In a state-of-the-art building in uptown Waterloo, 42 full-time resident researchers are working to push back the frontiers of human knowledge.

The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, known as PI, studies the world at its most fundamental levels, focusing on quantum theory, superstring theory, quantum gravity and related areas.

"Industries that invest in directed research often need to have products in the marketplace within years," says John Matlock, PI's communications director.

"And even many university-based researchers are trying to produce results within relatively short timespans. Perimeter Institute offers an environment where scientists can think long and hard about the deepest, most profound theories of space, time, matter and information.

Photo courtesy of Perimeter Institute
The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics provides a home for studying the world at its most fundamental levels.

"They move forward cautiously and their discoveries won't come on a schedule."

The applications that come from research also often take time to develop, just as they did after the fundamental relationship between electricity and magnetism was recognized by James Clerk Maxwell in the 19th century.

"(Maxwell's) idea of electro-magnetism led to the entire communications age that connects individuals, countries and indeed the entire planet," Matlock says. "Think of how instantly the world reacted to television pictures of the Southeast Asian tsunamis, and then sent individual donations over phone lines and the Internet."

PI's germinating spark was Mike Lazaridis, founder and co-CEO of locally based Research in Motion Ltd., who donated $100 million - the largest single contribution to basic science in Canadian history.

An additional $20 million in private funding and $54 million from federal and provincial governments followed - resulting in a unique public-private partnership in basic research.

The institute publishes nearly 100 scientific papers annually, all to the public domain for other scientists worldwide to pick up and build upon.

"Lazaridis' generosity is an investment in ideas - whatever they may be and whenever they occur," Matlock says.

The institute already has attracted worldwide attention. Lured by internationally competitive salaries and strong community amenities, researchers have arrived from more than a dozen countries and institutions such as Princeton, Cambridge, Oxford, Caltech and Berkeley. They are joined by visiting scientists drawn by an atmosphere that encourages interaction and the open exchange of ideas.

While the institute has co-operative arrangements with many of Canada's top universities, PI researchers remain independent.

They do not have mandatory teaching assignments, although they regularly instruct courses at neighbouring universities. There are no experimental facilities either: The experts use imagination and mathematics to contemplate and calculate new understandings about forces of nature and physical laws.

"This is something that I have always had a passion for and God has given me the opportunity to support it in a way that I never imagined," Lazaridis said at the building's dedication last October. "No one can predict the discoveries they will make ... but we know their discoveries will change everything."

One place where change could come is from PI's work in quantum information theory and quantum computing. Two of PI's long-term researchers, Ray Laflamme and Mike Mosca, also head the nearby Institute for Quantum Computing on campus at the University of Waterloo, where they've built a prototype quantum computer. A quantum computer is a device using tiny quantum particles to handle information.

Says Mosca: "Each quantum particle can be in two places or two states (which represent the bit values 0 and 1) at the same time. This weird phenomenon, if controllable and measurable, is at the heart of what promises to be mind-blowing computational power."

The Waterloo quantum computer, which is the largest in existence, controls only seven qubits, but already a traditional computer needs to keep track of 128 high precision numbers to simulate it. While it is capable of only the most rudimentary calculations, it is estimated that a 40-qubit computer might be more powerful than today's fastest supercomputers.

Interest in quantum computing has been building over the past decade since Peter Shor (then at AT&T's Bell Laboratory, now with MIT) mathematically proved that a quantum computer could factor very large numbers in a matter of days - as opposed to the millions of years a traditional computer would require. Among the potential uses of such a computer - assuming it could be built - is protecting secrets, since cryptography depends on the difficulty of factoring large numbers.

While a working quantum computer would have the computational muscle to easily crack today's best encryptions, quantum computing actually holds the promise of more secure communications. That's because the nature of quantum information makes it impossible to intercept without being detected - another strange characteristic of the sub-atomic world.

"This fundamental new quantum property of nature is a very powerful new tool that allows us to provide a variety of cryptographic objectives previously thought to be impossible," Mosca says.

Miniaturization of computer switches and gates down to the size of atoms is another tantalizing possible outcome of research in quantum computing.

Such breakthroughs in quantum computing may be years, or even decades away, if they happen at all. In the meantime, PI invests in the community and the future through a variety of free public lectures and science programs. It even offers summer camps tailored toward students and teachers.

"All of the programs are designed to make abstract ideas understandable, share the joy of discovery, and encourage young people to consider a life in science," Matlock says.

"You can't hurry discovery," he says. "Big ideas take time."

(James Bow can be reached at bow@businessedge.ca)