Faculty

Dusan Sarenac: Far-field moire neutron interferometry

In this talk I will present our work on developing far-field moire neutron interferometry at the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Center for Neutron Research. We have successfully built a two phase-grating moire interferometer and employed it for phase contrast imaging.

Kyle Willick: Carbon Nanotube Mechanical Resonators - Magnetic force detection and fast sensing

Suspended carbon nanotube (CNT) resonators have demonstrated excellent sensitivity in mass and force sensing applications to date. I will introduce these mechanical resonators, and how they can be combined with magnetic field gradients to realize magnetic moment readout.

David Gosset, IBM TJ Watson Research Center

There is strong evidence that a sufficiently large fault-tolerant quantum computer would solve certain computational problems exponentially faster than any classical computer. How can quantum algorithms and complexity theory help guide the way forward in our current era of small and noisy quantum computers?

Andrew N. Cleland, University of Chicago

Superconducting qubits offer excellent prospects for manipulating quantum information, with good qubit lifetimes, high fidelity single- and two-qubit gates, and straightforward scalability (admittedly with multi-dimensional interconnect challenges). One interesting route for experimental development is the exploration of hybrid systems, i.e. coupling superconducting qubits to other systems.

Colloquium featuring Karl Jansen - NIC/DESY Zeuthen, Germany

The strong interaction of quarks and gluons is described theoretically within the framework of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). The most promising way to evaluate QCD for all energy ranges is to formulate the theory on a 4 dimensional Euclidean space-time grid, which allows for numerical simulations on state of the art supercomputers. We will review the status of lattice QCD calculations providing examples such as the hadron spectrum and the inner structure of nucleons.

Quantum mechanics reveals that at its core, the world is not as it seems – it is far more interesting.
 
In the quantum world, outcomes are counter-intuitive, differing from what we expect based on our everyday experiences. The particle physicist Richard Feynman remarked that this means we seem to have to walk “a logical tightrope” when we talk about a quantum system.  
 

Tarun Patel: Photocurrent imaging of charge density wave transitions in ultrathin 1T-TaS2  

1T-TaS2 is a layered van-der Waals material which shows multiple charge density wave (CDW) transitions as a function of temperature. Ultrathin flakes fabricated by mechanical exfoliation and protected from oxidation with h-BN capping in inert atmosphere have been shown to retain these transitions.

Ke He, Tsinghua University

The quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) effect is a quantum Hall effect induced by spontaneous magnetization instead of an external magnetic field. The effect occurs in two-dimensional (2D) insulators with topologically nontrivial electronic band structure which is characterized by a non-zero Chern number. The experimental observation of the QAH effect in thin films of magnetically doped (Bi,Sb)2Te3 topological insulators (TIs) paves the way for practical applications of dissipationless quantum Hall edge states.

Jiawei Ji - The University of Calgary

Quantum circuits based only on matchgates are able to perform non-trivial (but not universal) quantum algorithms. Because matchgates can be mapped to non-interacting fermions, these circuits can be efficiently simulated on a classical computer. One can perform universal quantum computation by adding any non-matchgate parity-preserving gate, implying that interacting fermions are natural candidates for universal quantum computation within the circuit model.