quantum computing
pontiff | January 12, 2009QIP 2009 started today in Santa Fe, NM. Since the conference organizers have seen it wise to include wireless access, what better excuse for a bit of liveblogging.
Andrew Landahl gave us a nice introduction to QIP and explained the New Mexico State question (I'm thinking of starting a movement in California to have a state answer. If you've ever lived in California, you'd understand.) He mentioned that New Mexico has a spaceport, but forgot to ask if anyone arrived yesterday via the spaceport. Anyone? Rosewell?
Then....let the talks begin!
Matt "Michael Phelps" Hastings, "A…
pontiff | January 6, 2009For those of us quantum computing folk heading to QIP 2009 in Santa Fe, NM, a few recommendations from someone who once called Santa Fe home.
Food
The first thing you must realize is that New Mexican food is not Mexican food, nor is it Tex-Mex (bleh: worst food ever), but is really it's own form. In addition, Santa Fe has a ton of good food (for a town so small) which is not New Mexican. The second thing you must understand is that New Mexico has a state question! You will be asked this question at dinner. The question is "Red or Green?" an refers to what type of chile you would like.…
pontiff | December 10, 2008Via Zz, a link to Symmetry Breaking's list of physics based license plates.
Sweet I'll have to submit my old California plates:
If there is one thing I will regret in life it is that I missed one of the most "terrifiq" opportunities of all time. While I was at the Santa Fe Institute, I had my QUBITS plates and sometimes would park beside Murray Gell-Mann's car which had a QUARKS license place. At one point Ben Schumacher, who invented the word "qubit", visited the Santa Fe Institute. Damnit that was my opportunity to get a picture of two people who invented words in the dictionary…
pontiff | December 10, 2008Reminder: the deadline for the registration for the SquInT conference (to be held in sunny partially sunny cloudy rainy Seattle) is this Friday, Dec 12. See here.
pontiff | December 5, 2008News from the other coast: MIT has won an IGERT to start an interdisciplinary graduate program in quantum information science. From the press release:
MIT has been awarded a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation to establish a pioneering doctoral-study program in the growing field of quantum information science (QIS), which has evolved rapidly recently with a new influx of ideas from quantum physics and poses great potential in supercomputing.
Website up an running here.
Isaac Chuang sends me some info on the program. Note for undergraduates: looks like a summer program is…
pontiff | December 1, 2008Postdoc with some awesome Canadian quantum researchers:
Quantum Information Processing Program
JUNIOR (POSTDOCTORAL) FELLOWSHIPS
The Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) is a private not-for-profit research institute. It is a catalyst for discovery, incubating ideas that revolutionize the international research community. CIFAR identifies emerging fundamental research questions concerning society, technology and the very nature of humanity and the universe, and creates interdisciplinary networks of leading scholars from around the world to explore them in a way that is…
pontiff | November 25, 2008The deadline for SqUinT abstracts for posters and talks is Nov 26th. See here.
pontiff | November 24, 2008How did I miss this, an obvious entry into the best title ever contest:
arXiv:0810.2587
A photonic cluster state machine gun
Authors: Netanel H. Lindner, Terry Rudolph
Quick, duck for cover, Terry is shooting us with cluster states!
pontiff | November 20, 2008A reminder from Ivan for those who want to attend SqUinT
Dear SQuInTers,
Please remember that abstract submission for contributed talks and posters are due in one week, Nov. 26.
http://panda.unm.edu/SQuInT/contribute.php
Registration payment deadline -- Dec. 12.
http://panda.unm.edu/SQuInT/register.php
Hotel reservation deadline -- Jan. 19.
http://panda.unm.edu/SQuInT/local.php
pontiff | November 17, 2008Registration for QIP 2009 is now open:
QIP 2009 -- 12th WORKSHOP ON QUANTUM INFORMATION PROCESSING -
Santa Fe, New Mexico USA. January 12-16, 2009.
REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN at http://qipworkshop.org/
Deadline for special conference hotel rates: December 1st.
Quantum Information Processing is the recasting of computer
science in a quantum mechanical framework. QIP 2009 is the twelfth
workshop on theoretical aspects of quantum computing, quantum
cryptography and quantum information theory in a series which
started in Aarhus in 1998. QIP 2009, like its previous editions,
will feature invited…
pontiff | November 15, 2008I'm in Halifax, Nova Scotia...eh. For some reason they have a parade at night in November with floats containing Santa and reindeer (obligatory crappy cell phone picture to follow):
Yeah, what the hell?
Interesting conference, I'm attending. I haven't been at a conference in ages where disagreed with so many of the talks!
For example, I learned that many many people have got it all wrong and quantum error isn't possible because we haven't thought about the role of phase errors properly (sadly I didn't get to hear about the twin paradox.) I also learned form an older, well established…
pontiff | November 10, 2008The 11th Annual SQuInT Conference (dude that makes me feel old) will be held in Seattle this year. Seattle is in the southwest because Southwest airline flies here (quick book the direct flights from Albuquerque!) In conjunction with this there will also be a satellite meeting, the Workshop on Integrated Atomic Systems II.
Invited speakers for this years SqUiNt conference include
Andrew Childs (Waterloo)
Luming Duan (Michigan)
Jack Harris (Yale)
Chris Monroe (Maryland)
Barbara Terhal (IBM)
David Weiss (Penn. State)
Yes, for those of you unawares of the SqUinT tradition, that is a list…
pontiff | November 6, 2008I wrote a paper with David DiVincenzo once. Now he is in the title of a YouTube video. Some things you can never predict.
Part of me wants to say very loudly OMG. The other part of me watched the full six episodes.
Parts 2-6 below the fold. Hat tip Aggie.
Part II:
Part III:
Part IV:
Part V:
Part VI:
pontiff | October 31, 2008Shor's algorithm is an algorithm for quantum computers which allows for efficiently factoring of numbers. This in turn allows Shor's algorithm to break the RSA public key cryptosystem. Further variations on Shor's algorithm break a plethora of other public key cryptosystems, including those based on elliptic curves. The McEliece cryptosystem is one of the few public key cryptosystems where variations on Shor's algorithm do not break the cryptosystem. Thus it has been suggested that the McEliece cryptosystem might be a suitable cryptosystem in the "post quantum world", i.e. for a world…
pontiff | October 28, 2008
I've spent the last two days in the San Francisco bay area visiting first Stanford and then Berkeley.
Highlights of the trip included:
Talking to Jelena Vuckovic about the work she and her group have been performing on strongly coupling photonic crystals to quantum dots.
Talking to Thaddeus Ladd and Yoshihisa Yamamoto about their work on ultrafast pulses for controlling electron spin which appears in Nature Physics. Picosecond single qubit gates, mmmm.
Talking with Vaughan Pratt. I did not tell him that I am teaching his (and Knuth and Morris') algorithm this Friday! Oh, and I shook…
pontiff | October 24, 2008Bruce Schneier has a commentary up at Wired about quantum cryptography. There are a lot of good points about the article, but it left me kind of scratching my head. As far as I can tell Bruce Schneier believes that you should not worry about any cryptographic system currently in use ever being broken. I didn't think cryptographers were allowed to have so little paranoia.
Schneier begins by explaining quantum cryptography and quantum computing. The former is a method for taking a small shared private key (needed for authentication) and boosting it up into a shared secret key of greater…
pontiff | October 23, 2008Stephen Jordan, now a postdoc at Caltech, has produced a useful little guide to quantum algorithms: a zoo of quantum algorithms. Help squash the myth that all there is to quantum algorithms are the algorithms of Shor and Grover!
pontiff | October 14, 2008Self promotion for those around the University of Washington campus: I'm giving a talk in the physics department at UW. Mondays, October 20 at 4:00 P.M. Ronald Geballe Auditorium, Rm. A102 (cookies at 3:45):
Title: "Who Will Build a Quantum Computer: the Physicists or the Computer
Engineers?"
Abstract: Building a quantum computer large enough to perform a task beyond the capability of today's classical computers (breaking a cryptographic code or simulating a complex quantum system) is a daunting task. On the fundamental side, this difficulty arises from the fact that quantum systems like to…
pontiff | September 25, 2008An entry into the "best abstract ever" subcompetition of the "best title ever" competition, arXiv:0809.3979:
Counterfactual Quantum Cryptography
Authors: Tae-Gon Noh
Abstract: The 'quantum counterfactuality' is one of the most striking counterintuitive effects predicted by quantum mechanics. This manuscript shows that the counterfactual effect is not merely an interesting academic theme, but that it can also provide practical benefits in everyday life. Based on the quantum counterfactual effect, the task of a secret key distribution between two remote parties can be accomplished even when no…
pontiff | September 24, 2008Major news from the quantum information front. Today I see posted on the arXiv a paper by M.B. Hastings: arXiv:0809.3972 "A Counterexample to Additivity of Minimum Output Entropy." If correct this resolves one of the most famous open problems in quantum information theory, and, even more interestingly says that in a quantum world, transmitting classical information down quantum channel defies your classical intuition. Blessed be our quantum world, which just continues and continues to amaze.
Previously I explained the idea channel capacity. You're sending (classical) information from one…