Author: dabacon

Posted on

The Universe's Machine Language

For those local to Seattle, Seth Lloyd is in town tonight giving a Seattle Science Lecture:

Monday, May 8 at 7:30 pm.
Seth Lloyd: ‘Programming the Universe’
Seth Lloyd is a professor at MIT who works in the vanguard of research in quantum computing – using the quantum mechanical properties of atoms as a computer. He believes once humans have a complete understand the laws of physics, quantum computing will allow a complete understanding of the universe as well. His new book Programming the Universe explains how the creation of the universe involves information processing. His hypotheses bear implications for the evolution vs. intelligent design debate since he argues divine intervention isn’t necessary to produce complexity and life. Downstairs at Town Hall, enter on Seneca Street.

Posted on

Fifteen Year Plan

The Economist predicts that in 15 years time there will be quantum computers: “But quantum computing does now seem to be acquiring a momentum of its own. Give it 15 years, and who knows what will result.” Okay, not quite, but there is an article about building quantum computers which can be found here

Posted on

Sophisticated Quantitation Assay

A rock star chemist sends me word of a company which has a product calledThe Qubit Quantitation System (You’ll have to say what country you are connecting from to see this page.) Those biologists have stolen our “qubit!” I wonder if they realize that their product will get horrible placement on search engines because they are using a very common and highly linked word. Doesn’t seem like the best strategy to me. (On another note, am I the only one who is annoyed by the word “assay?”)

Posted on

Quantum Emerging Technologies

A new journal to watch: ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computing Systems?

JETC covers research and development in emerging technologies in computing systems. Major economic and technical challenges are expected to impede the continued scaling of semiconductor devices. This has resulted in the search for alternate mechanical, biological/biochemical, nanoscale electronic, and quantum computing and sensor technologies. As the underlying nanotechnologies continue to evolve in the labs of chemists, physicists, and biologists, it has become imperative for computer scientists and engineers to translate the potential of the basic building blocks (analogous to the transistor) emerging from these labs into information systems.

So far no quantum computing papers, but I think this will be changing very soon.

Posted on

One Heck of a Lorentz Transform

When I was little I used to wonder if a long time ago a distant alien race had noticed our little planet and set up a gigantic mirror pointing towards the earth such that we could use superpowerful telescopes to look into our planet’s past. Mostly I remember thinking that it would be cool if this were true and we could see dinosaurs (that was, I believe, the complete and total extent of my own version of the dinosaur fetish that seems to infect so many children.) Of course I was delighted when I discovered many years later the writings of Jorge Luis Borges, who had quite a fetish for mirrors. A memorial quote of Borges on mirrors is from “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”

Then Bioy-Casares recalled that one of the heresiarchs of Uqbar had stated that mirrors and copulation are abominable, since they both multiply the numbers of man.

While this is not a quote I can exactly sympathize with, the logic of mirrors holds, I think, some strange consequences. For example, suppose you want to freeze a moment of your life for future generations to look back upon. Well, simply launch a mirror away from you at as close to the speed of light as you can possibly manage. Then some future generation will be able to use this mirror to look back at this moment. (Of course the closeness to which you can launch this mirror to the speed of light will effect how much you have “frozen” this instant.) Of course, you could just as easily take a picture of the moment. But the mirror trick affords a certain sense of security: as long as no one can launch a mirror faster than yours, your mirror is safe. And this only gets better as time goes on (they need a faster mirror than yours to catch up to yours.) Of course the size of the mirror needed might be a little extravegant, and certainly gets worse as a function of time. Why Kodak hasn’t marketed this to cult leaders who wish to preserve their teachings, however, I do not know. 🙂
The reason for this post is completely a function of associative memories: yesterday I was bored, and so I calculated for myself that if you move approximately 1-10^(-39) percent of the speed of light as compared to everyone else, then the event in your frame which has coordinates x=1cm and t=0, would correspond to an event which happened about 14 billion years ago, i.e. at the begining of the big bang. In other words there are reference frames where what is next to you happened at the big bang.
So what physicists/(whatever job title describes what I am) do when they get bored? Well it appears to me to be the same things we thought about when we were little. But now they just involve numbers.

Posted on

Brain Signals Random

Note to self: Going to see David Sedaris will give you really funky dreams.
Note to self: Dreams which involve explaining how to pull Pauli gates through Clifford gates using holes in the ground and coconuts are disturbing.

Posted on

Join QIP: See the World (or at least Canada and Japan!)

From my inbox some annoucements for some awesome summer schools and conferences:

———————————————————————-
6th Canadian Summer School on Quantum Information Processing
August 7-11, 2006, University of Calgary, Canada
http://www.equips.ca
———————————————————————-
Students and researchers are invited to attend the sixth summer school on quantum information processing held at the University of Calgary. The goal of the school is to introduce a general audience of computer scientists, physicists, and mathematicians with little or no background in quantum information processing to this exciting and growing field.
Quantum information processing lies at the intersection of computer science, physics, and mathematics and concerns information processing that depends on quantum mechanical effects. It aims at understanding the principles of quantum mechanics and how they can be used for computations and in communication. It is an
interdisciplinary area that brings together theorists and experimentalists.
Lectures will be given by excellent communicators and researchers in the area, including
* Andris Ambainis
* Richard Cleve
* David Feder
* Paul Haljan
* Peter Hoyer
* Ashwin Nayak
* Alain Tapp
* Wolfgang Tittel
* John Watrous
* Gregor Weihs
There are no fees for attending the school. Affordable, comfortable accommodation at the University of Calgary is available.
Registration: http://www.equips.ca
Contact information: equips [at] equips.ca
Summer school: August 7-11, 2006
Please see website for additional information on participation, registration, accommodation, and travel. Please do not hesitate to contact the organizers at equips[at]equips.ca.
The summer school is organized in conjunction with the third conference for graduate students in quantum information processing, held at the University of Calgary, August 14-19, 2006. For more information about the students’ conference, please visit http://www.iqis.org.

(note that the above summer school is followed by the Quantum Information Students’ Conference 2006, which sounds really cool and makes me wish I was a student.)
Also

The Eighth International Conference on
Quantum Communication, Measurement and Computing
“QCMC2006”
This is the First Call for Papers for QCMC2006, which will be held at
Tsukuba International Congress Center in Tokyo, JAPAN,
from 29th November to 3rd December 2006.
(Arrival Date: Tuesday 28th November,
Departure Date: Monday 4th December)
******************* Call for Papers *********************
The QCMC2006 Website is now accepting abstract submissions.
The deadline for abstract submission is Friday, 16 June, 2006
Authors will be notified of acceptance by the end of the August
All papers will be handled electronically.
Please go to the conference website for details;
http://www.qcmc2006.org/submission.html
QCMC2006 is seeking contributions in a
broad spectrum of topics relating to quantum information
and quantum communications, including:
-Quantum Cryptography
-Quantum Communication Systems
-Quantum Measurement and Quantum Metrology
-Quantum Optics for Information Processing
-Non-Classical Light Sources
-Quantum Repeaters
-Quantum Information Theory
-Quantum Computation
Invitation from the Chairmen of the Organizing Committee
Dear prospective QCMC2006 attendee
It is our pleasure to co-chair the Eighth International Conference on Quantum Communication, Measurement and Computing (QCMC). QCMC2006 is being held in Tokyo, to celebrate the 20th anniversary
of the initial meeting in this series, with a program that will focus on summarizing recent achievements in and looking ahead to the future of quantum communication, measurement and computing.
On behalf of the Organizing Committee we invite you to attend QCMC2006, and we encourage you to submit papers on any topic within the program scope.
We thank in advance all prospective QCMC2006 attendees for the high quality of their contributed papers, which we are
certain will add great value to the conference.
We would also like to thank the members of the Organizing Committee, the Program Committee, and Award & Advisory Committee for their kindness in committing to make QCMC2006 a great success.
Sincerely yours,
Osamu Hirota (Chair) and Jeffrey H. Shapiro (Co-Chair)
Chairmen of the Organizing Committee
The 8th International Conference on Quantum Communication, Measurement and Computing

and

Dear Colleagues-
This is the announcement and call for papers for the Second Conference on Quantum Information and Quantum Control, to be held in Toronto, Canada, 7-11 August 2006. More information, together with a list of invited speakers can be found at http://cqiqc.physics.utoronto.ca/CQIQCII. This conference is intended to follow on successful meeting held in 2004, and is intended to bring together the quantum information and quantum control communities.
The deadline for abstract submission is 19 May.
We look forward to seeing you in Toronto this summer,
Sincerely,
Aephraim Steinberg (chair)
Paul Brumer
Daniel James
Hoi-Kwong Lo
Harry Ruda
CQIQC II Organizing Committee

Posted on

Smaller or Larger Hilbert Space: A Religious Debate

Quantum Quandries has founded a new church: The Church of the Smaller Hilbert Space. Humor that appeals directly to quantum physicists: priceless. I am greatly looking forward to the theological debate between members of the Church of the Larger Hilbert Space and Church of the Smaller Hilbert Space. And can we look forward to the Church of the Infinite Hilbert Space, or the Church of the Empty Hilbert Space (that last one feels a little Zen, doesn’t it?) And why aren’t their any Churches for Banach Spaces? Members of all Hilbert Space Churches would be welcome, of course.

Posted on

Blabbering Bacon

For those local to Seattle: Next week, on Tuesday, I’m giving a talk here at UW:

Towards Robust and Powerful Quantum Computers
Colloquium
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
3:30 pm, EE-105
Abstract
Today, a massive effort, spanning many hundreds of research groups coming from multiple disparate disciplines, is underway to build a robust large scale quantum computer. These groups are undertaking this task because the payoffs for building a quantum computer are large and because of a remarkable set of theoretical insights, collectively known as the theory of fault-tolerant quantum computation, which assures them that building a robust quantum computer is possible. In this talk I will discuss my research into the theory of fault-tolerant quantum computation as well as into the study of the algorithmic power of quantum computers. On this first topic, I will highlight methods for achieving fault-tolerant quantum computation which are remarkably similar to how fault-tolerance is achieved in classical computers. Such “self-correcting” quantum systems are best thought of as being the equivalent of the classical transistor which jump started the classical computer revolution. On the second topic of quantum algorithms, I will highlight the similarities and differences between quantum and classical computers and describe how these differences have lead to new quantum algorithms for classically hard problems.