Seminar

Max Hofheinz, University of Sherbrooke

In superconducting quantum circuits the Josephson junction is the key element because it is the only strongly nonlinear and dissipationless circuit element we know. Usually it is used in the superconducting state where it acts as a nonlinear inductor, for example in Josephson qubits or Josephson parametric amplifiers. But a Josephson junction can also be nonlinear and dissipationless when a non-zero DC voltage below the gap is applied.

Arthur Mehta, IQC

Non-local games, also known as interactive proof systems, have long been an important area of study for mathematicians, physicists and computer scientists. Starting with the famous CHSH game in 1969, it has been known that non-local games are also an ideal area to explore the differences between quantum and classical behaviour. This has motivated the study of the area of non-local games for people working in quantum information.

Alvaro Alhambra, Perimeter Institute

Heat-Bath Algorithmic Cooling is a technique for producing pure quantum systems by utilizing a surrounding heat-bath. Here we connect the study of these cooling techniques to the resource theory of athermality, enabling us to derive provably optimal cooling protocols under a variety of experimental restrictions on the available control.

Fereshte Ghahari Kermani, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

Recent progress in creating graphene quantum dots (QDs) with fixed build-in potentials has offered a new platform to visualize and probe the confined electronic states. In this talk, I describe scanning tunneling spectroscopy measurements of the energy spectrum of graphene QDs as a function of energy, spatial position, and magnetic field.

Rescheduled from Tuesday, February 12

Shun Yanai, Delft University of Technology

Microwave optomechanical circuits have been demonstrated in the past years to be powerful tools for both, exploring fundamental physics of macroscopic and massive quantum objects as well as being promising candidates for novel on-chip quantum limited microwave devices. In this work, we explore a microwave optomechanical device consisting of a coplanar microwave cavity coupled to a mechanical high quality factor nanobeam resonator.

Fabrication and Growth of 111 SiNWs for Mechanical Spin-Detection

Pardis Sahafi, Institute for Quantum Computing

In our group, vertical Si nanowires grown on a 111 surface are used for force detection in nanoscale NMR and ESR. These measurements require a very long (20 µm) and minimally tapered vertical Si nanowires, to be used as nano-mechanical oscillators with a high quality factor (Q ~ 10⁴).

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.

Giovanni Fanchini, Western University

In this talk, we will review the use of thin films of organic polyradicals – organic polymers with one unpaired electron per monomer [1] – for memory devices and other applications. Although memory devices based on radical polymers have been often proposed, their stability was frequently limited to a few writing cycles, despite the excellent quality of the active layer.

IQC and the Department of Physics at the University of Waterloo welcome Shahpoor Moradi, University of Calgary

Quantum computation has been developed as a computationally efficient paradigm to solve problems that are intractable with conventional classical computers. Quantum computers have the potential to support the simulation and modeling of many complex physical systems, not just quantum ones, significantly more rapidly than conventional supercomputers.