Dr. Rick Mukherjee joined the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in Dec 2024 as the inaugural Director of the Quantum Center and an Associate Professor of Physics. He also serves on the board of the Chattanooga Quantum Collaborative. He earned his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Complex Systems in Germany and held research appointments at Rice University, Harvard University, Imperial College London and the University of Hamburg, with expertise spanning in AMO physics applied to quantum simulation of many-body phenomena and quantum information theory. His work is currently supported by multiple federal grants, including the NIST STRS, NSF TIP, and TVA sponsorship.
Presentation Title:
Qudit-based quantum algorithms – A new paradigm
Presentation Abstract:
I will briefly introduce the UTC Quantum Center and outline its research activities, followed by a focus on quantum algorithms. In particular, I will present recent advances in solving NP-hard optimization problems—specifically integer programming—using qudits (higher-dimensional qubits). The talk will highlight a scalable circuit-based algorithm employing interacting qudits to overcome the resource inefficiencies of qubit-based encodings. The approach integrates feasible-region distillation, phase-amplitude cost encoding, and quantum phase estimation, yielding the optimal solution with maximum measurement probability and a provable reduction in time complexity over classical exact methods.