New results out of the Martinis lab at UCSB have shown single qubit gate fidelities of 0.98 for a superconducting phase qubit. This is significantly better than previous single qubit gate fidelities in their system and in any other superconducting qubit system. It is an extremely impressive number. (Seems that carefully crafted microwaves pulses were a big help in getting the gate fidelity to this level.) Martinis is speaking at SQUINT 2008, but just in a tutorial section. Maybe we will get lucky and a bit of these new fidelities will leak into his talk.
Must Pass Texas
As a native Californian, my sworn enemy is the state of Texas. Thus it gives me great pleasure to see that the state of Washington is tied with Texas in venture capital funding. Soon, Seattle, will rule the world! Okay, maybe not. But I love Oren Etzioni’s comment on comparing Silicon Valley to Seattle:
Mr. Etzioni says Seattle has at least one advantage over its storied counterpart in California. “People aren’t distracted by too much sunshine,” he said. “They sit in their offices or garages and get creative.”
Jenn
Via John Cook’s Venture blog, introducing Alaska Airlines new clippy, “Jenn”.
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Two Body Problem of a Different Kind
Two faculty postions in experimental Quantum Information and Nanoscience are being advertised at the University of Bristol. The positions are a part of the Centre (not sure what that word is) for Quantum Photonics and will be housed in the new £11M Nanoscience & Quantum Information Building. Since quantum and nano are so small they should be able to cram a lot of work in this new building! Oh wait, that’s not how it works.
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Quantum Mario
Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics:
Those of you who know me outside of this blog will find that particular juxtaposition of physics and Nintendo very amusing.
Delegate Strategy Questions
An interesting odd/even effect:
Although no official count was available early Wednesday, state Democratic party officials predict that Clinton will get 20 to 30 more delegates when all results are in. Because of the relatively close finish, they are likely to split delegates in most of the congressional districts with an even number of delegates, while Clinton will pick up an extra delegate in districts that offer an odd number.
So did the campaign’s know about this effect and spend more money and put in more effort in districts with an odd number of delegates? Is that even the correct strategy?
Grrr! United Airlines Edition
When error messages err:
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"Jumper" Jumped by Farhi and Tegmark
“Jumper” is a new movie about a man (okay, Hayden Christensen, aka Anakin Skywalker) who can teleport himself anywhere just by thinking about it. Quantum teleportation is a procedure where quantum information can be transported using entanglement and a few bits of classical communication. The distance between these two is, *ahem*, rather large. The New York Times today has an article about an event at MIT (that other institute of technology) which brought together the director of Jumper, star Hayden Christensen, and MIT professors Ed Farhi and Max Tegmark.
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MSR Awarded Fifteen Armies
Microsoft, which to me is that big collection of buildings across the lake where I yell when Vista bogs down my laptop, has announced a new Research Lab to be located in Cambridge, MA. It will be run by mathematical physicist turned comptuer scientist Jennifer Tour Chayes who was the manager for Mathematics, Theoretical Computer Science and Cryptography at Microsoft Research in Redmond.
For some strange reason I get the feeling that Microsoft and Google are playing a large game of Risk with the pieces being replaced by offices, and the countries being replaced by top teir university towns.
ACM Turing Award 2007
The Turing Award, the Nobel Prize of computing (but really how can we fault Nobel for not having a computing prize when computers for Nobel would have been people), has been won by Edmund Clarke (CMU), E. Allen Emerson (UT at Austin) and Joseh Sifakis (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/CARNOT Institute) for research on Model Checking. The citation reads
For their role in developing Model-Checking into a highly effective
verification technology, widely adopted in the hardware and software
industries.
The winners will share a $250,000 prize ($150,000 more this year due to the sponser ship of the Googlemonster.)