Happenings in the Quantum World, May 6, 2008

New leader at the Perimeter Institute this Friday, Perimeter researcher wins prestigious award, a summer school on quantum cryptography, the answer is not quantum physics, and quarter charge quasiparticles for quantum computing.

• Looks like the Perimeter Institute, without whom jobs in quantum computing theory would be scarcer a Wii at Christmas time, is going to announce its new executive director this Friday, May 9.
• In other Perimeter Institute quantum computing news, Raymond Laflamme, has won the Premier's Discovery Award. The picture on that announcement makes Ray look very intense!
• Speaking of which, the following appeared in my inbox a few days ago from...Ray Laflamme:
  

  Dear Colleague
  please pass this message to your students, pdfs or colleagues that might be interested.

  We are planning a summer school on Quantum Cryptography at IQC from August 7th to 11th. The summer school is aimed for graduate students, pdfs and industry researchers who know basics ideas of quantum information and cryptography who want to deepen their understanding of the cryptographic context, the theoretical underpinning and the experimental realisations and difficulties. The summer school will last 5 days. A rough idea of the schedule is as follow

  Day 1 Introduction to Classical Cryptography and Information Security
  Day 2 Quantum Cryptography Overview and Protocols
  Day 3 Security
  Day 4 Implementations
  Day 5 Industry presentations

  Invited lecturers:
  Christian Kurtsiefer
  Hoi-Kwong Lo (to be confirmed)
  Alfred Menenez
  Valerio Scarani
  Renato Renner

  We will also include the possibility of poster presentations from the participants. Attendance is limited and we strongly encourage early registration before the registration deadline of June 1st, following the link at http://www.iqc.ca/quantumworld/index.php?id=9
  

  Local Organising committee:
  Jean Christian Boileau
  Raymond Laflamme
  Norbert Lutkenhaus
  Michele Mosca

• Two MIT Tech Review articles on D-Wave by Seth Lloyd and Scott Aaronson have appeared. You can tell which of these two has tenure by the length of the article :)
• From the laugh out loud, but it makes you cry, a bandwagon jupmer to the silly book "The Secret" (which apparently invoves lots of lawsuits), "The Answer: Grow any Business, Achieve Financial Freedom and Live an Extraordinary Life." The key it seems, is, wait for it, quantum physics:
  

  For example, chapter two explores how the world works on the smallest scale, also known as quantum mechanics. From this subatomic perspective, scientists conclude that everything is energy, including thoughts. "The Answer" explains how to apply the laws of quantum science to build a dream business.

  This is clearly an omen that it is time to found a quantum computing company. Wait, maybe this actually is describing D-wave's business plan?

• A Scientific American article on fractional charge in quantum Hall systems of one quarter. Hopes for topological quantum computing upped by a few percentage points. No sign of an impact on Microsofts stock price. Seems other external events may have drowned out the signal.