Events

QUANTUM + Pop Culture

“Quantum physics” has taken its position with “rocket science” in pop culture as a shorthand for frighteningly complicated science. Quantum physics has also taken on a sort of magical connotation in fiction, with features like entanglement, superposition, and tunneling spurring imagination. But where does the science draw the line? How much is joyful speculation, and how much is disregard for reality? And if it’s always seen as either magical or scary, how does that affect the perception of quantum science?

Henry Yuen, University of Toronto

An outstanding open question in quantum information theory concerns the computational complexity of nonlocal games. in a nonlocal game, a classical verifier interacts with multiple players that cannot communicate, but are allowed to share entanglement. In a recent breakthrough result, Slofstra showed that the following problem is undecidable: given a nonlocal game, is there a quantum strategy for the players to win with probability 1?

Jun Fan, City University of Hong Kong

Two-dimensional nanomaterials could cause structural disruption and cytotoxic effects to cells, which greatly challenges their promising biomedical applications including biosensing, bioimaging, and drug delivery. Here, interactions between lipid liposomes and hydrophobic nanosheets is studied utilizing coarse-grained (CG) molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The simulations reveal a variety of interaction morphologies that depend on the size and the orientation of nanosheets.

Neutron whispering gallery

Dr Valery Nesvizhevsky, European Centre for Neutron Research, Institut Laue-Langevin

The "whispering gallery" effect has been known since ancient times for sound waves in air, later in water and more recently for a broad range of electromagnetic waves: radio, optics, Roentgen and so on. It consists of wave localization near a curved reflecting surface and is expected for waves of various natures, for instance, for atoms and neutrons. For matter waves, it would include a new feature: a massive particle would be settled in quantum states, with parameters depending on its mass. In 2010, we observed the quantum whispering gallery effect for cold neutrons and since then continue increasing the precision in these experiments.

Ludwig Mathey, University of Hamburg

While traditional means of influencing material properties are static, I will present our recent studies of dynamical control of high-temperature superconductors via light pulses. Specifically, I will discuss both light enhanced superconductivity, for which we propose a parametric amplification mechanism, as well as light induced superconductivity. As a second platform, I will describe dynamics in driven cavity-BEC systems.

Swati Singh, University of Delaware

When properly engineered, simple quantum systems such as harmonic oscillators or spins can be excellent detectors of feeble forces and fields. Following a general introduction to this fast growing area of research I will focus on two simple and experimentally realizable examples: a nitrogen vacancy (NV) center in diamond interacting with its many-body environment, and acoustic modes of superfluid helium interacting with gravitational waves.

Justin Thaler, Georgetown University

The quantum query complexity of a function f measures how many bits of the input a quantum computer must look at in order to compute f. 

Neil Turok, Perimeter Institute

Observations reveal the cosmos to be astonishingly simple, and yet deeply puzzling, on the largest accessible scales. Why is it so nearly symmetrical? Why is there a cosmological constant (or dark energy) and what fixes its value? How did everything we see emerge from a singular “point” in the past?

Wavelength selective thermal emitters using nitride quantum wells and photonic crystals

Dr. Dongyeon Daniel Kang, Kyoto University

Wavelength selective thermal emitters are highly desired for the development of the compact/energy-efficient spectroscopic sensing systems capable of detecting various gases such as CO_x, CH₄, and NO_x, which are strongly needed in environmental science, medical care, and other industrial applications. In addition, for the latter applications, dynamic control of thermal emission intensity is important for such emitters because synchronous detection can increase the signal-to-noise ratio significantly.

Alexander Belovs, University of Latvia

This talk reflects on recent research in progress with Andras Gilyen. Over the years, there have been a number of papers dealing with quantum algorithms testing some properties of classical probability distributions. Our goal is to understand what is the right way for quantum algorithms to access the distribution. There is a number of possible models, and we analyse their mutual strength.