Future students

IQC presents the first in a series of lectures from members of industry in quantum computing and quantum information. Jonathan Hodges, VP of engineering for Diamond Nanotechnologies, will be speaking about his research as well as the day-to-day realities of working in industry. You can learn more about the company here: http://www.diamondnanotechnologies.com/

David P. Pappas, NIST

Progress in the field of experimental quantum information processing has been steady over the past decade with important developments continuing to be made in the understanding, design, and measurement of systems at the quantum level. As the boundaries of these measurements are pushed, we are finding that surface and interfacial properties play an increasingly important role. In general, this field has benefitted immensely from advances in VLSI.

Amir Jafari-Salim, IQC

In this talk, I will give a summary of my recent research on superconducting nanostructures for quantum detection of electromagnetic radiation. In this regard, electrodynamics of topological excitations in 1D superconducting nanowires and 2D superconducting nanostrips is investigated. Topological excitations in superconducting nanowires and nanostrips lead to crucial deviation from the bulk properties.

Michael Hilke, McGill University

We will review several proof of principle applications for graphene based devices performed in our group, including in field sensors, electronics, THz spectroscopy, spintronics, nanofluidics, and even musical instruments. We will then discuss the synthesis mechanism of graphene as well as the synthesis of very large single layered graphene monocrystals with various shapes, ranging from hexagons to fractals, dubbed graphlocons.

Robin Kothari

We provide a quantum algorithm for simulating the
dynamics of sparse Hamiltonians with complexity sublogarithmic in
the inverse error, an exponential improvement over previous methods.
Unlike previous approaches based on product formulas, the query
complexity is independent of the number of qubits acted on, and for
time-varying Hamiltonians, the gate complexity is logarithmic in the
norm of the derivative of the Hamiltonian. Our algorithm is based on
a significantly improved simulation of the continuous- and

Takashi Imai, McMaster University

NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) is a versatile probe of condensed matter, and has a broad range of applications in chemistry, medicine (MRI), oil industry, etc. NMR has become so popular outside the conventional realm of physics that the crucial role NMR has been playing in condensed matter physics is sometimes overlooked. I will explain how condensed matter physicists use NMR as a powerful low energy probe of solids, drawing examples from modern research into statistical physics, magnetism, and superconductivity.

Volkher Scholz, Institute for Theoretical Physics ETH Zurich

We derive new Heisenberg-type uncertainty relations for both joint measurability and the error- disturbance tradeoff for arbitrary observables of finite-dimensional systems. The relations are formulated in terms of a directly operational quantity, namely the probability of distinguishing the actual operation of a device from its hypothetical ideal, by any possible testing procedure whatsoever.

Xiaodong Xu, The University of Washington

Electronic valleys are extrema of Bloch energy bands in momentum space. Having multiple valleys gives the electron states pseudospin degrees of freedom in addition to their real spin. In this talk, I will discuss our experimental progress on the investigation of spins and pseudospins using atomically thin semiconductors, which are either single or bilayer group VI transition metal dichalcogenides.

Enrique Solano, Universidad del País Vasco, Bilbao, Spain

I will introduce the field of quantum simulations from a wide
scientific perspective. Then, I will discuss the relevance of quantum
simulations for reproducing different aspects of quantum physics:
nonrelativistic and relativistic quantum dynamics, physical and unphysical
quantum operations, as well as strong and ultrastrong light-matter
interactions. Finally, I will give examples in the context of trapped-ion
and circuit QED technologies.

A conference to celebrate the work of Chris Godsil

It is surprising that the characteristic polynomial of the adjacency matrix of a graph provides a useful window onto combinatorial properties of the graph itself, but this approach to graph theory has been a source of interesting and useful results for over 80 years.