Biography:Chetan Nayak

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Chetan Nayak
Born
New York City, NY, United States
Alma mater
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsQuantum computing, Computer Science
InstitutionsMicrosoft
ThesisTheories of the half-filled Landau level [3] (1996)
Doctoral advisorFrank Wilczek [3]

Chetan Nayak (born 1971) is an Indian-American physicist and computer scientist specializing in quantum computing. He is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and a technical fellow and distinguished engineer on the Microsoft Azure Quantum hardware team.[4] He joined Microsoft in 2005 and became director and general manager of Quantum Hardware at Microsoft Station Q at Microsoft Research in 2014.[5][6][7]

Education and career

Nayak was born in New York City in 1971. He earned a bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1992 and a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University in 1996.[5][3] His dissertation on "Theories of the half-filled Landau level" was completed under Frank Wilczek.[3]

In 1996, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Berkeley (UCSB) and a professor of physics at the University of California, Los Angeles from 1997 to 2006.[5][8][9]

He joined Microsoft in 2005 as a visiting researcher in Redmond, Washington, and the faculty of UCSB in 2007 where he has served as a technical fellow and professor of condensed matter theory through 2024.[5][7][10][11]

Nayak has contributed to the theory of topological phases, high-temperature superconductivity, the quantum Hall effect, and phases of periodically driven quantum systems.[12][13][14][15][16][11][17][18]

Scientific work

In 1996, Nayak and Wilczek discovered the type of non-Abelian statistics in paired quantum Hall states associated with Majorana zero modes.[16]

In 2005, with Michael Freedman and Sankar Das Sarma, Nayak authored a proposal for a topological qubit using the 5/2 fractional quantum Hall state as the non-Abelian topological state.[14][19] In 2006 and 2008, Das Sarma, Freedman and Nayak developed theoretical proposals for topological quantum computing based on non-abelian anyons.[17][11]

In 2011, Nayak, Parsa Bonderson and Victor Gurarie proved that quasiparticles in certain quantized Hall states are non-Abelian anyons, firmly establishing the mathematical foundation of these particles.[12]

In 2016, with Dominic Else and Bela Bauer, he developed Floquet time crystals and predicted its occurrence in periodically driven systems.[15][18]

Nayak also led research teams in inducing a phase of matter characterized by Majorana zero modes with low enough disorder to pass the topological gap protocol, demonstrating the viability of topological quantum computing. [20]

In February 2025, the Microsoft Quantum team announced the creation of a chip powered by a topological architecture.[21] The claim has been met with skepticism by many in the quantum scientific and engineering community, who question the lack of data supporting the existence of the proposed qubits.[22][23] Nayak has clarified that the supporting data, namely measurements on the native operations in a measurement-based topological qubit, do exist. Results were presented to a closed group at a Station Q meeting and are anticipated at the 2025 APS March Meeting.[24]

Recognition

Nayak is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a recipient of the Outstanding Young Physicist Award from the American Chapter of the Indian Physics Association, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, and an NSF Early Career Award.[1][2][25][26]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "APS Fellowship Division of Condensed Matter Physics Fellowship". 2011. https://www.aps.org/funding-recognition/aps-fellowship/dcmp-fellowship. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "2000 Annual Report". 2000. https://sloan.org/storage/app/media/files/annual_reports/2000_annual_report.pdf. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Nayak, Chetan (Nov 1996). "Theories of the Half-Filled Landau Level". https://www.proquest.com/openview/1a9c466c9686bab0ca0f5588641a7104/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y. 
  4. ↑ Kelley, Alexandra (8 Feb 2024). "Microsoft Quantum Coming Getting DARPA Funding". https://rcpmag.com/articles/2024/02/08/microsoft-quantum-computing-darpa.aspx. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 "Shelly Gable, Chetan Nayak". 20 Mar 2005. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/fashion/weddings/shelly-gable-chetan-nayak.html. 
  6. ↑ Simonite, Tom (4 Nov 2019). "Microsoft is Taking Quantum Computers to the Cloud". Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-taking-quantum-computers-cloud/. Retrieved 2024-10-04. 
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Savitsky, Zach (20 Dec 2023). "A ghostly quasiparticle rooted in a century-old Italian mystery could unlock quantum computing's potential—if only it could be pinned down". https://www.science.org/content/article/ghostly-quasiparticle-rooted-century-old-mystery-unlock-quantum-computings-potential. 
  8. ↑ Gurarie, Victor; Flohr, Michael; Nayak, Chetan (11 August 1997). "The Haldane-Rezayi quantum Hall state and conformal field theory". Nuclear Physics B 498 (13): 513–538. doi:10.1016/S0550-3213(97)00351-9. Bibcode: 1997NuPhB.498..513G. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0550321397003519. Retrieved 4 October 2024. 
  9. ↑ Freedman, Michael; Nayak, Chetan; Walker, Kevin; Wang, Zhenghan (11 August 1997). "A class of P,T-invariant topological phases of interacting electrons". Annals of Physics 310 (2004): 428–492. doi:10.1016/j.aop.2004.01.006. https://boulderschool.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Nayak-P_%20T-invariant.pdf. Retrieved 4 October 2024. 
  10. ↑ "Condensed Matter Theory". https://www.physics.ucsb.edu/research/condensed-matter-theory. 
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Nayak, Chetan; Simon, Steven; Stern, Ady; Freedman, Michael; Das Sarma, Sankar (2008). "Non-Abelian anyons and topological quantum computation". Reviews of Modern Physics 80 (3): 1083. doi:10.1103/RevModPhys.80.1083. Bibcode: 2008RvMP...80.1083N. https://journals.aps.org/rmp/abstract/10.1103/RevModPhys.80.1083. Retrieved 4 October 2024. 
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Wilczek, Frank (11 Feb 2011). "A landmark proof". Physics 4: 10. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.83.075303. https://physics.aps.org/articles/v4/10#c1. Retrieved 2024-10-04. 
  13. ↑ Moore, Joel (5 Oct 2009). "Quasiparticles do the twist". Physics 2: 82. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.80.155303. https://physics.aps.org/articles/v2/82. Retrieved 2024-10-04. 
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Markoff, John (23 Jun 2014). "Microsoft Makes Bet Quantum Computing is Next Breakthrough". https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/24/technology/microsoft-makes-a-bet-on-quantum-computing-research.html. 
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Zyga, Lisa (9 Sep 2016). "Time crystals might exist after all". https://phys.org/news/2016-09-crystals.html#google_vignette. 
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Nayak, Chetan; Wilczek, Frank (18 November 1996). "2n-quasihole states realize 2n−1-dimensional spinor braiding statistics in paired quantum Hall states". Nuclear Physics B 479 (3): 529–553. doi:10.1016/0550-3213(96)00430-0. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0550321396004300. Retrieved 4 October 2024. 
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Das Sarma, Sankar; Freedman, Michael; Nayak, Chetan (1 July 2006). "Topological Quantum Computation". Physics Today 59 (7): 32-28. doi:10.1063/1.2337825. Bibcode: 2006PhT....59g..32S. https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/article-abstract/59/7/32/1040851/Topological-quantum-computationThe-search-for-a?redirectedFrom=fulltext. Retrieved 4 October 2024. 
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Else, Dominic; Bauer, Bela; Nayak, Chetan (26 August 2016). "Floquet Time Crystals". Physical Review Letters 117 (9). doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.090402. PMID 27610834. Bibcode: 2016PhRvL.117i0402E. https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.090402. Retrieved 4 October 2024. 
  19. ↑ Das Sarma, Sankar; Freedman, Michael; Nayak, Chetan (27 April 2005). "Topologically Protected Qubits from a Possible Non-Abelian Fractional Quantum Hall State". Physical Review Letters 94 (16): 166802. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.090402. PMID 27610834. https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.090402. Retrieved 4 October 2024. 
  20. ↑ Yirka, Bob (24 Jun 2023). "Microsoft claims to have achieved first milestone in creating a reliable and practical quantum computer". https://phys.org/news/2023-06-microsoft-milestone-reliable-quantum.html. 
  21. ↑ "Microsoft's Majorana 1 chip carves new path for quantum computing". https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/ai/microsofts-majorana-1-chip-carves-new-path-for-quantum-computing/. 
  22. ↑ "Microsoft has a new quantum computer – but does it actually work?". https://www.newscientist.com/article/2469079-microsoft-has-a-new-quantum-computer-but-does-it-actually-work/. 
  23. ↑ "Preskill's comment on Microsoft's PR claim". https://www.linkedin.com/posts/john-preskill-154abab3_roadmap-to-fault-tolerant-quantum-computation-activity-7298045316707061761-euN0. 
  24. ↑ "Chetan Nayak's comment on Shtetl-Optimized". https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8669#comment-2003328. 
  25. ↑ "Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellows Database". 2000. https://sloan.org/fellows-database. 
  26. ↑ "Chetan Nayak". https://aspenphys.org/people/chetan-nayak/. 



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