Doctorant F/H PhD proposal in energetic cost of fault-tolerant quantum computing

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Type de contrat : CDD

Niveau de diplôme exigé : Bac + 5 ou équivalent

Fonction : Doctorant

Mission confiée

The MOCQUA team at the Loria laboratory in Nancy (France) is looking for a PhD student in the theory of quantum computing.

The goal of the project will be to analyze how the energy consumption of fault-tolerant quantum computers scales as a function of the size of quantum algorithms, in a regime where the computation is specifically optimized to minimize energy consumption rather than qubits or gates counts. The main objective will in particular be to determine whether better energy scaling than that predicted by the quantum threshold theorems [1,2] can be achieved, thanks to a coupling of hardware noise and energy models with the theory of fault-tolerant quantum computing, following the approaches developed in [3,4].

In practical terms, the PhD student will mostly focus on fault-tolerant quantum computing theory, and interact with a post-doctoral researcher providing him the hardware energetic and noise models. Because such models can introduce correlated noise, this project will indirectly help understanding how to better design fault-tolerant circuits to resist against such noise, which is an important question of independent interest. In order to help designing more resource-efficient and noise-resilient fault-tolerant circuits, the PhD might possibly use tools from diagrammatic reasoning for quantum circuits currently developed in the group [5], as well as recent developments in fault-tolerant circuit transformations [6].

Methodologically speaking, the project will involve the following tasks:

  • Analytical calculations
  • Numerical simulations

This project will be supervised by Marco Fellous-Asiani (Starting faculty at INRIA Université de Lorraine; expert in energetics of fault-tolerant quantum computing [3,4]), Simon Perdrix (Research director at INRIA Université de Lorraine; expert in diagrammatic reasoning for quantum circuits [5]), and involve close collaborations with Michael Vasmer (Starting Faculty at Inria Paris; expert in fault-tolerant quantum computing [7,8]).

References:

[1] Yamasaki, H., & Koashi, M. (2024). Time-efficient constant-space-overhead fault-tolerant quantum computation. Nature Physics, 20(2), 247-253.

[2] Nguyen, Q. T., & Pattison, C. A. (2025, June). Quantum fault tolerance with constant-space and logarithmic-time overheads. In Proceedings of the 57th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (pp. 730-737).

[3] Fellous-Asiani, M., Chai, J. H., Thonnart, Y., Ng, H. K., Whitney, R. S., & Auffèves, A. (2023). Optimizing resource efficiencies for scalable full-stack quantum computers. PRX Quantum, 4(4), 040319.

[4] Fellous-Asiani, M., Chai, J. H., Whitney, R. S., Auffèves, A., & Ng, H. K. (2021). Limitations in quantum computing from resource constraints. PRX Quantum, 2(4), 040335.

[5] Clement, A., Delorme, N., Perdrix S. Minimal Equational Theories for Quantum Circuits. In the proceedings of LICS 2024.

[6] Rodatz, B. Poor, B., Kissinger, A. Fault Tolerance by Construction Arxiv:2506.17181 2025.

[7] Bourassa, J. E., Alexander, R. N., Vasmer, M., Patil, A., Tzitrin, I., Matsuura, T., ... & Dhand, I. (2021). Blueprint for a scalable photonic fault-tolerant quantum computer. Quantum, 5, 392.

[8] Huang, E., Pesah, A., Chubb, C. T., Vasmer, M., & Dua, A. (2023). Tailoring three-dimensional topological codes for biased noise. PRX Quantum, 4(3), 030338.

Principales activités

Scientific research.

Compétences

The candidate should possess a master's degree in physics or in computer-science, and have a good knowledge of the basics of quantum physics, quantum information, or quantum computing.

A familiarity with programming (Python) would be a plus.

Avantages

  • Restauration subventionnée
  • Transports publics remboursés partiellement
  • Congés: 7 semaines de congés annuels + 10 jours de RTT (base temps plein) + possibilité d'autorisations d'absence exceptionnelle (ex : enfants malades, déménagement)
  • Possibilité de télétravail (après 6 mois d'ancienneté) et aménagement du temps de travail
  • Équipements professionnels à disposition (visioconférence, prêts de matériels informatiques, etc.)
  • Prestations sociales, culturelles et sportives (Association de gestion des œuvres sociales d'Inria)
  • Accès à la formation professionnelle
  • Sécurité sociale

Rémunération

2300 € brut/mois