Business Trip

Trip report to Infleqtion

Members of the Omori Laboratory visited Infleqtion in Boulder, Colorado (USA) from April 1 to April 12. We’ve received a joint report from Valentin, Odagawa, and Shinkawa, so please take a look!
大森研究室のメンバーが、4/1~4/12にInfleqtion(ボルダー, アメリカ)を訪問しました。その様子がわかるレポートがValentinさん、小田川さん、新川さんから届きましたので、どうぞご覧ください!

The IMS team flew to America to visit the partner company Infleqtion, through the Moonshot goal 6 project.
The delegation included Sylvain, Tomita-san, Tamura-san, Suzui-san, Akane-san, Cake, Watanabe-san, Jorge, Omar, as well as three new members! Shinkawa and Odagawa are new master’s course students who will be working on research together. There is also Valentin, who is a French engineer that will help with the group regarding electronics-related subjects.


Infleqtion team prepared a warm welcome, involving a lot of its members such as Eric who is the project manager of our collaboration, but also Garrett, Tony, Maddy, Abraham, Alex, Mickael, Fahrad, and Marin. During the team’s 10 days in the USA, they also got to meet Thomas Noel (VP of Quantum Computing and another member of Moonshot Goal 6) as well as Dana Anderson (co-founder and CTO of Infleqtion). Dana also revealed himself to be a great pilot as we will mention later on!


This trip aimed to prepare for the arrival of the Quantum Processing Unit (QPU) built by Infleqtion from IMS’ requirements and expertise. The QPU will be a major component of the new 4G build.
About the QPU by Infleqtion


Without further ado, here is a picture of the QPU and (almost) everyone involved!

After the excitement of discovering this table full of technologies and micro-assemblies, the rest of the days consisted in a lot of training and discussions with Infleqtion. Unboxing, test methods, alignments, module swaps, electrical wiring… all these points have been reviewed and made up for 10 busy days!


As breaks between our different meetings, Infleqtion gave us tours around different labs and activities. We got the opportunity to explore cutting-edge atomic physics services such as Octant, and Tiqker. Octant is a platform that allows users to perform remote experiments with ultracold atoms online, while Tiqker offers a portable atomic clock solution. Both tools aim to make high-quality atomic physics technologies more accessible to a broader audience beyond the research community.


In addition, the group toured the labs of the Thompson Group and the Kaufman Group at JILA, where we got a glimpse into some of the most advanced fundamental physics research taking place today.

Experiencing these world-leading research environments firsthand was truly inspiring.


Finally, here are some fun stories to tell.


Over the weekend, we went on a little outing to refresh ourselves, with Valentin driving.
We were looking for a bookstore and ended up at the famous University of Colorado. We found a shop that said “Bookstore,” but it didn’t have a single book inside! For lunch, we stopped by the university cafeteria. We had no idea how to order and were just wandering around when a sweet lady named Alicia came over and explained everything to us.

Since it was almost closing time, a kind guy from the kitchen gave us a huge pile of fries and even threw in some spicy chicken for free.
Alicia said, “You came all the way from Japan? Then it’s on the house.”
And at the end, she even handed us a full bottle of ketchup. Thank you so much, Alicia! Next time we go, we’ll bring you a little gift.


After lunch, we headed to a scenic mountain that Abraham recommended.
We hiked up a snowy trail, and at the top, we were rewarded with an amazing view.
On the ground at the summit, we left a drawing of Okazaemon—the mascot character from Okazaki, Japan.

(Artist: Watanabe)

But one mountain wasn’t enough for us, so we went on to climb another!
After enjoying the hikes, we made our way downtown and finally found a real bookstore.
We wrapped up our Saturday with some delicious tacos for dinner.


We went hiking again the next day, this time with the Infleqtion team.
The mountain was even tougher than Saturday’s, but we had a great time.
After the hike, we got to ride in a plane owned by Dana, the co-founder and CTO of Infleqtion, as well as a professor at JILA.

Everyone was super excited about the cool garage and the amazing views from the sky.
Tomita-san, Cake, Jorge, and Omar even got to try flying the plane.
Thank you, Dana-san !


We thank the Infleqtion team for showing us so many interesting things, everyone has learnt a lot, we have many things to prepare and work to do but we are even more excited to receive the QPU from the USA! We also thank them for taking such good care of us, with a lot of good shared meals!

We also thank the administrative IMS team for organising everything and making the trip smooth.

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