As will be spreading through the mainstream news shortly, I’m sure, Nature has two papers out today demonstrating the teleportation of the internal states of trapped ions. Both the NIST and Innsbruck groups have, using fairly different ion trap systems, succeeded in deterministic teleportation of the internal states of the ions. Woot! Woot! Not only are both of these experiements gorgeous, they are sure the sign of much more interesting protocols to be implemented in the near furuture (or, well, the experimentalist’s version of the near furture.) This is the first demonstration of deterministic teleportation of massive qubit systems (there has been a continuous quantum variable deterministic teleportation experiment done using light.)
A few stats.
Ions
NIST: 9Be+
Innsbruck: 40Ca+
Fidelitity
NIST: 76% to 80%
Innsbruck: 73% to 76%
Distance teleported
NIST: 100s of micrometers (?)
Innsbruck: 10 micrometers
Qubit teleported
NIST: Hyperfine ground states: F=1,m=-1 and F=2,m=-2
Innsbruck: ground state S_1/2 (m_J=-1/2) and metastable state D_5/2(m_J=-1/2)
The main difference between these two experiments is in how they achieve individual addressing. The NIST group has these really neat traps which allow you to move the ions into different sets of trapped ions and then address them spatially. The Innsbruck group uses some neat tricks that allow the internal states to guide which qubits they are coupling their laser light to.
It’s experiments like these that make me even more of an optimist about quantum computing (are we all supposed to use the work reaganist instead of optimist now?) Sure we’ve seen teleportation before. But, especially in the NIST experiment, not in such a way that it is clear that it is just the beginning of a long line of rockin bigger and better experiments (ion traps rock, man!)
Occam
I put away Jorge Luis Borges many years ago when I wrote my Literature thesis as an undergrad. Tonight I returned to him and read Death and the Compass:
“It’s possible, but not interesting,” Lönnrot answered. “You will reply that reality hasn’t the slightest need to be of interest. And I’ll answer you that reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but that hypothesis may not . . .”
Why Your Self Image Matters
Without a sense of your place in the universe, you end up writing funny shit:
The Revolution Against Evolution, http://www.rae.org is not associated with the Raelians http://www.rael.org. The Raelians claim to be creationists, but not in the Biblical sense. Instead they believe that life was imported from outer space by aliens. Their god is a UFO driver. Our group, Revolution Against Evolution, is made up of traditional Biblical Christians who believe in a supernatural creator God, and his son Jesus Christ. We in no way believe that this Christ was a space alien. We do suspect, however, that the god the Raelians serve and believe in is a counterfeit, either of their own imagination, or demonic in nature. Our creator God of the Bible is not a super-technological god; He is a supernatural God.
5ive Days to Midnight
Yesterday I subjected myself to the SciFi Channel minseries “5ive Days to Midnight.” Why would I subject myself to five hours of such torture? Well, the main character is a physicist and the plot involves time travel! That withstanding it was not a pretty site. First, because the dialogue was atrocious, but second because the main character is a physicist who lives in Washington (the state, that is!) Even the T.V. taunts me now.
Shasta Bound
Patrick Hayden, Luis de la Fuente, and I are going to attempt to climb Mt. Shasta next week. Please do a weather dance in our honor next Friday and Saturday. Here is a picture of current conditions on Shasta courtesy of the fine ShastaCam
The route we will take to climb Shasta goes up Avalanche Gulch which is to the right of the ridge in the middle of the picture. The route goes to the left of Thumb Rock which is the silhouetted feature at the top on the right of the picture which, well, looks like a thumb. To the left of Thumb Rock is a big long line of rocks called the Red Banks (in summer they really show up as a stark red line.) Below the Red Banks is a big bare spot. This is The Heart and is remarkably free of snow year round. The route you take is to the right of The Heart and goes through the right side of the Red Banks and then up to the Summit. The plan is to climb from Bunny Flats to Lake Helen on Friday (6860 ft to 10440 ft), camp at Lake Helen (below The Heart) and then attempt to summit on Saturday morning (10440 ft to 14162 ft).
A New Doctor
Congrats are due to Doctor Luis de la Fuente. Ph.D. UCSF 2004!
Here we see Luis (middle) thinking while everyone else swills beer:
What exactly is he thinking? I think he is thinking “what happened to the left side of my body in this photo?”
Move Over Moveable Type
I’ve switched blogging software to WordPress from MoveableType. Upgrade and transfer were pretty painless. Let me know if anyone is having crazy problems with this new setup.
Over In Nonlocality World
Nonlocal determinism implies local indeterminism.
In a universe which evolves nonlocally, a localized observor does not have access to enough information to correctly predict his deterministic evolution. This ignorance will lead to local laws which are probabilistic due to the ignorance of the nonlocal information. In such a universe there are two mysteries: (1) why no signaling? and (2) why quantum theory is a good description of the probabilities arising from the ignorance of nonlocal information? Further, this interpretation amounts to an untestable hypothesis, unless the answers to (1) and (2) are not exact.
Mistaken Identity
For those of you who keep not recognizing me at conferences.
Old Dave:
New Dave:
Notice that the key difference is the necklace.
Crazy Dave:
Homer Jay Simpson Redux
After reading the comments for the Homer Jay Simpson puzzle and getting an email from Ken Brown, I realized that the real puzzle I was thinking of was “into how many pieces can one cut a torus using three planes.”