Are We Computing Quantum in the Wrong Base? with Ivan Deutsch

Every commercial neutral-atom quantum computer today encodes information in just two energy levels of an atom that has many more — strontium has ten nuclear-spin levels, cesium has sixteen. Ivan Deutsch, one of the founding theorists of neutral-atom quantum computing, joins the podcast to ask whether binary is really the right base for quantum computation, and to make the case for spin cat codes: a fault-tolerant encoding that embeds a qubit inside the richer structure of a qudit, the way bosonic cat codes use microwave cavities. Along the way, Ivan traces three decades at UNM — from the earliest days of quantum information science to his role building Elevate Quantum, the only federally designated quantum Tech Hub in the United States.