Summary of Research
Broadly, my work explores using quantum computers for practical applications. Past work of mine has focused on quantum optimization, and future work will likely explore using optimization methods to improve the performance of Hamiltonian simulation on quantum computers. This is necessary to improve methods used in various areas such as magnetism, the study of high-temperature superconductors, drug discovery, and more.
This Hamiltonian simulation task serves as a core computational kernel for many applications of interest where classical computers struggle and quantum computers are expected to perform well. Specifically, Hamiltonian simulation models how a quantum system changes over time. This process can also be used to estimate a quantum system's lowest possible energy configuration and energy value. This can be achieved by using Quantum Phase Estimation or other more recently devised algorithms.
One of the core challenges for realizing these types of simulations, especially on near-term fault-tolerant quantum hardware, is efficiently mapping Hamiltonians of interest onto a given quantum computer's architecture. Difficulties that arise include translating the system of interest into an appropriate basis for the quantum computer (e.g., Fermionic to Pauli mappings), efficiently routing qubits to minimize swap overheads, ordering terms to minimize error, or even just choosing the right simulation algorithm for the desired use case.
My work aims to reduce these overheads so that quantum computers can someday be useful for something of impactful societal value, beyond what we can achieve today.
Publications
Javier Gonzalez-Conde, Zachary Morrell, Marc Vuffray, Tameem Albash, and Carleton Coffrin. The cost of emulating a small quantum annealing problem in the circuit-model, Physics Review A, 2025
Zachary Morrell, Marc Vuffray, Sidhant Misra, and Carleton Coffrin. QuantumAnnealing: A julia package for simulating dynamics of transverse field ising models. In Proc. of the 2024 IEEE International Conference on Quantum Computing and Engineering (QCE), 2024
Andreas Baertschi, Francesco Caravelli, Carleton Coffrin, Jonhas Colina, Stephan Eidenbenz, Abhijith Jayakumar, Scott Lawrence, Minseong Lee, Andrey Y. Lokhov, Avanish Mishra, Sidhant Misra, Zachary Morrell, Zain Mughal, Duff Neill, Andrei Piryatinski, Allen Scheie, Marc Vuffray, and Yu Zhang. Potential applications of quantum computing at los alamos national laboratory, Technical Report, 2024
Byron Tasseff, Tameem Albash, Zachary Morrell, Marc Vuffray, Andrey Y. Lokhov, Sidhant Misra, and Carleton Coffrin. On the emerging potential of quantum annealing hardware for combinatorial optimization. Journal of Heuristics, 2024
Zachary Morrell, Marc Vuffray, Andrey Y. Lokhov, Andreas Bärtschi, Tameem Albash, and Carleton Coffrin. Signatures of open and noisy quantum systems in single-qubit quantum annealing. Phys. Rev. Appl., 19:034053, Mar 2023
Aubrey Eckert, Nevin Martin, Ryan G. Coe, Bibiana Seng, Zacharia Stuart, and Zachary Morrell. Development of a comparison framework for evaluating environmental contours of extreme sea states. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, 9(1):16, December 2020
Contributed Talk: "QuantumAnnealing: A Julia Package for Simulating Dynamics of Transverse Field Ising Models". Morrell, Zachary et. al. (QCE 2024)
Invited Talk: "A Brief Introduction to Quantum Annealing". Morrell, Zachary (CPAIOR 2024)
Contributed Talk: "Signatures of Open Quantum System Dynamics in Single Qubit Annealing". Morrell, Zachary et. al. Adiabatic Quantum Computing (AQC 2022)
Contributed Talk: "Simulating and Visualizing Quantum Annealing in Julia 2022". Morrell, Zachary et. al. Julia Con 2022
Poster: "A Case For Analog Quantum Computing". Morrell, Zachary et. al. Adiabatic Quantum Computing (AQC 2023)
Awards
2024 - LANL Small Group Distinguished Performance Award
2024 - LANL LAAP Award
2021 - Summa Cum Laude UNM
2021 - UNM Outstanding Senior in Computer Science
2020 - LANL Quantum Computing Summer School Fellowship
2018 - LANL CSCNSI Program (since renamed to LANL Supercomputer Institute)
2016-2019 - UNM Deans List