Seminar

IQC/Physics Special Seminar - Loren Swenson, D-Wave Systems

I will introduce quantum annealing as a technique for harnessing quantum mechanics to solve hard problems. The design of a quantum annealing processor based on superconducting flux qubits, some of the challenges we have encountered in constructing it, and measurements confirming the role of quantum mechanics in such processors will be presented. Finally, I will briefly discuss recent benchmarking and simulation results using the D-Wave 2000Q processor.

Colloquium: Xiaoting Wang, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China 

Quantum information processing (QIP) has been identified as one of the key future technologies that are crucial for communication, cryptography, computing, complex-system simulation, metrology, artificial intelligence and national security. Quantum control, on the other hand, provides a powerful tool to analyze and improve the physical performances of different QIP devices.

Pardis Sahafi - London, Royal Holloway College

Semiconductor electron pump devices have shown promise for current standards due to their high accuracy current transport [1]. Further to this, at higher fields and frequencies these pumps demonstrate excitation states corresponding to energies in the microwave range [2]. This suggests possible applications in microwave and THz photonics, an emerging field with applications spanning from quantum information processing to medical imaging.

Robert F. McDermott, University of Wisconsin, Madison

One of the remarkable recent discoveries in information science is that quantum mechanics can lead to efficient solutions for problems that are intractable on conventional classical computers.

Roland Esteban Hablützel Marrero, Centre for Quantum Technologies, National University of Singapore

Three coupled harmonic oscillators with an interaction given by the trilinear Hamiltonian $a^{\dagger} b c + a b^{\dagger} c^{\dagger}$ can describe a wide range of physical processes. In this talk I will show how we implement the trilinear Hamiltonian utilizing a chain of three $^{171}$Yb$^+$ ions in a linear Paul trap.

Paper Review: The quantum pigeonhole principle and the nature of quantum correlations by Y. Aharonov et al., arXiv:1407.3194

Arash Ahmadi, IQC

Colloquium: Jayakanth Ravichandran - University of Southern California

Perovskite Chalcogenides are a new class of semiconductors, which have tunable band gap in the visible to infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Besides this band gap tunability, they offer a unique opportunity to realize large density of states semiconductors with high carrier mobility. In this talk, I will discuss some of the advances made both in my research group and in the research community in theory, synthesis of these materials and understanding their optoelectronic properties.

Nigar Sultana 

Colloquium: Ania Jayich, University of California, Santa Barbara

The nitrogen vacancy (NV) center in diamond is an atomic-­scale defect that exhibits remarkably coherent quantum properties in a uniquely accessible way: at room temperature, in ambient conditions, and even immersed in biological environments. NV centers are being explored for a variety of quantum technologies, including quantum sensing and quantum information processing.

Seminar: Bhaskaran Muralidharan

We describe two distinct applications of quantum dots [1-3] from a quantum transport perspective. In the first part, we bring in a Bayesian viewpoint to the analysis of clocks, specifically taking the Salecker Wigner clock formulation [4] and explore a novel set up to estimate the tunneling time [1] between electrons in a contact and a quantum dot weakly coupled to it. Using the exponential tunneling distribution as priors for clocks, we analyze the case of a single precessing spin in a quantum dot.