications for our worldview and personal beliefs. The world is rife with randomness; 13.8 billion years ago, quantum fluctuations triggered the singularity's explosion, forming the universe we inhabit. Randomness is a prerequisite for independent consciousness; the observer's actions can be seen as subjective initiative influencing the evolution of the object, highlighting humanity's intrinsic power.
"Thus, students who enroll at Fudan and attend today's lecture on quantum mechanics are realizing their potential through effort!" Pan Jianwei emphasized the significance of personal endeavor with a scientific perspective, prompting laughter from the audience.
Quantum computing combined with artificial intelligence may represent the target of human evolution. Pan Jianwei articulated that information exchange shapes social structures, with the perception of information being essential for practical existence. Protecting privacy permits diverse thoughts to coexist, fostering innovation.
"The interaction, perception, and protection of information have accompanied human evolution and social development, posing three major technical requirements: computing power, measurement precision, and information security. Quantum technology serves as a formidable tool."
For centuries, secure transmission of information has been a human aspiration. In the 7th century BC, the Spartans began employing encryption, leading to the invention of numerous complex encryption algorithms. However, all classical encryption algorithms reliant on computational complexity face the risk of being broken.
Quantum communication stands as the only communication method with rigorously proven security, centered on quantum key distribution. Using the correlation of entangled state measurement results, a random key can be shared between parties, while quantum mechanics principles ensure that unauthorized eavesdropping would breach the Bell inequality, leaving detectable traces. This enables parties to discard insecure keys, guaranteeing the ultimate key's safety for unbreakable communication.
At the Quantum Innovation Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Pan Jianwei and his team are developing the world’s first medium-to-high orbit quantum satellite. In the future, quantum teleportation may enable scenarios resembling the travels of Sun Wukong’s cloud, likening to how he could traverse vast distances. Pan Jianwei illustrated, with himself as an example, how to "teleport" from Shanghai to Beijing in three steps: first, establishing a connection between himself in Shanghai and an "empty person" in Beijing via quantum entanglement; second, sending the measurement results to Beijing; and third, operating on that "empty person" in Beijing using the results, thus reconstructing a fully identical "Pan Jianwei" while the original in Shanghai ceases to exist due to measurement.
"Of course, we are still far from teleporting macroscopic objects, but quantum teleportation can achieve efficient quantum information transmission," he stressed, indicating that quantum teleportation could effectively connect quantum computers, which traditional communication methods cannot accomplish, thus forming a foundational element in constructing quantum networks.
On the other hand, the significant demand for computational capacity versus the existing computational power gap is evident, with quantum computing greatly alleviating this challenge. To metaphorically express the exponential growth in computational power brought by quantum superposition, Pan Jianwei used an A4 paper folded 50 times, resulting in a thickness of 110 million kilometers, nearly the distance between the Earth and the Sun. "This represents that a quantum computing system with 50 qubits has a data processing capacity 10 million times higher than a classical computer with 50 bits." As such, quantum computing finds applications in solving computational challenges across classic encryption breaking, weather forecasting, financial analysis, and drug design.
On August 16, 2016, at 1:40 AM, China successfully launched the world’s first quantum science experiment satellite ("Mozi") using a Long March 2D rocket from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. In 2016, under Pan Jianwei's leadership, the Mozi satellite was successfully launched, achieving the first successful distribution of quantum entanglement, quantum key distribution, and quantum teleportation at intercontinental distances, validating the feasibility of distant quantum communication through satellites. In 2022, the international first micro-nano quantum satellite "Jinan-1" was also successfully launched. With the establishment of the "Beijing-Shanghai Line" and the national quantum secure communication backbone network, the first prototype of a comprehensive quantum communication network integrating space and ground has materialized. "We will launch multiple satellites to form a 'constellation' for an efficient satellite quantum communication network," he explained, adding that the medium-to-high orbit quantum satellite is also in development, expected to reach launch readiness around 2027.
Discussing the future of quantum computing, a student from the School of Computing and Intelligent Innovation asked whether the current development stage of quantum computing is mature enough for computer scientists to enter the field. Pan Jianwei affirmed that the involvement of computer science experts is indeed vital for quantum computing research. "In quantum computing, it doesn't matter whether the hardware is ready; theoretical research can proceed independently of hardware development." He noted that there is ample scope for computer scientists in quantum error correction and artificial intelligence computations.
Finally, Pan Jianwei referenced Turing Award winner Professor Yao Qizhi's perspective: combining quantum computing and artificial intelligence could potentially lead to understanding or creating new, transcendent intelligences to address questions regarding consciousness's origins and other ultimate cosmic issues. "Integrating quantum technology with artificial intelligence may represent a goal for civilization and the evolution of humanity."
Guest Introduction: Pan Jianwei Quantum physicist, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Executive Vice President and Professor at the University of Science and Technology of China Pan Jianwei is a quantum physicist, professor at the University of Science and Technology of China, and director of the Quantum Information and Quantum Technology Innovation Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is also an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a foreign academician of the Royal Society, and an academician of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World. His primary research areas include quantum optics, quantum information, and foundational issues in quantum mechanics. He has led his team in breakthroughs of key technologies for quantum information processing, completely addressing the security issues of quantum communication under real-world conditions. He spearheaded the successful development of the world's first quantum science experiment satellite, "Mozi," and established the first international quantum secure communication backbone network, the "Beijing-Shanghai Line," presenting China’s experimental and applied research in quantum secure communication at an internationally leading level.
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