quantum computing
pontiff | August 1, 2008A result of much quantum coolness out today: arXiv:0807.4935 (scirate): "Quantum Communication With Zero-Capacity Channels" by Graeme Smith and Jon Yard. Strange things they are going on when we try to use our quantum cell phones, it seems. Quantum cell phones, what the hell? Read on...
You know the situation. You're standing in line to get your morning coffee and bagel, and you get a call from your boss: "Hey Pontiff Dude, what's your bank account number? I need to have it so that I can deposit this large bonus into your account and if I don't do this within a few seconds, you won't get…
pontiff | July 28, 2008In attempt to keep my reading more current, I'm going to try to post the top rated arXiv papers on SciRate each week and hopefully add about the papers. Let's see how long I can keep it up (bets?)
0807.2668 (7 scites) "Mixing doubly stochastic quantum channels with the completely depolarizing channel" by John Watrous.
QP says: A large variety of open quantum system evolutions are describable using the superoperator formalism. A superoperator is a linear map from a space of linear operators to another space of linear operators. The ones we care most about in quantum computing are the…
pontiff | July 23, 2008From Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days by Jessica Livingston, we find a gem of quantum computer's capabilities in an interview with Max Levchin, cofounder of Paypal:
...Its one of those things where, in the end, fraud is so nondeterministic that you need a human or a quantum computer to look at it and sort of make a final decision...
Fight determinism with determinism, but fight nondeterminism with nondeterminism! I like it! But can you fight determinism with nondeterminism? Why am I now singing "I shot the nondeterminism, and the nondeterminism won?"
(I'm pretty sure Max…
pontiff | July 10, 2008An interesting interview with Christos Papadimitriou (recent winner of the Katayanagi Prize for Research Excellence) on Dr. Dobb's Journal. On chess and backgammon:
In chess, when you play like an idiot, you always lose, so you learn. In backgammon, you can play 10 games, not play well, and win. So you think you are great but you have made a great number of mistakes. Tragically, life is closer to backgammon, because you can play a perfect game and lose!
Which made me wonder which game is the closest game to "real life?" (Okay I'll dispense with the obvious answer which is the board game "…
pontiff | July 3, 2008I can taste the green chilies and after conference ski trip already:
QIP 2009 -- 12th WORKSHOP ON QUANTUM INFORMATION PROCESSING
Santa Fe, New Mexico USA. January 12-16, 2009.
http://qipworkshop.org
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First call for papers
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IMPORTANT DATES:
Submission deadline for talks: October 20, 2008, 23:59 GMT.
Acceptance notification for talks: November 20, 2008.
Submission deadline for posters: December 1, 2008.
Acceptance notification for posters…
pontiff | June 16, 2008I do believe this is the first time I've performed the paper dance on the scienceblogs incarnation of this blog. Yep, it's that time again: it's the paper dance!
"A far away light in the futuristic place we might be; It's a tiny world just big enough to support the kingdom of one knowledgeable; I feel a wave of loneliness and head back down I'm going too fast (I'm going too fast)"
arXiv:0806.2160
The Stability of Quantum Concatenated Code Hamiltonians
Authors: D. Bacon
Abstract: Protecting quantum information from the detrimental effects of decoherence and lack of precise quantum control is…
pontiff | June 5, 2008Blessed be Mike Lazaridis:
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, June 4, 2008 - In a new and generous act of personal philanthropy, Mike Lazaridis has provided an additional $50 million (Canadian) to Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PI). This private donation increases his personal contributions to $150 million in the research institute.
pontiff | May 24, 2008From the Uncyclopedia entry on computers:
How Computers Work
Inside a computer case is a midget that intakes power and outputs graphics. On an average computer, this is an average male midget. High end computers contain baby giraffes or sometimes Links (which will periodically shut down, some blame this on power consumption, but this is actually due to the Links leaving the computer in order to save Zeldas from Gilbert Gottfrieds). Cheaper Hewlett-Packard computers generally come standard with a retard midget. Macs and Dells run on magnets which make them better then anything else! Rumors…
pontiff | May 19, 2008Dude, can I get a Canadian aerospace company to win a United States federal contract and as a consequence have to fund my quantum computing research?
Dalhousie research is taking a quantum leap into next-generation computing.
The university has received $2 million from Lockheed Martin that will benefit the university's basic scientific research in an area of quantum computing, physics and material sciences.
The money, to be spread over four years, is part of the company's commitment to spend $242 million in Atlantic Canada as part of its industrial benefits obligation arising from the federal…
pontiff | May 9, 2008Of interest to quantum computeristas: Cosmologist Niel Turok has been named the new director of the Perimeter Institute. Onward and upward!
pontiff | May 8, 2008The mothership, aka Seed magazine, has a crib sheet for quantum computing. Its not half bad, considering how bad things like this can go. And of course this is probably due in part to the fact that they list the Optimizer as a consultant. But the real question is whether that little shade of black outside of NP is an illustrators trick or the result of a complexity theorist being the person they asked to vet the cheat sheet?
pontiff | May 6, 2008New 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!…
pontiff | May 1, 2008One of the coauthors on the paper which I claimed was shoddy has written a comment in the original post. Which merits more commenting! But why comment in the comment section when you can write a whole blog post replying!
The paper in question is 0804.3076, and the commenter is George Viamontes:
Dave, this is a complete mis-characterization of the paper. Before I start the rebuttal, I'll add the disclaimer that I am the second author of the paper, and would be more than happy to clarify this work to anyone.
Sweet! Continuing:
We are absolutely well aware of the threshold theorem and we…
pontiff | April 30, 2008Hoisted from the comments, Rod says
You guys are much more blunt than I usually am (except with students :-). You're also a lot more succinct.
This particular paper may be wrong, and the authors should be told that, but: as the field grows, and more engineers join, there are going to be more people who start with naive positions. The goal is not to run them off, but to teach them, so they can help us build these things :-).
To which, of course, I can only plead guilty, guilty, guilty. I mean no harm to engineers, that is for sure, especially considering the fact that I am surrounded by them…
pontiff | April 29, 2008Okay, quick, who can be the first to tell me what is drastically wrong with arXiv:0804.3076? (via rdv.) Winner gets a beer next time I see them. This is almost as fun as the game of trying to spot the error in papers claiming thethe discovery of a quantum algorithm for efficiently solving NP-complete problems.
pontiff | April 25, 2008Bill Gates, in his transition from Mr. Big at Microsoft, to Mr. Big at the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, has been going around to various college campuses and given a talk "Bill Unplugged." You can watch the video here if you are so inclined.
Notes from the talk.
First of all no one asked the question I wanted him to answer: how is he going to commute to work. You see Gates' house is on the "east side" which is separated from Seattle by floating bridges (I kid you not.) The commute across these bridges, is, well, lets just say, not the most pleasant experience. The new offices for…
pontiff | April 22, 2008Andrew Landahl (who really should have a blog because he is certainly one of the most interesting people I get to talk to when I attend a conference) sends me a note about recent appearances of quantum computing on prime time TV which he has graciously let me post below.
I thought you'd be amused to know that quantum information has finally made it to prime time. Using TiVo, I just caught up on back-to-back episodes of CBS's "Big Bang Theory" from the past two weeks that make prominent references to quantum teleportation and Shor's algorithm. The week before last, the episode opened with a…
pontiff | April 15, 2008It was an unassuming blue-grey volume tucked away in the popular science section of the Siskiyou County Library. "Spacetime Physics" it announced proudly in gold letters across the front of the book. Published in 1965, the book looked as if it hadn't been touched in the decades since 1965. A quick opening of the book revealed diagrams of dogs floating beside rocket ships, infinite cubic lattices, and buses orbiting the Earth, all interspaced with a mathematical equations containing symbols the likes of which I'd never seen before. What was this strange book, and what, exactly, did those…
pontiff | April 9, 2008The ads on scienceblogs today lead me to find out that, apparently, I can buy a quantum computer right here from Seattle based REI:
And only $70 bucks! Jeez, those D-wave investors overpaid. I wonder how you use it to factor? But the number in the bag and wait?
pontiff | April 3, 2008Today, I looked on the arxiv and found arXiv:0804.0272:
arXiv:0804.0272
Quantum computing using shortcuts through higher dimensions
Authors: B. P. Lanyon, M. Barbieri, M. P. Almeida, T. Jennewein, T. C. Ralph, K. J. Resch, G. J. Pryde, J. L. O'Brien, A. Gilchrist, A. G. White
and nearly fell out of my chair. What an awesome title. A least for me, when I first parsed the title of the paper, the first thing that popped into my head was using spatial dimensions to speed up quantum computation (as opposed to using higher dimensional quantum systems.) Gots to get me some string theories to…