Kenneth R Brown | Scholars@Duke

Kenneth R Brown
Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Prof. Brown's research interest is the control of quantum systems for both understanding the natural world and developing new technologies. His current research areas are the development of robust quantum computers and the study of molecular properties at cold and ultracold temperatures.

Current Research Interests

Quantum error correction, quantum control, quantum computer architecture, ion trap quantum computing, and the spectroscopy of sympathetically cooled molecular ions

Current Appointments & Affiliations

Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Pratt School of Engineering 2018
Associate Professor of Chemistry, Chemistry, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2018
Associate Professor of Physics, Physics, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences 2018

Contact Information

701 W Main St, Suite 400, Durham, NC 27701
kenneth.r.brown@duke.edu (919) 660-1376
Brown Lab

Background
Education, Training, & Certifications
- Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley 2003
- B.S., University Puget Sound 1998
Duke Appointment History
- Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Pratt School of Engineering 2017 - 2018
Academic Positions Outside Duke
- Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Computational Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology. 2013 - 2017
- Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Computational Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology. 2007 - 2013
Recognition
In the News
- JUN 26, 2019 Pratt School of Engineering
  
  Quick Course: Summer Computing at Pratt Opens New Doors for Students
- AUG 7, 2018 Pratt School of Engineering
  
  Duke to Lead $15 Million Program to Create First Practical Quantum Computer
- APR 16, 2018 Pratt School of Engineering
  
  Spectator Qubits Seek to Improve Control of Four Quantum Computing Systems
Awards & Honors
Research
Selected Grants
- Quantum Scientific Computing Open User Testbed 2019 - 2023
- PFCQC: STAQ: Software-Tailored Architecture for Quantum co-design awarded by National Science Foundation 2018 - 2023
- Collaborative Research: EPiQC:Enabling Practical-Scale Quantum Computation awarded by National Science Foundation 2018 - 2023
- Collaborative Research: EPiQC:Enabling Practical-Scale Quantum Computation awarded by National Science Foundation 2018 - 2023
- Quantum-hardware focused application performance benchmarks awarded by Department of Energy 2018 - 2022
- Quantum-hardware focused application performance benchmarks awarded by Department of Energy 2018 - 2022
- Scaling Modular and Reconfigurable Quantum Systems awarded by University of Maryland 2018 - 2021
- Quantum Computing in Chemical and Material Sciences awarded by Department of Energy 2018 - 2021
- Quantum control based on real-time environment analysis by spectator qubits awarded by Army Research Office 2018 - 2021
- MRI: Development of a Programmable Ion-Trap Quantum Computer awarded by National Science Foundation 2018 - 2020
- Workshop on Research Themes in Quantum Information in the United States and Europe awarded by National Science Foundation 2019 - 2020
- Control and Spectroscopy of Single Molecular Ions awarded by Army Research Office 2018 - 2020
- Precision Chemical Dynamics and Quantum Control of Ultracold Molecular Ion Reactions awarded by Georgia Institute of Technology 2018 - 2019
Publications & Artistic Works
Selected Publications
- Academic Articles
  - Li, M., et al. “2D Compass Codes.” Physical Review X, vol. 9, no. 2, May 2019. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevX.9.021041.
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  - Murphy, D. C., and K. R. Brown. “Controlling error orientation to improve quantum algorithm success rates.” Physical Review A, vol. 99, no. 3, Mar. 2019. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.99.032318.
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  - Debroy, Dripto M., et al. “Stabilizer Slicing: Coherent Error Cancellations in Low-Density Parity-Check Stabilizer Codes..” Physical Review Letters, vol. 121, no. 25, Dec. 2018. Epmc, doi:10.1103/physrevlett.121.250502.
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  - Beale, Stefanie J., et al. “Quantum Error Correction Decoheres Noise..” Physical Review Letters, vol. 121, no. 19, Nov. 2018. Epmc, doi:10.1103/physrevlett.121.190501.
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  - Calvin, Aaron T., and Kenneth R. Brown. “Spectroscopy of Molecular Ions in Coulomb Crystals..” The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, vol. 9, no. 19, Oct. 2018, pp. 5797–804. Epmc, doi:10.1021/acs.jpclett.8b01387.
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  - Leung, P. H., and K. R. Brown. “Entangling an arbitrary pair of qubits in a long ion crystal.” Physical Review A, vol. 98, no. 3, Sept. 2018. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.98.032318.
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  - Brown, Natalie C., and Kenneth R. Brown. “Comparing Zeeman qubits to hyperfine qubits in the context of the surface code: 174Yb+ and 171Yb+.” Phys. Rev. A, vol. 97, May 2018, pp. 052301–052301. Manual, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.97.052301.
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  - Trout, C. J., et al. “Simulating the performance of a distance-3 surface code in a linear ion trap.” New Journal of Physics, vol. 20, no. 4, Apr. 2018. Scopus, doi:10.1088/1367-2630/aab341.
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  - Calvin, Aaron T., et al. “Rovibronic Spectroscopy of Sympathetically Cooled 40CaH+.” The Journal of Physical Chemistry A, vol. 122, no. 12, Mar. 2018, pp. 3177–81. Manual, doi:10.1021/acs.jpca.7b12823.
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  - Leung, Pak Hong, et al. “Robust 2-Qubit Gates in a Linear Ion Crystal Using a Frequency-Modulated Driving Force..” Physical Review Letters, vol. 120, no. 2, Jan. 2018. Epmc, doi:10.1103/physrevlett.120.020501.
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  - Condoluci, J., et al. “Reassigning the CaH+ 11Σ → 21Σ vibronic transition with CaD..” The Journal of Chemical Physics, vol. 147, no. 21, Dec. 2017. Epmc, doi:10.1063/1.5016556.
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  - Linke, Norbert M., et al. “Fault-tolerant quantum error detection..” Science Advances, vol. 3, no. 10, Oct. 2017. Epmc, doi:10.1126/sciadv.1701074.
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  - Li, M., et al. “Fault tolerance with bare ancillary qubits for a [[7,1,3]] code.” Physical Review A, vol. 96, no. 3, Sept. 2017. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.96.032341.
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  - Rugango, René, et al. “Vibronic Spectroscopy of Sympathetically Cooled CaH..” Chemphyschem : A European Journal of Chemical Physics and Physical Chemistry, vol. 17, no. 22, Nov. 2016, pp. 3764–68. Epmc, doi:10.1002/cphc.201600645.
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  - Gutiérrez, M., et al. “Errors and pseudothresholds for incoherent and coherent noise.” Physical Review A, vol. 94, no. 4, Oct. 2016. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.94.042338.
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  - Fallek, S. D., et al. “Transport implementation of the Bernstein-Vazirani algorithm with ion qubits.” New Journal of Physics, vol. 18, no. 8, Aug. 2016. Scopus, doi:10.1088/1367-2630/18/8/083030.
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  - Janardan, S., et al. “Analytical error analysis of Clifford gates by the fault-path tracer method.” Quantum Information Processing, vol. 15, no. 8, Aug. 2016, pp. 3065–79. Scopus, doi:10.1007/s11128-016-1330-z.
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  - Brown, K. R., et al. “Co-designing a scalable quantum computer with trapped atomic ions.” Npj Quantum Information, vol. 2, no. 1, Jan. 2016. Scopus, doi:10.1038/npjqi.2016.34.
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  - Rugango, Rene, et al. Trapping and Sympathetic Cooling of Boron Ions. 2016.
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  - Mount, E., et al. Error compensation of single-qubit gates in a surface-electrode ion trap using composite pulses. Dec. 2015. Dspace, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.92.060301.
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  - Delaubenfels, T. E., et al. “Modulating carrier and sideband coupling strengths in a standing-wave gate beam.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 92, no. 6, Dec. 2015. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.92.061402.
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  - Khanyile, Ncamiso B., et al. “Observation of vibrational overtones by single-molecule resonant photodissociation..” Nature Communications, vol. 6, July 2015. Epmc, doi:10.1038/ncomms8825.
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  - Rugango, R., et al. “Sympathetic cooling of molecular ion motion to the ground state.” New Journal of Physics, vol. 17, Mar. 2015. Scopus, doi:10.1088/1367-2630/17/3/035009.
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  - Gutiérrez, M., and K. R. Brown. “Comparison of a quantum error-correction threshold for exact and approximate errors.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 91, no. 2, Feb. 2015. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.91.022335.
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  - Trout, C. J., and K. R. Brown. “Magic state distillation and gate compilation in quantum algorithms for quantum chemistry.” International Journal of Quantum Chemistry, vol. 115, no. 19, Jan. 2015, pp. 1296–304. Scopus, doi:10.1002/qua.24856.
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  - Merrill, J. T., et al. “Transformed composite sequences for improved qubit addressing.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 90, no. 4, Oct. 2014. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.90.040301.
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  - Kabytayev, C., et al. “Robustness of composite pulses to time-dependent control noise.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 90, no. 1, July 2014. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.90.012316.
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  - Shu, G., et al. “Heating rates and ion-motion control in a y -junction surface-electrode trap.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 89, no. 6, June 2014. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.89.062308.
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  - Monroe, C., et al. “Large-scale modular quantum-computer architecture with atomic memory and photonic interconnects.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 89, no. 2, Feb. 2014. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.89.022317.
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  - Brown, Kenneth R. “Physics Probing the electron..” Science (New York, N.Y.), vol. 343, no. 6168, Jan. 2014, pp. 255–56. Epmc, doi:10.1126/science.1246820.
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  - Tomita, Y., et al. “Comparison of ancilla preparation and measurement procedures for the Steane [[7,1,3]] code on a model ion-trap quantum computer.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 88, no. 4, Oct. 2013. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.88.042336.
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  - Goeders, James E., et al. “Identifying single molecular ions by resolved sideband measurements..” The Journal of Physical Chemistry. A, vol. 117, no. 39, Oct. 2013, pp. 9725–31. Epmc, doi:10.1021/jp312368a.
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  - Shappert, C. M., et al. “Spatially uniform single-qubit gate operations with near-field microwaves and composite pulse compensation.” New Journal of Physics, vol. 15, Aug. 2013. Scopus, doi:10.1088/1367-2630/15/8/083053.
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  - Vittorini, Grahame, et al. “Modular cryostat for ion trapping with surface-electrode ion traps..” The Review of Scientific Instruments, vol. 84, no. 4, Apr. 2013. Epmc, doi:10.1063/1.4802948.
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  - Gutiérrez, M., et al. “Approximation of realistic errors by Clifford channels and Pauli measurements.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 87, no. 3, Mar. 2013. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.87.030302.
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  - Sarvepalli, P., and K. R. Brown. “Topological subsystem codes from graphs and hypergraphs.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 86, no. 4, Oct. 2012. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.86.042336.
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  - Merrill, J. T., et al. “Demonstration of integrated microscale optics in surface-electrode ion traps.” New Journal of Physics, vol. 13, Oct. 2011. Scopus, doi:10.1088/1367-2630/13/10/103005.
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  - Nguyen, J. H. V., et al. “Challenges of laser-cooling molecular ions.” New Journal of Physics, vol. 13, June 2011. Scopus, doi:10.1088/1367-2630/13/6/063023.
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  - Tomita, Y., et al. “Analytical solution of thermal magnetization on memory stabilizer structures.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 82, no. 4, Oct. 2010. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.82.042303.
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  - Crosson, I. J., et al. “Making classical ground-state spin computing fault-tolerant..” Physical Review. E, Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics, vol. 82, no. 3 Pt 1, Sept. 2010. Epmc, doi:10.1103/physreve.82.031106.
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  - Clark, C. R., et al. “Detection of single-ion spectra by Coulomb-crystal heating.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 81, no. 4, Apr. 2010. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.81.043428.
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  - Brown, Kenneth R. “Quantum computing: chemistry from photons..” Nature Chemistry, vol. 2, no. 2, Feb. 2010, pp. 76–77. Epmc, doi:10.1038/nchem.527.
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  - Tomita, Y., et al. “Multi-qubit compensation sequences.” New Journal of Physics, vol. 12, Jan. 2010. Scopus, doi:10.1088/1367-2630/12/1/015002.
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  - Tanaka, U., et al. “Design and characterization of a planar trap.” Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, vol. 42, no. 15, Nov. 2009. Scopus, doi:10.1088/0953-4075/42/15/154006.
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  - Viteri, C. R., et al. “Monte Carlo analysis of critical phenomenon of the Ising model on memory stabilizer structures.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 80, no. 4, Oct. 2009. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.80.042313.
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  - Clark, R. J., et al. “A two-dimensional lattice ion trap for quantum simulation.” Journal of Applied Physics, vol. 105, no. 1, July 2009. Scopus, doi:10.1063/1.3056227.
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  - Clark, C. R., et al. “Resource requirements for fault-tolerant quantum simulation: The ground state of the transverse Ising model.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 79, no. 6, June 2009. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.79.062314.
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  - Labaziewicz, Jaroslaw, et al. “Suppression of heating rates in cryogenic surface-electrode ion traps..” Physical Review Letters, vol. 100, no. 1, Jan. 2008. Epmc, doi:10.1103/physrevlett.100.013001.
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  - Leibrandt, D. R., et al. “Laser ablation loading of a surface-electrode ion trap.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 76, no. 5, Nov. 2007. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.76.055403.
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  - Brown, K. R., et al. “Passive cooling of a micromechanical oscillator with a resonant electric circuit.” Physical Review Letters, vol. 99, no. 13, Sept. 2007. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.137205.
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  - Brown, K. R. “Energy protection arguments fail in the interaction picture.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 76, no. 2, Aug. 2007. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.76.022327.
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  - Labaziewicz, Jaroslaw, et al. “Compact, filtered diode laser system for precision spectroscopy..” Optics Letters, vol. 32, no. 5, Mar. 2007, pp. 572–74. Epmc, doi:10.1364/ol.32.000572.
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  - Brown, K. R., et al. “Loading and characterization of a printed-circuit-board atomic ion trap.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 75, no. 1, Jan. 2007. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.75.015401.
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  - Brown, Kenneth R., et al. “Limitations of quantum simulation examined by simulating a pairing Hamiltonian using nuclear magnetic resonance..” Physical Review Letters, vol. 97, no. 5, Aug. 2006. Epmc, doi:10.1103/physrevlett.97.050504.
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  - Pearson, C. E., et al. “Experimental investigation of planar ion traps.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 73, no. 3, Mar. 2006. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.73.032307.
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  - Moore, K. L., et al. “Bose-Einstein condensation in a mm-scale Ioffe-Pritchard trap.” Applied Physics B: Lasers and Optics, vol. 82, no. 4, Mar. 2006, pp. 533–38. Scopus, doi:10.1007/s00340-005-2101-1.
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  - Brown, K. R., et al. “Erratum: Arbitrarily accurate composite pulse sequences (Physics Review A (2004) 70 (052318)).” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 72, no. 3, Sept. 2005. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.72.039905.
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  - Storcz, M. J., et al. “Full protection of superconducting qubit systems from coupling errors.” Physical Review B Condensed Matter and Materials Physics, vol. 72, no. 6, Aug. 2005. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.72.064511.
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  - Yu, T. M., et al. “Bounds on the entanglement attainable from unitary transformed thermal states in liquid-state nuclear magnetic resonance.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 71, no. 3, Mar. 2005. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.71.032341.
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  - Brown, K. R., et al. “Arbitrarily accurate composite pulse sequences.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 70, no. 5 A, Nov. 2004. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.70.052318.
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  - Leslie, S., et al. “Transmission spectrum of an optical cavity containing N atoms.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 69, no. 4, Jan. 2004. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.69.043805.
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  - Brown, K. R., et al. “Scalable ion trap quantum computation in decoherence-free subspaces with pairwise interactions only.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 67, no. 1, Jan. 2003. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.67.012309.
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  - Brown, K. R., et al. “Deterministic optical Fock-state generation.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 67, no. 4, Jan. 2003. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.67.043818.
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  - Shenvi, N., et al. “Effects of a random noisy oracle on search algorithm complexity.” Physical Review a Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 68, no. 5, Jan. 2003. Scopus, doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.68.052313.
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  - Brown, K. R., et al. “Quantum computing with quantum dots on quantum linear supports.” Physical Review A. Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, vol. 65, no. 1, Jan. 2002, pp. 123071–1230719.
  - Bacon, D., et al. “Coherence-preserving quantum bits..” Physical Review Letters, vol. 87, no. 24, Dec. 2001. Epmc, doi:10.1103/physrevlett.87.247902.
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  - Sullivan, Michael B., et al. “Quantum Chemical Analysis ofpara-Substitution Effects on the Electronic Structure of Phenylnitrenium Ions in the Gas Phase and Aqueous Solution [J. Am. Chem. Soc.1998,120, 11778−11783]..” Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 121, no. 47, American Chemical Society (ACS), Dec. 1999, pp. 11026–11026. Crossref, doi:10.1021/ja9955363.
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  - Sullivan, Michael B., et al. “Quantum Chemical Analysis ofpara-Substitution Effects on the Electronic Structure of Phenylnitrenium Ions in the Gas Phase and Aqueous Solution.” Journal of the American Chemical Society, vol. 120, no. 45, American Chemical Society (ACS), Nov. 1998, pp. 11778–83. Crossref, doi:10.1021/ja982542a.
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  - Brown, Natalie C., et al. Handling Leakage with Subsystem Codes.
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  - Landsman, K. A., et al. “Two-qubit entangling gates within arbitrarily long chains of trapped ions.” Physical Review A, vol. 100, no. 2, American Physical Society (APS). Crossref, doi:10.1103/physreva.100.022332.
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  - Li, Muyuan, et al. Direct measurement of Bacon-Shor code stabilizers.
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  - Nam, Yunseong, et al. Ground-state energy estimation of the water molecule on a trapped ion quantum computer.
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- Book Sections
  - Merrill, J. T., and K. R. Brown. Progress in compensating pulse sequences for quantum computation. Vol. 154, 2014, pp. 241–94.
- Conference Papers
  - Gokhale, P., et al. “Asymptotic improvements to quantum circuits via qutrits.” Proceedings International Symposium on Computer Architecture, 2019, pp. 554–66. Scopus, doi:10.1145/3307650.3322253.
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  - Javadi-Abhari, A., et al. “Optimized surface code communication in superconducting quantum computers.” Proceedings of the Annual International Symposium on Microarchitecture, Micro, vol. Part F131207, 2017, pp. 692–705. Scopus, doi:10.1145/3123939.3123949.
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  - Brown, K. R., et al. “Laser-cooled atomic ions as probes of molecular ions.” Aip Conference Proceedings, vol. 1642, 2015, pp. 392–95. Scopus, doi:10.1063/1.4906702.
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  - Heckey, J., et al. “Compiler management of communication and parallelism for quantum computation.” International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems Asplos, vol. 2015-January, 2015, pp. 445–56. Scopus, doi:10.1145/2694344.2694357.
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  - Kudrow, D., et al. “Quantum rotations: A case study in static and dynamic machine-code generation for quantum computers.” Proceedings International Symposium on Computer Architecture, 2013, pp. 166–76. Scopus, doi:10.1145/2485922.2485937.
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  - Brown, K. R. “Sympathetic heating spectroscopy: Probing molecular ions with laser-cooled atomic ions.” Optics Infobase Conference Papers, 2010.
Teaching & Mentoring
Recent Courses

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Education, Training, & Certifications

Duke Appointment History

Academic Positions Outside Duke

In the News

Awards & Honors

Selected Grants

Selected Publications

Academic Articles

Book Sections

Conference Papers

Recent Courses