Description: Custom VLSI CMOS operating below 100 mK to multiplex control and readout of quantum devices and sensors.
Reilly's Quantum Nanoscience Laboratory works on the interface between quantum devices and the classical control hardware needed to run them at scale — custom VLSI CMOS operating below 100 mK, high-bandwidth dispersive readout, and cryogenic microwave engineering — a programme built up during his long association with Microsoft's quantum effort. A distinct and directly relevant second thread is the manipulation of spin states in nanoparticles for new imaging modalities in medicine: hyperpolarisation and spin-state engineering of nanoparticle contrast agents, which is quantum control applied to MRI. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — the cryo-CMOS readout chain he builds is exactly the enabling technology that would let a pT/sqrt(Hz) spin-ensemble sensor be multiplexed into an array rather than run one channel at a time; and the nanoparticle-MRI thread is an independent route into biological spin sensing. Large group, strong engineering culture, significant industry entanglement.
Yang works on the systems-level physics of silicon spin qubits: operating qubits at elevated temperatures (above one kelvin, where cryo-CMOS control electronics can be co-integrated), valley and spin-orbit engineering, and the electrical control of spin qubits without micromagnets. The 'hot qubit' programme in particular is an engineering argument about where the classical/quantum boundary should sit in a real machine. Positioned against the established body of NV-ensemble quantum sensing work — DEER, nanoscale NMR and T1 relaxometry protocols operating at pT/sqrt(Hz) field sensitivity — raising the operating temperature of a spin sensor while preserving coherence is the same trade a pT/sqrt(Hz) NV ensemble makes implicitly by working at room temperature; Yang's work is the silicon community's attempt to buy back some of that convenience. Borderline inclusion — this is quantum computing rather than sensing — retained under the inclusive rubric.