O brave new quantum world!
From article entitled “Bright Outlook for Queenland Nanotechnology Alliance”:
…their efforts are focused on making a significant impact into solving many of the holy grails, such as clean energy, personalised medicine and quantum computing.
Well I’m not sure if quantum computing is a hoy grail, but I’m pretty sure quantum computing researchers all know and laugh at “The Holy Grail.”
Right now I’m in the middle of an incredibly strange transition. Friday and Saturday the Northwest Section of the American Physical Society had its annual conference in Tacoma (at the University of Puget Sound: what an acronym, eh?) This conference was full of all sorts of cool physics, astronomy, and even the history of physics (did you know that graphs were not really used until the mid to late nineteenth century. How strange?!) Starting this evening, I’ll be attending the 38th ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing which is being held here in Seattle. I’m sure the next few days will be filled with all sorts of cool theoretical computer science. Now I’m faced with getting my brain to move from an experiment involving electromagnetically induced transparency to understanding capacity achieving list decoding codes. So if my bloggings seem a little random, well, you’ll know that this transition has fried my brain.
Okay, we will officially call this week “D-wave week.” According to an article here (update: for a link that may work for all browsers, see here), D-wave just secured another round of financing, to the tune of $14,000,000.
An article today in the New York Times describes a cool experiment with “backwards propogating light.” It’s a cool experiment, but what I love best from the article is the following line:
However, the pulses were in a shape known as Gaussian, which is, in principle, infinite in width, though in practice not quite that wide.
Winner of the understatement of the year?
The KITP is hosting a conference on Topological Phases and Quantum Computation which starts today. The talks should be appearing online this week here. Wish I could be there, but hopefully most of the talks will appear online, thus allowing the teaching bound like me to follow the conference from afar.
It’s Bacon! (Warning: the linked site may lead to abnormally clogged arteries.)
Update: From the comments,
Bacon, Bacon, Bacon
www.baconrobots.com – Because the only thing better then Bacon is a hot animatronic lady cooking it for you.
www.ratethebacon.com – A site for bacon lovers who love to talk about bacon.
www.baconspectator.com – Home of the Bacon of the Month Club.
www.craftyplanet.com/bacobuddies.htm – Bacobuddies – how cool is that.
www.blacktable.com/bacon030515.htm – Bacon soap.
www.makinbacon.com/welcome.htm – I’m sorry, but microwaving bacon is just wrong.
www.cookingforengineers.com/article.php?id=3 – Or is it? Scientific Bacon.
www.cockeyed.com/inside/bacon/bacon.html – The economy of bacon.
www.bayoudog.com/04kitchen/bacon.htm – Bacon as heroin.
www.iheartbacon.com – for the Bacon obsessed
Lately I have been pondering how I would teach quantum computing to computer science undegraduates. Imagine the class was made up of juniors and seniors who are majoring in computer science or computer engineering. How would you teach such a class?
My first thought is that I would attempt to structure the class more around programming and simulating quantum circuits than on the more abstract course that one normally sees in quantum computing. Certainly this would have the advantage of stressing the students previous strengths (leaving out, unfortunately, the theory students. But if they are really destine to be theory students they should try to take the graduate level course, no?) It would also give them hands on access to the abstract ideas of quantum computing. What I’d really like to use for this would be somethign akin to a hardware description language combined with a simulation synthesis tool. It would also be awesome if a CAD tool could also be developed. However, I haven’t seen anything quite resembling this in the quantum simulation world, but I’d certainly be happy to find out if such programs exist.
Which would you rather have, breadth or depth? Suppose I give you the choice between the following two directions in experimental research in quantum computing in the next five years: either a few (say ten to thirty) qubits with extremely low decoherence and high control precision (perhaps even a high enough to perform quantum error correction) or a huge number of qubits (say hundreds to thousands to millions) with fairly poor decoherence and control. Assume that in both cases, fabrication can be done with a fairly high degree of sophistication. Of of these two options, which would you perfer to see in the near future?
D-Wave Systems, those crazy Vancouverites trying to build a quantum computer, have a new CEO:
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, May 9 /CNW/ – D-Wave, developer of the world’s most advanced computers, has appointed Silicon Valley technology executive and entrepreneur Herbert J. Martin as chief executive officer.
Which makes me dream of the day when I will be able to include in my grant proposal a request for dollars to buy a quantum computer.
In tonight’s quant-ph a keen eyed colleage finds a paper wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a koan:
Quantum Physics, abstract
quant-ph/0605070
From: Yu Shi [view email]
Date: Sun, 7 May 2006 12:02:44 GMT (16kb)
High Energy Quantum Teleportation Using Neutral Koans
Does this mean that Deepak Chopra was right? 😉
In this sprit:
Two students were watching an atom. One students said to the other: “look the electron is a particle, right?” The other said, “no most definitely a wave!” A wise master came along, so the students decided to ask the master his opinion on the matter. They both discussed with the master why each thought that the electron was what it was. The master thought for a while and then replied: “I’m not a physicist you damn fools.”
On a somewhat related note: This weekend we went to see Julia Sweeney and Ira Glass. Julia Sweeney does quite a routine about losing her religion (part of which is available from a “This American Life” show here here.) At one point in her routine she describes how after leaving her Catholic faith, she learns about all the new age mumbo jumbo. She is very excited by this: a blend of science and religion. But she makes the mistake of getting interested enough to actually go out and learn about quantum theory. Paraphrasing: “sure there is a lot about the behavior of atom particles and waves we don’t understand, but there is no quantum consciousness. Deepak Chopra is full of shit!” Ouch, new age slam!