In Sherbrooke, 150 kilometres east of Montreal, quantum physics is everywhere, even on beer cans. Concocted in the mid-2010s by two former PhD students at the Faculty of Science’s Quantum Institute, and still brewed just a few kilometres away, this Quantum beer from India could claim the title of official drink of the former bastion of the Quebec textile industry that has become one of the world capitals of this technology of the future. This will allow computers using it (particles will then replace chips) to perform calculations incredibly faster than a conventional computer.
“There are few ecosystems in the world as concentrated and coordinated as here”Julien Camirand Lemyre, who had the good taste to invent India Quantum Ale, created Nord Quantique in 2020, a Canadian startup that is a symbol of the excitement that reigns in Sherbrooke.
Launched in early 2022 by the Quebec government, the Quantum Innovation Zone aims, by bringing together research and entrepreneurship, to make the promises of technology for computing, cryptography, sensors and materials a reality. To this end, a 4,600-square-metre space has been set up in the former headquarters of the newspaper The tribunethe daily newspaper of the Estrie region. Start-ups can rent offices, meeting rooms and, above all, ultra-modern equipment that they could hardly afford for their experiments, such as these dilution refrigerators, whose unit selling price amounts to millions of euros.
To find the best minds, they need only go up the hill again to the Quantum Institute. Founded forty-five years ago to distinguish itself from the great universities of Montreal, such as McGill, which eclipsed it, the school is a world reference. It has three hundred students and thirty-nine professors, including Alexandre Blais, the Canadian star of the field. The influence of the area is also contributed to by the presence in Bromont, an hour’s drive from Sherbrooke, of IBM’s only Canadian factory: the American computer giant has installed one of its four quantum computers in operation in the world there.
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This is what “fertile land” who seduced Valérian Giesz, co-founder and CEO of Quellela, a French start-up specializing in quantum computers, met in Sherbrooke on Friday, September 13, during a visit to which The world was invited.
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