The Quantum Shorts film contest is accepting entries for 2018, due by December 1. The competition is for films no longer than five minutes that take inspiration from quantum physics. Prizes, screening and awards will be given for ten selected films that tell stories with a quantum twist or bring artistry to interpretations of quantum [...]
Fernando Brandao, Bren Professor of Theoretical Physics, collaborating with Garnet Chan, Bren Professor of Chemistry, and Austin Minnich, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Physics have received an NSF award under the RAISE:TAQS program. Their proposal Quantum simulation of materials and molecules using quantum computation will "explore how transformative advances in the simulation of quantum [...]
Ant-Man and the Wasp, the newest film in Marvel's Cinematic Universe (MCU) opened on July 6. IQIM's Spiros Michalakis, has earned his own spot in the MCU as a science consultant on Ant-Man, Doctor Strange and Captain Marvel. Read the New York Times article, The Science (and Scientists) behind Ant Man, featuring the role of [...]
Stabilizer codes are among the most successful quantum error-correcting codes, yet they have important limitations on their ability to fault tolerantly compute. In a recent paper by Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Scholar Tomas Jochym-O'Connor, IQIM alum Alex Kubica and Theodore Yoder introduce a new quantity, the disjointness of the stabilizer code, which, roughly speaking, is the [...]
Computers need energy to operate: Have you ever noticed that when rendering graphics or performing other computationally expensive tasks, your laptop heats up and drains its battery? Even though technological improvements have greatly increased the energy efficiency of computer components over the years while making them ever faster, heat dissipation remains one of the major [...]
A new paper by Nicole Yunger Halpern, Brian Swingle and Justin Dressel combines the out-of-time-ordered correlator (OTOC) and the Kirkwood-Dirac (KD) quasiprobability. Quantum circuit for inferring the coarse-grained OTOC quasiprobability A from weak measurements. [Fig. 3] Two topics, evolving rapidly in separate fields, were combined recently: the out-of-time-ordered correlator (OTOC) signals quantum-information scrambling in [...]
John Preskill's thoughts about his colleague and friend, Stephen Hawking appear in Time Magazine. While his scientific accomplishments alone would suffice to ensure an enduring legacy, Stephen Hawking also became one of the world’s most successful popularizers of science. Stephen firmly believed that the quest for a complete theory of the universe should be accessible [...]
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is expanding. Black Panther premiers on February 16th, Avengers: Infinity War on May 4th, and Ant-Man and the Wasp opens in theaters on July 6, 2018. Fans are anxiously anticipating Ant-Man and the Wasp; here are just a few of the reasons why (from Comicbook.com) : This is the first Marvel [...]
Caltech's EAS publication ENGenious spotlights four faculty members "who [Division Chair] Ravichandran identifies as part of a select group focused on studying the quantum phenomena in exquisite detail, with an eye to bringing that detail to usefulness. The group spans the whole spectrum, from the most basic science to information theory and quantum information theory [...]
The January 30, Physics Today Review Quantum computing advances spur excitement and confusion:Media anticipation heightens, but informed voices counsel patience features recent discussion by John Preskill. This includes his January arXiv paper “Quantum computing in the NISQ era and beyond,” which is based on his keynote address at December’s Quantum Computing for Business conference in Silicon Valley. Photograph of [...]