O brave new quantum world!
Michael Biercuk sends me a note about an upcoming workshop on dynamic decoupling. He’s trying to get a gauge of the interest in such a workshop:
Upcoming International Workshop on Dynamical Decoupling (IWODD)
Expected Date: October, 2009
Location: Boulder, CO
By Invitation Only
Interested participants please contact Michael J. Biercuk,
biercuk at boulder.nist.gov
Those interested should shoot Michael an email.
Happy Tax Day! Happier anniversary to me and Mrs. Pontiff!
Over 9 months ago I decided to apply for teaching tenure track jobs. Then the economy took what can best be described as a massive, ill-aimed, swan dive. Thus creating an incredible amount of stress in my life. So what does a CS/physics research professor do when he’s stress? The answer to that question is available on the iTunes app store today: arXiview. What better way to take out stress and at the same time learn objective C and write an iPhone app that at least one person (yourself) will use?
Continue reading “arXiview: A New iPhone App for the arXiv”
I am always greatly amused by the display of frustration in which one threatens to leave a country if things don’t change. During the end of the first term of Bush the Second, it was common in the United States to hear liberals express their anger as: “If he wins a second term, I’m going to move to Canada.” (If you go too far to the left, you end up in Canada?) The expression reached spectacular heights, in my opinion, however, when Tina Fey said of Sarah Palin that if McCain/Palin won the presidential election, Fey would “leave Earth.”
But now that the evil liberals have taken over the Washington, it seems to me that the evil right needs a good guide as to where they can move to overcome their ills. So I’ve put together a simple list to help guide you to your own private utopia.
Continue reading “Where To Move?”
Scott the optimizer asks a question on a wim:
Come up with a catchy name for growth rates of the form 2^(n^&alpha) , 0< &alpha<1.
I thought the answer was obvious: “probably in BQP.”
update: does html superscript not work in a blockquote? I guess the answer is yes.
The survey of abused words in quantum computing shows the word “exponential” as having an, um, exponential, lead over its competitors. My own personal choice for the most abused word was “scalable,” a word that is, in my opinion, the least debated, but most important, concept in quantum computing today. A word which everyone uses but whose definition is strangely missing from all almost all papers that use the word. Here are some thoughts on this word, what it means to particular groups, and what I, in my own pomposity, think the word really should mean.
Note the title of this post is ripped off from the title of quant-ph/0204157, a classic paper on “scalability” in quantum computing.
Continue reading “Climbing Mt. Scalable”
John Preskill writes to me about workshop being quickly organized in response to the release of a report by US National Science and Technology Council calling for a national initiative in quantum information science. I saw this report a while back and have some half written blog posts about it that I need to finish off. Anyway the workshop website is http://www.eas.caltech.edu/qis2009/index.html. Everyone in the quantum information science is invited to attend and the registration and deadlines are, like, almost now!
Here is the blurb from the website:
In January 2009, the United States National Science and Technology Council issued a report on A Federal Vision for Quantum Information Science. The report proposes that:
The United States … create a scientific foundation for controlling, manipulating, and exploiting the behavior of quantum matter, and for identifying the physical, mathematical, and computational capabilities and limitations of quantum information processing systems in order to build a knowledge base for this 21st century technology.
This Workshop on Quantum Information Science (QIS) has been organized in response to the NSTC report. It brings together leading theorists and experimenters drawn from physical science, computer science, mathematics, and engineering who will assess recent progress in QIS and identify major goals and challenges for future research.
The workshop will include open evening sessions so that all participants can express their views concerning the priorities for a national QIS initiative. The workshop will be followed by a report that will be submitted to the federal agencies that sponsor or perform QIS research.
Note: Deadline for workshop rate at the Marriott is Wednesday, April 8, 5:00pm EST.
Over at Xconomy Ed Lazowska writes about the proposed cuts in higher education here in the state of Washington. There I find that the Washington higher eduction is number one! Number one in terms of the percentage being cut by the (proposed) state budget: 23 to 31 percent among global challenge peer states. But are we really number one or are there other non-global challenge peer states that are getting cut worse? Inquiring minds want to know: which university system is going to win the prestigious “the Tax Man axeth” contest?
A note from Ivan Deutsch, Secretary-Treasurer of the APS GQI topical group about the winners of the best student paper awards:
We are pleased to announce the Best Student Paper awards for the 2009 APS March Meeting. For the best experimental paper, the winner is
Eric Lucero, UCSB
for his paper J17.1, “High fidelity gates in Josephson phase qubits”.
For the best theoretical paper, the winner is
Lev Bishop, Yale University
for his paper V17.9, “Towards proving non-classicality with a 3-qubit GHZ state in circuit QED”.
Congratulations to the future Doctors Lucero and Bishop!