CRC Press Schrödinger’s Web: Race to Build the Quantum Internet

As the race to build the world’s first quantum computer is coming to an end, the race to build the quantum internet has just started. This book leverages the author’s unique insights into both the Chinese and American quantum programs. It begins with the physics and history of the quantum internet and ends with the latest results in quantum computing and quantum networks. The Chinese quantum Sputnik moment. The U.S. National Quantum Initiative. What’s up with Quantum Computing Supremacy? The Race to Build the Quantum Internet. Where will Quantum Technology be Tomorrow?   Written by a renowned quantum physicist, this book is for everyone who is interested in the rapidly advancing field of Quantum Technology — The Second Quantum Revolution. The 2016 launch of the Chinese quantum satellite Mozi was a quantum Sputnik moment. The United States went from thinking it was ten years ahead of the Chinese to the realization that it was ten years behind them. This quantum gap led to the U.S. National Quantum Initiative, launched in 2018. Since then, the race to build the quantum internet has taken off at breakneck speed. Review "As theoretical physicist Jonathan Dowling makes clear in Schrödinger’s Web, early versions of the quantum internet are here already ― for example, quantum communication has been taking place between Beijing and Shanghai via fiber-optic cables since 2016 ― and more are coming fast. So now is the perfect time to read up. Dowling, who helped found the U.S. government’s quantum computing program in the 1990s, is the perfect guide. Armed with a seemingly endless supply of outrageous anecdotes, memorable analogies, puns and quips, he makes the thorny theoretical details of the quantum internet both entertaining and accessible. …Like Dowling’s 2013 book on quantum computers, Schrödinger’s Killer App, Schrödinger’s Web hammers home the nonintuitive truths at the heart of quantum mechanics. … Dowling died unexpectedly in June at age 65, before he could see this future come to fruition. Once when I interviewed him, he invoked Arthur C. Clarke’s first law to justify why he thought another esteemed scientist was wrong. "The first law is that if a distinguished, elderly scientist tells you something is possible, he’s very likely right," he said. "If he tells you something is impossible, he’s very likely wrong." Dowling died too soon to be considered elderly, but he was distinguished, and Schrödinger’s Web lays out a powerful case for the possibility of a quantum internet."―Dan Garisto in Science News, September 2020 About the Author Jonathan Dowling earned a Ph.D. in Mathematical Physics from the University of Colorado. He has worked at the United States Army Aviation and Missile Command, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and then at the Louisiana State University. Dr. Dowling is one of the founders of the U.S. Government program in quantum computing and quantum cryptography.