Future graduate students

Colloquium featuring Carl Alexander Miller - QuICS and NIST

How can two parties carry out a fair coin flip across a noiseless quantum channel? In 2007, Carlos Mochon proved a tantalizing result: he showed that fair quantum coin flipping is possible in principle, but he used a protocol that required a huge (exponential) number of communication rounds. In the twelve years since, despite some continued deep theoretical work on the problem, no improvements to the efficiency of Mochon's protocol have been made.

Dr. John Donohue is a quantum physicist and science communicator, currently acting as the Scientific Outreach Manager at the Institute for Quantum Computing and University of Waterloo. He holds a PhD in Physics and Quantum Information, and has conducted research in quantum optics in Canada and Germany. At IQC, John works to break down quantum mechanics to its essence, through classes, workshops, activities, and exhibits. John is interested in how to “count” light by measuring photons, the individual and indivisible particles that make it up.

Security in the Quantum Future

Quantum theory is quickly becoming quantum technology.

The goal of the IQC Workshop on Quantum Illumination is to bring together a wide range of participants from these various domains to discuss the state of the art in laboratory research, the range of possible applications, and paths toward those applications.

Topological Insulator-Superconductor Heterostructures and Devices

Lin Li, IQC

 A 3D topological insulator (TI) has a fully gapped insulating bulk state but a conducting surface. Such conducting “surface” states are formed with helical Dirac fermions, with spin-momentum strictly locked by spin-orbital coupling. When coupled to a conventional s-wave superconductor (S), the surface state behaves just like the desired p-wave superconductor. It has been predicted that Majorana zero-modes obeying non-Abelian statistics can appear in such a system.

Academic Writing Workshop #4

Elisabeth van Stam (UW Writing and Communication Centre)

Join us for our last session in the clarity in scientific writing series. During this session, we will apply the principles you have learned in order to improve the clarity and cohesion of your own writing. Please bring a sample of your writing (1-2 pages, double spaced), and be prepared to read, discuss, and revise!

Academic Writing Workshop #3

Elisabeth van Stam (UW Writing and Communication Centre)

Join us for our ongoing writing series on clarity in scientific writing. During this session, we will cover theory and practical examples related to active vs. passive voice, verb tense in scientific writing, parallel structure and more.

Join us for this week's IQC Student Seminar, featuring surprise speakers and a pizza lunch.

Huichen Sun

Electromagnetically induced transparency and Autler-Townes splitting in superconducting quantum circuits

Josh Ruebeck

ψ-epistemic interpretations of quantum theory have a measurement problem