SODA papers are out. One quantum paper: “Quantum Verification of Matrix Products” by Harry Buhrman and Robert Spalek. Also known as quant-ph/0409035.
Jet Lag, Shmet Lag
Tokyo, in route to Singapore.
Ticking Away the Moments That Make Up a Dull Day
Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow’s new book coming out this September: A Briefer History of Time
Twirling, Twirling To Infinity
Nature gets the best title of the day award for “Cosmic ‘cigar’ spins at astonishing pace”. Seems that Santa is a very strange object, indeed.
Going to MIT and Negative Information
Patrick Hayden (awesome ski picture) sends me an email that negative quantum information was discussed…..on the public radio show “Car Talk!” (The August 27th edition, available for purchase from audible.com.) You know your work has hit it big time when it makes it onto a show which discusses how to repair your car. The next step after “Car Talk” is if your work appears on “The Daily Show.”
Of course, we shouldn’t be too surprised. The hosts of “Car Talk”, Tom Magliozzi and Ray Magliozzi (click and clack), both graduated from MIT. In the show where they discuss negative quantum information, one of the two hosts says something like “Of course you know who Claude Shannon is.” Of course!
FTQC 2005 Talks
A workshop I very much regret missing because I was in Italy, “IBM Workshop on Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computation” now has all of their presentations online.
Beyond the Frinkahedron
An easy, well written discussion of the casual causal dynamical triangulations approach to quantum gravity: hep-th/0509010: “The Universe from Scratch” by J. Ambjørn, J. Jurkiewicz. and R. Loll. If I were young (wait a second), interested in quantum gravity, and this article didn’t get me interested in this technique, I think I would check my pulse (ducks shoe thrown by Lubos.)
physics.QP
The arxiv has announced a restructuring of its categories. Quant-ph will be known as physics.QP and its moderators are Daniel Gottesman and Lev Vaidman:
physics.QP Quantum Physics (Daniel Gottesman, Lev Vaidman)
quantum information and associated physical effects, quantum computation, experimental quantum devices, non-determinism experiments and interpretations
I have no idea what “non-determinism experiments” refers to. Apparently there are some really good experimentalists out there who run experiments with no noise.
You're Next Gravity
Via Pharyngula:
NEW YORK, Sept. 7 /PRNewswire/ — Science vs. Religion. Evolution vs. Creation. It is an age-old battle whose time has come. “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” will gather together all the experts (or at least those who will talk to them), travel to the places that matter in the debate (basic cable budget permitting) and ultimately settle the controversy once and for all. “Evolution Schmevolution: A Daily Show Special Report” will premiere on Monday, September 12 and air nightly at 11:00 p.m. through September 15. For one full week, “The Daily Show” goes in-depth, around, through and quite possibly under, one of the hottest hot-button issues facing our nation: evolution. It’s the accepted theory on the origin of life by an overwhelming majority of the world’s biologists, but maybe they’re all wrong. What’s so great about the scientific method anyway? “Evolution Schmevolution” will explore:
* What other theories are out there?
* Who’s on the frontlines of this debate?
* Should your child’s curriculum really be decided by experts in their respective fields?
Quantum Letterman
According to the ISI Web of Science, here are the top cited papers under a “subject” search of “quantum computation”:
1. Loss D, DiVincenzo DP
Quantum computation with quantum dots
PHYSICAL REVIEW A 57 (1): 120-126 JAN 1998
Times Cited: 1003
2. Bouwmeester D, Pan JW, Mattle K, et al.
Experimental quantum teleportation
NATURE 390 (6660): 575-579 DEC 11 1997
Times Cited: 837
3. Ohno Y, Young DK, Beschoten B, et al.
Electrical spin injection in a ferromagnetic semiconductor heterostructure
NATURE 402 (6763): 790-792 DEC 16 1999
Times Cited: 758
4. Gershenfeld NA, Chuang IL
Bulk spin-resonance quantum computation
SCIENCE 275 (5298): 350-356 JAN 17 1997
Times Cited: 617
5. MONROE C, MEEKHOF DM, KING BE, et al.
DEMONSTRATION OF A FUNDAMENTAL QUANTUM LOGIC GATE
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 75 (25): 4714-4717 DEC 18 1995
Times Cited: 595
6. DIVINCENZO DP
QUANTUM COMPUTATION
SCIENCE 270 (5234): 255-261 OCT 13 1995
Times Cited: 594
7. SHOR PW
SCHEME FOR REDUCING DECOHERENCE IN QUANTUM COMPUTER MEMORY
PHYSICAL REVIEW A 52 (4): R2493-R2496 OCT 1995
Times Cited: 565
8. BARENCO A, BENNETT CH, CLEVE R, et al.
ELEMENTARY GATES FOR QUANTUM COMPUTATION
PHYSICAL REVIEW A 52 (5): 3457-3467 NOV 1995
Times Cited: 557
9. Ekert A, Jozsa R
Quantum computation and Shor’s factoring algorithm
REVIEWS OF MODERN PHYSICS 68 (3): 733-753 JUL 1996
Times Cited: 525
10. Knill E, Laflamme R, Milburn GJ
A scheme for efficient quantum computation with linear optics
NATURE 409 (6816): 46-52 JAN 4 2001
Times Cited: 435
What this means is beyond me, but what the heck, who said I was going to provide useful information on this blog!