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!
Who Will Program the Quantum Computers?
Quantum computers can break many of today’s modern public key cryptosystems. Hence there are lots of three and four letter agencies in governments around the world who are very interested in getting a quantum computer built. (If we put our paranoid hats on, we can ask: are there any countries that are pursuing a secret project for quantum computing? Is it beyond possibility that China, for example, has a secret quantum computing project, and that they will beat the rest of the world to building a quantum computer? Could this be the next Sputnik? OK, enough paranoid mode!) What will the sensitive nature of quantum computers current killer application, breaking public key cryptosystems, mean for researchers in quantum computation? Will it mean that the first large scale quantum computers, when they are built, will have restricted access? Will all hell break loose once quantum computers which can break today’s public key cryptosystems? I’m not just thinking about spy versus spy schemes, but instead, I’m thinking about financial transactions, online use of credit cards, and the whole of the electronic economy. Sometimes it feels like it is a shame that the main attention grabbing algorithm for quantum computers is factoring. Other times, I think about the above line of reasoning, as it scares the bejesus out of me.
How will we make the transition from a world where public key cryptosystems are no longer secure? Will we use the unbroken cryptosystems (lattice based, and linear decoding based?) which have drawbacks which are fairly severe? Will we install quantum key distribution into our networks? And will this transition be gradual, or will it hit like a shockwave, as serious size quantum computers get built over a short span of time?
Interestingly, I don’t think the quantum computing community has had a serious dialogue about these issues. At least not that I know of. Sure we talk about these things over lunches in quantum groups around the world, but is there any consensus over how the public quantum computing community should deal with these issues?