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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?

The 2^nd of the ninth session of the  hosted by CW21 will be launched on Tuesday, Nov 20^th at noon.

Light sandwiches and beverages will be provided by RSVP.

Details of the session:

When: Tuesday, Nov 20th at noon 

Where: QNC1201

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.

Li Liu

Entanglement is a type of resource used in quantum information theory that gives correlations that cannot be simulated using classical probability theory. It is known that entanglement cannot be created locally. 

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.

The "blood, sweat, tears, toil and triumphs" of commercializing technology

Marc Morin is the co-founder and CEO of Auvik Networks, creators of cloud-based software that makes it dramatically easier for IT managed service providers to monitor and manage their clients' IT networks. A serial entrepreneur, Marc has previously co-founded several successful companies, including PixStream (acquired by Cisco for USD$369 million) and Sandvine (Sold to Francisco Partners for CAD$582 million), and is a seed investor in a number of local tech companies.

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.

Dhinakaran Vinayagamurthy

Trusted-execution environments (TEE) like Intel SGX provide a promise for practical secure computations on users' sensitive data in untrusted computing environments like cloud and blockchains. TEEs are designed using a combination of hardware enforced access controls and cryptography. While there is extensive research on attacking and hardening the access control mechanisms, the advent of quantum computers also requires hardening the cryptography used by TEEs for their long-term security against quantum adversaries.