As a follow up to my last post, I’d also note that Chris Fuchs has set up what looks likes a great lineup for the March meeting.  Because not all of you are GQI members (join!) here is the email Chris sent out that describes the lineup:

Dear GQI Membership,

I write to you as the chair-elect of the GQI executive committee and the program chair of our portion of the 2011 APS March Meeting.  This coming year the meeting will be in Dallas, Texas, 21-25 March 2011.

We believe we have put together an exciting venue of invited talks and focus sessions.  Please have a look at the attachment (see below) and you will see.  There will be some astounding experiments reported, and you will also have a chance to meet several of the founders of our field.  2011 is a hallmark year for quantum information as a field within physics  Also we are pleased to announce that one of our talks will be given by one of the two LeRoy Apker Award winners for “outstanding achievements in physics by undergraduate students.”

I should further mention that the meeting will host a talk from one of this year’s Nobel-Prize winners for the discovery of graphene, Konstantin Novoselov.  (Andre Geim may also speak, but has not yet confirmed.)  Moreover, there will be a recognition of the 100^th anniversary of the discovery of superconductivity with a session of historical talks devoted to the subject, as well as a  Nobel-laureate session on it.  Speakers will include Ivar Giaever, Wolfgang Ketterle, Sir Anthony Leggett, K. Alexander Mueller, and Frank Wilczek, and there is word that there may be more.

In all, it should be a more-than-usual memorable meeting, with some quite wonderful GQI invited and focus sessions.  The executive committee and I hope the venue will be exciting enough to tip the scales for you if you have been indecisive about attending.

Particularly, we encourage you to submit a talk or poster on your latest  research.  The better showing GQI makes at this meeting, the greater the chance we have of increasing general APS awareness of our field, the better the chance the topical group may recruit enough members to attain APS Division status, and, MOST IMPORTANTLY, the better the chance we have of convincing American physics departments that it is worthwhile to create faculty and research positions for all of us.  Your participation is really, truly vital.  Quantum information needs you!

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

Please note that the deadline for abstract submission is NOVEMBER 19 (less than 11 days away!).  Please submit an abstract yourself; please get your students to submit an abstract too!  Please get your associates to submit an abstract as well!! The place to go to submit and register for the meeting is here:

http://www.aps.org/meetings/march/

The GQI executive committee and I hope to see you in Dallas.  It’ll be a whoppin’ good time!

Chris Fuchs

Chair-elect of APS Topical Group on Quantum Information

GQI Program Chair for 2011 APS March Meeting

The attachment reads:

Sunday, March 20, tutorial
Ivan Deutsch (University of New Mexico)
Quantum Simulation and Computing with Atoms

Tuesday, March 22, invited session, “Quantum Information: Featured Experi-
ments”

H. Jeff Kimble (California Institute of Technology)
Entanglement of Spin Waves among Multiple Quantum Memories

Christopher Monroe (Joint Quantum Institute and University of Maryland)
Quantum Networks with Atoms and Photons

Till Rosenband (National Institute of Standards and Technology)
Quantum-Logic Clocks for Metrology and Geophysics

Robert J. Schoelkopf (Yale University)
Towards Quantum Information Processing with Superconducting Circuits

Anton Zeilinger (University of Vienna)
Quantum Information and the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics: A Story of Mutual Benefit

Wednesday, March 23, invited session, “20 Years of Quantum Information in Physical Review Letters”

Charles H. Bennett (IBM Research)
The Theory of Entanglement and Entanglement-Assisted Communication

David P. DiVincenzo (Aachen University)
Twenty Years of Quantum Error Correction

Artur Ekert (University of Oxford and National University of Singapore)
Less Reality, More Security

Peter W. Shor (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
The Early Days of Quantum Algorithms

Benjamin Schumacher (Kenyon College)
A Brief Prehistory of Qubits

Thursday, March 24, invited session, “Symmetric Discrete Structures for Finite Dimensional Quantum Systems”

Berthold-Georg Englert (National University of Singapore)
On Mutually Unbiased Bases (MUBs)

Asa Ericsson (Institut Mittag-Leffler)
Quantum States as Probabilities from Symmetric Informationally Complete Measurements (SICs)

Steven T. Flammia (California Institute of Technology)
The Lie Algebraic Significance of Symmetric Informationally Complete Measurements

Christophe Schaef (University of Vienna)
Report on the Zeilinger Group SIC and MUB Experiments

William K. Wootters (Williams College)
States with the Same Probability Distribution for Each Basis in a Complete Set of MUBs

Focus Session: Superconducting Qubits

Chair: Robert McDermott (University of Wisconsin – Madison)

John Martinis (University of California at Santa Barbara)
Scaling Superconducting Qubits with the ResQu Architecture

Christopher Chudzicki (Williams College)
Parallel Entanglement Distribution on Hypercube Networks (Apker Award talk)

Focus Session: Quantum Optics with Superconducting Circuits

Chair: David Schuster (Yale University)

Andreas Wallraff (ETH, Zurich)
Tomography and Correlation Function Measurements of Itinerant Microwave Photons

Focus Session: Semiconducting Qubits
Chair: Jason Petta (Princeton University)

Amir Yacoby (Harvard University)
Control and Manipulation of Two-Electron Spin Qubits in GaAs Quantum Dots

Focus Session: Quantum Information for Quantum Foundations

Chair: Christopher Fuchs (Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics)

Giulio Chiribella (Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics)
Toward a Conceptual Foundation of Quantum Information Processing

Focus Session: Advances in Ion Trap Quantum Computation

Chair: Jungsang Kim (Duke University)

Richart E. Slusher (Georgia Tech Quantum Institute)
Trapped Ion Arrays for Quantum Simulation

Focus Session: 20 Years of APS Quantum Cryptography: Where Do We Stand?

Chair: Norbert Lutkenhaus (University of Waterloo)

Richard J. Hughes (Los Alamos National Laboratory)
Twenty-Seven Years of Quantum Cryptography!

Like I said, looks like a wonderful lineup.  So you should go (I mean I think it’s even strong enough to persuade a native Californian like me to go to Texas for a meet
ing.
  And that’s saying a lot.  Though it is easier considering the results of the World Series 🙂 )

If you’re a member of the APS topical group on Quantum Information (GQI) you recently received an email from Chris Fuchs about the upcoming APS March meeting (to be held in Dallas, Texas this year.)  If you’re not a member, shame on you, you should become a member!  But more importantly Chris has made a very good effort this year to have a good showing of talks from the quantum foundations community.  There is a focus session this year, “Quantum Information for Quantum Foundations” with Giulio Chiribella (Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics) as the invited speaker.  Giulio will give a talk titled “Toward a Conceptual Foundation of Quantum Information Processing.”  Further Anton Zeilinger (University of Vienna) will be giving a symposium talk, “Quantum Information and the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics: A Story of Mutual Benefit.”

One of the explicit reasons for forming GQI, in addition to the explosive growth of quantum information science, was a place for all who are tightly tied to quantum theory and in particular for quantum foundations folks.  The mission statement of GQI makes this explicit:

The Group is committed to serving as the home within the American Physical Society for researchers in the foundations of quantum mechanics. The Topical Group will promote a continuation of the active and beneficial exchange of ideas between quantum foundations and quantum information science.

Over the years this has resulted in varying degrees of success.  I can remember a few foundations sessions at the March meeting that were top notch and very interesting, but increasingly there has not been a strong foundations showing.

I would, of course, encourage all quantum information related people to attend (submit a talk or a poster) to the March meeting (at worst you’re going to learn about the very exciting superconducting qubit experiments occurring at places like UCSB, Yale, and IBM) but I would particularly encourage you to submit a talk or a post if you are from the quantum foundations community.

My personal view is that foundations work lies very deep in the heart of quantum information science.  Not necessarily for the grand old debate about the interpretation of quantum theory, but because foundations seeks to bring conceptual clarity to a subject whose mystery is what we are trying to exploit.  So foundations people come out of yer closet and help shed some crazy light on quantum information science!