Possible applications in the aerospace industry DLR and NASA develop open source software package for quantum computers

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The German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the US space agency NASA are working together on a software library that can be used to investigate the potential of quantum computers for aerospace applications. The resulting modules are to be made publicly available under an open source license.

The Quantum Computing working group at DLR has already published a software module that is used to investigate quantum computing approaches for tasks such as route optimization of transatlantic flights, aircraft allocation at major airports and satellite mission planning. Based on this work and corresponding approaches from the US space agency, NASA and DLR are now developing further modules that will subsequently be made generally available as open source software.

"As one of the first and world-leading working groups for application-oriented quantum computing research, the NASA Quantum Artifical Intelligence Laboratory (QuAIL) research group is an attractive cooperation partner for DLR. There are many similarities in terms of content with DLR's research objectives and use cases," says Dr. Tobias Stollenwerk, head of the Quantum Computing working group at the DLR Institute of Software Technology in Cologne. "The focus is on the investigation of applications for quantum computers in aerospace and the development of corresponding algorithms."

DLR and NASA have been conducting joint research into quantum computing since 2016. The cooperation is now being strengthened. Among other things, software is to be developed to support the creation of new quantum computer algorithms. There is also a focus on software for compiling and error suppression in computing processes.

The partners are also continuing to work on the DLR group's software module. The module serves as an interface for transferring industrial planning problems to quantum computers. It was developed in the EQUATE (Enabling QUAntum AdvantagE) project. The project is investigating whether a specific problem can actually be solved faster on a current quantum computer than on a conventional computer. It is also investigating how quantum computers can be efficiently combined with conventional computers.

Quantum computing at the DLR Institute of Software Technology

The Institute of Software Technology has been researching quantum computing since 2015. The Quantum Computing working group is part of the High-Performance Computing department. The group's central tasks include the development and research of algorithms and software for early quantum computers.

Quantum computers promise extreme runtime improvements for certain application problems that cannot currently be solved with conventional computers. While conventional computers solve computing tasks with bits that either have the state zero or one, quantum computers work on the basis of qubits. These can assume many different states at the same time. Algorithms that make optimum use of these properties can be significantly superior to conventional algorithms.

Open-Source-Bibliothek für maschinelles Lernen im Quanten-Computing