Faculty

Rakesh Tiwari, McGill University

Quantum phenomena have the potential to speed up the solution of hard optimization problems. For example quantum annealing, based on the quantum tunnelling effect, has recently been shown to scale exponentially better with system size as compared with classical simulated annealing. However, current realizations of quantum annealers with superconducting qubits face two major challenges. First, the connectivity between the qubits is limited, excluding many optimization problems from a direct implementation.

Sangil Kwon: Phase in Superfluids and Spontaneously Broken Gauge Symmetry

It is often said that superfluids (including superconductors) can be described by a macroscopic quantum wavefunction and their phase transition can be understood based on the concept of spontaneously broken gauge symmetry. This statement is not, however, trivial at all. In this seminar, I will discuss some conceptual problems that stem from applying the concept of spontaneously broken gauge symmetry to superfluids.

APS March Meeting Student Practice Talk Session

Pavithran Iyer, Université de Sherbrooke

Arbitrary precision quantum control of qubit systems appears to be unobtainable due to environmental influences that manifest themselves as errors in a quantum algorithm. Errors modelled by the probabilistic application of Pauli operators during the computation are convenient for analytical proofs and classical simulation but the level of accuracy of such a model depends on the quantumness of the error source.

Feihu Xu, University of Science and Technology of China

Every time you take a photo, photons strike different parts of your image sensor in different quantities. In daytime, your sensor detects more than a billion photons, which are more than 1000 photons per pixel for a basic one-megapixel camera. Can you take a photo with one photon per pixel? I will address how to perform accurate imaging at a light level of one photon per pixel.

Jeongmin Park - Center for Integrated Nanostructure Physics (CINAP), Institute for Basic Science (IBS) Department of Energy Science, Sungkyunkwan University

The combination of two-dimensional (2D) materials and functional oxide has been attracted in electrical transport study. Many researchers expected synergetic performance from this interesting structure. And the field effect transistor (FET) scheme was widely used to study it. Here, we successfully demonstrated graphene FET device which is fabricated on top of SrTiO3 (STO).

Gerard Valentí Rojas - The Institute of Photonic Sciences, Spain

The laws of quantum mechanics have helped scientists to unravel the behaviour of nature at its most fundamental scales. However, quantum phenomena are often difficult to understand and simulations have historically provided a useful framework for their study. Nevertheless, when dealing with large quantum systems or real-time dynamics, the computational cost of numerical simulations can become unfeasible.

Matthew Day, University of Bristol and National Physical Laboratory, UK

Trapped ions are one of the most mature platforms for quantum information processing, quantum-enhanced sensing, and precision spectroscopy. Scaling to large numbers of trapped ions remains an open, technological challenge that would help advance the functionality and usefulness of the platform. The production of ion microtrap arrays, fabricated using MEMS techniques, has provided a key component to this scaling challenge.

Hydrogen and hydride superconductors, a new path to room temperature superconductivity?

The recent discovery of superconductivity in H₃S under high pressure by the group of Mikhail Eremets at the record breaking temperature of 203 K has opened a whole new path to potential room temperature superconductivity. I will describe recent experiments designed to verify the pairing mechanism in this new material using infrared spectroscopy.

Nikolai Lauk, University of Calgary

Realization of a quantum network that enables ecient long-distance entanglement distribution would allow for multiple impressive applications with quantum key distribution being the most prominent one.