I’m as much a nationalist as Dick Cheney is a peace loving hippie. Except, of course, when it comes to funding. Yes, I am a “fundanationalist.” Particularly funding of quantum computing. Selfish? Indeed! And you would be too if your salary came from agencies scooped straight out of a bowl of alphabet soup.
So I have no qualms asking the question “Is the US the leading place to do quantum computing theory research?” Now how might one check this out? One way would be to look at the data from the last two QIP conferences. QIP is certainly the top conference for a certain kind of quantum computing theory, one which is more computer sciency than physicy. Note that over the last two QIPs there has been a more democratic method for inviting speakers, so that this data is arguably fairly representative of the work the community currently values. Here are numbers:
QIP 2007 [Brisbane, Australia]
US 12
Canada 8
Europe 13
Asia 1
Australia 1
Israel 2
QIP 2006 [Paris, France]
US 11
Canada 8
Europe 16
Asia 2
Australia 1
Israel 2
Note that I took the authors current affiliation and not the affiliation when they spoke, as I’m more interested in what the current state of theory research is. Well so the United States has less that one third of the speakers. So I would say that the US is certainly not dominating quantum computing research, but is in a three way tie for the top spot with Europe and Canada. Considering the lack of hiring of top quantum computing people in US universities (certain exceptions, of course, apply) I would guess that this divide is only going to deepen.
Of course truthfully I am happy to see quantum computing funded everywhere. However I wonder if this view is shared by those deep in the heart of government funding agencies. Is third place good enough for quantum computing theory research in the United States?
There seems to be a bias in your ordering—it is neither alphabetical nor numerical.
Yep, my bias was what I thought the order would be before I added up the data. Canada didn’t do as well as I expected and Europe did better than I thought.
Is there a substantial difference versus QIP 2005 (at MIT)? I’m curious if the location of the conference away from North America has dropped the US and Canada. (But then Australia is only 1 at Brisbane.)
Much more importantly, Australia is getting spanked.
“Asia” 1 & 2 papers the last two years? Can we get a breakdown by country? Is Japan completely shut out? Not that Europe is more homogeneous than Asia, but at least some of the funding (EU) is shared across much of the continent, which isn’t true here in Asia.
I’m not a theorist, I’m an engineer, but the names I know — Nemoto, Hayashi, Imai, Murao, Koashi, Matsumoto, and numerous others (no disrespect intended to those left off) collectively seem to form a solid body. And I seem to recall that some pundit or another had a good time at a recent quantum information conference in Japan.
And I know you explicitly excluded experimental work, but the work by folks at NEC, NTT, Todai (U. Tokyo), Tokodai (Tokyo Inst. Tech.), (ahem) Keio, and other places certainly qualifies as world class in quality, and constitutes a large body of work, and a large number of working bodies :-).
I too was surprised by the small number of “Asia” (and Australia) speakers.) The speakers from QIP 2006 and 2007 were Francois Le Gall, Kazuo Iwama, and Masahiro Kitagawa, but as you mention there are a lot of good theorists who this method of counting certainly doesn’t account for.
I was confused by your ‘fundanationalist’ label. Does it mean you are loyal to the notion that the US is *the place* to do quantum computing theory research? Or is it the idea that those US lettered agencies should exclusively fund US-based research?
If the former, I’ll call you an idealist, though no insult intended (I’m one too). But for the latter case, you and Dick may have more in common than is polite to admit…
Dave, I think “quantum computing” is a little bit too narrow. If you expand to “quantum simulation” then the picture changes very considerably. For example, here are peer-reviewed publications relating to density functional theory, in five-year bins.
DFT articles in Inspec:
(("density functional" or
"quantum density") WN KY)
9 for 1965-1969
33 for 1970-1974
262 for 1975-1979
719 for 1980-1984
1747 for 1985-1989
3557 for 1990-1994
7819 for 1995-1999
14695 for 2000-2004
-----------------------
9035 for last two years
This is a very respectable annualized growth rate of 23%, sustained for forty years.
Now, if you conceive that “quantum computing” has little or nothing to do with the broader discipline of “quantum simulation”, then I will respectfully submit, that you are seriously underestimating the power and range of your own academic discipline!
To broaden the appeal of QIT and related disciplines, the strategy that our UW QSE Group has adopted is to seek common mathematical foundations for QIT, DFT, MOR, CFD, and QSE (to cite only some entries in the alphabet soup). We think the appropriate foundations are geometric.
To which one might well reply, WTF? In answer to which, come on by our group meetings, Mondays at 2:30 pm, Fridays at 9:00 am, in room 119 of Mechanical Engineering.
We have become confident enough in these geometric ideas as to begin an outreach effort to the broader quantum community. In particular, we are interested to identify “challenge problems” that can be attacked by geometric simulation methods.