Here are videos and slides of my 6 hour overview of QEC, slightly updated from my @qip2025.bsky.social tutorial. Thanks goes to Kishor Bharti and Atul Arora for letting me give this at the Quantum Meets! www.youtube.com/playlist?lis... zenodo.org/records/1874...
"the progress of civilization is ultimately grounded in people who believe in their own moral imagination, while retaining humility. We're going to need many such people to help develop ideas and institutions to navigate any possible posthuman transition" michaelnotebook.com/whichfuture/...
New many-body postdoc offering at @UMDscience; come join us! umd.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/UMCP/job/Uni...
Nice account of someone who didn't think it was all about the CV. www.ams.org/journals/not...
Heard many good things about these 52-chapter intro quantum mechanics notes by Robert Littlejohn. Should be useful for those interested in quantum simulation. bohr.physics.berkeley.edu/classes/221/...
Participated in my first NSF panel: wide variety of excellent proposals, from basic-science to practical. Thank you to the other panelists and program directors for upholding high standards and competitiveness!
Participants in that panel were Sofia Vallecorsa, Eleanor Rieffel, Hank Lamm, Gabe Perdue, Matthew Otten, Sarah Sheldon, Andrew Sornborger, Yigit Subasi, Thomas ladecola, Peter Orth, Norm Tubman, and Maxime Dupont.
Peter Shor and Bert de Jong hosted our discussion. We discussed ingredients for achieving the elusive practical quantum speedup. Several noted that an asymptotic polynomial speedup may not be enough since constants can prevent it from kicking in at practical parameter regimes.
Dario Gil kicks off 12 parallel roundtable discussions @fermilab.bsky.social quantum symposium by the SQMC center.
Recommendation letters for the Hartree are due on Dec. 8th. Please verify with your writers that your letters are uploaded!
Peter Shor: we haven't found many new quantum algorithms, in part, because we need larger quantum devices for testing our heuristics. He gives several examples of algorithms that were discovered computationally, including turbo codes, @fermilab.bsky.social quantum symposium by the SQMS center.
A short talk on continuous-variable (CV) codes and designs, aimed for a math audience. doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
Music has some pretty serious underlying geometry and category theory! media.ed.ac.uk/media/Beyond...
Error detection and correction at @umdscience.bsky.social has a long history: the guy who invented the barcode is an alum! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_...
"Even for the fastest qubit modalities, such as superconducting qubits, it will be challenging to achieve the required logical clock speeds. ...in the long term, the best quantum computer may be the one that runs the fastest." arxiv.org/abs/2510.26078
QuICS Hartree fellowship application is out! A competitive and completely free-range postdoc. Anyone interested in quantum science and technology topics is encouraged to apply, preferably by Dec. 1. umd.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/UMCP/j...
"Quantum hardware platforms are advancing steadily, but no one knows when quantum computers will run applications that broadly benefit society."
2025 UMD Quantum postdoc job thread.
We start with the Quantum Optics Fellowship, intended for AMO and QI. Anyone who would have applied for the JQI Fellowship should apply to this one. academicjobsonline.org/ajo/fellowsh...
Impressive span of group theory here, covering Schur-Weyl, Peter-Weyl, bosonic systems, modular qudits, Galois qudits, designs, MUBs, and more. link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
Every time I interact with Michel, he has some deep insight that I understand only years later. Maybe it is not completely fleshed out technically but it is always on point. It reminded me of other winners in the past. Well deserved!
A new proposal imposes significant restrictions on F-1 and J-1 visas, which would sharply curtail foreign talent flow to US grad schools. Both UMD Physics and umiacs are urging faculty to comment, so please consider. Comment period expires Sept 29. www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...
This is interesting and surprising: some Clifford gates cannot be implemented arbitrarily well on arbitrarily good approximate GKP states with Gaussian operations!
Nice work by Brenner, Diaz and Koenig
arxiv.org/abs/2509.14658
Cat qubits (and generalizations) for the win, I guess
;-)
David Gross (Cologne) talks about SDP based quantum algorithms. Take home: hidden constants matter. Even if there is an asymptotic speedup in your favorite use case, it may still not be in the parameter regime that is relevant to the problem size you're interested in.
Nobel Prize Laureate Roger Penrose, Yvette Fuentes, and myself, request your help in order to save an archive of incredible scientific and historical value. Please raise awareness by *sharing*, or *contribute*:
www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/roger-penr...
Do you have examples? Maybe that's how I can finally learn algebraic geometry.
I had another fun opportunity to talk about our quantum formulation of the space of molecular orientations at Sorbonne University. Great workshop! Organized by Ugo Boscain, Christiane Koch, Mario Sigalotti, and Dominique Sugny. zenodo.org/records/1705...
@ox.ac.uk debate by Simon Benjamin & Bálint Koczor, host @mariaviolaris.bsky.social. Motion: "quantum computers will have a greater impact on our lives than conventional ones." Terry Rudolph, Nathan Wiebe, Elham Kashefi vs @jenseisert.bsky.social, @graemesmith.bsky.social, me. Motion defeated 94-72.
"Every American taxpayer is a silent shareholder in that success. If we walk away now, we lose not just future breakthroughs but also what we have already earned." thehill.com/opinion/tech...
