Seminar

Joel Wallman, University of Waterloo

Significant global efforts are currently underway to build quantum computers. The two main goals for near-term quantum computers are finding and solving interesting problems in the presence of noise and developing techniques to mitigate errors. In this talk, I will outline and motivate an abstraction layer needed to reliably operate quantum computers under realistic noise models, namely, a cycle consisting of all the primitive gates applied to a quantum computer within a specified time period.

Kun Fang, University of Cambridge

As a more general form of quantum superposition, quantum coherence represents one of the most fundamental features that set the difference of quantum mechanics from the classical realm. In this talk, we will use the tool of semidefinite programming to study two fundamental tasks relating quantum coherence, i.e., coherence distillation of quantum states and coherence cost of quantum processes.

Peter Schumacher, Saarland University

We present an efficient gap-independent cooling scheme for a quantum annealer that benefits from finite temperatures.

An introduction to making scientific figures with Illustrator and Blender

Special guest speaker: Christopher Gutierrez, University of British Columbia

Scientific research can be a slow and laborious process. The absolutely final step in the process is to then communicate your exciting scientific findings to other scientists both in and outside of your field. Yet it is often at this final step where the least amount of time is spent.

Speaker: Rahul Deshpande

Title: Dynamic nuclear polarization in phosphorus doped silicon

Junichiro Kono, Rice University

Recent experiments have demonstrated that light and matter can mix together to an extreme degree, and previously uncharted regimes of light-matter interactions are currently being explored in a variety of settings, where new phenomena emerge through the breakdown of the rotating wave approximation [1]. This talk will summarize a series of experiments we have performed in such regimes.

Ashok Ajoy, University of California, Berkeley

The development of atom-like quantum sensors in wide bandgap materials, for instance Nitrogen Vacancy (NV) centers in diamond, has thrown up exciting new possibilities for the sensing of materials, molecules and biological systems through optical means. In particular I will describe the development of “quantum-assisted” magnetic resonance probes based on the NV center that allows sensing of nano- and meso-scale volumes at high spatial and frequency resolution [1,2].

Arnaud Carignan-Dugas, IQC / Department of Applied Mathematics

Inevitably, assessing the overall performance of a quantum computer must rely on characterizing some of its elementary constituents and, from this information, formulate a broader statement concerning more complex constructions thereof. However, given the vastitude of possible quantum errors as well as their coherent nature, accurately inferring the quality of composite operations is generally difficult.

Arthur Mehta, IQC / Department of Pure Mathematics

In this talk we continue our discussion of parallel repetition for non-local games. We will begin with a brief recap of the previous talk and the famous counterexample due to Feige. We then take a  look at a game that has interesting outcomes in the context of the quantum tensor product model. We will conclude by reviewing some of the major results on this topic for a variety of correlation sets.

Alex Ruichao Ma, University of Chicago

Superconducting circuits have emerged as a competitive platform for quantum computation, satisfying the challenges of controllability, long coherence and strong interactions. Here we apply this toolbox to the exploration of strongly correlated quantum materials made of microwave photons. We develop a versatile recipe that uses engineered dissipation to stabilize many-body phases, protecting them against intrinsic photon losses.