The QuEBS conference is on its third wonderful day. The conference has been incredible so far, a series of amazing speakers talking on everything from photosynthesis, the sense of smell, bird navigation and quantum information.
Program: Quantum Effects in Biological Systems
This thursday, the second conference on Quantum Effects in Biological System will be held here at Harvard University. We are very excited to have experts from all over the world here. The aim of this series of conferences is to establish the new field of Quantum Biology. The conference program can be found here.
Conference Announcements
I’ve received a couple of emails announcing travel grants for conferences, in case you got the travel bug.
US NSF Travel Grant Program for Nordita/Mittag-Leffler
Conference on Quantum Information Theory 4-8 Oct. 2010
This program will provide funds to support travel and lodging for US scientists to participate in the International Conference on Quantum Information Theory to be held in Stockholm Sweden during 4-8 October 2010. Information on the conference is available at
http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=1440
The program is contingent on funding expected from the US National Science Foundation and will be administered by Tufts University. It is intended to cover most of the costs of travel and lodging.
In addition, funds are available to cover lodging for 1-2 weeks before or after the conference to participate in the fall programs at Nordita and Mittag-Leffler or to engage in collaborative research at other institutes in Scandanavia. For information on these programs see http://www.nordita.org/ http://www.mittag-leffler.se/programs/future/1011f/
Those not constrained by teaching obligations are encouraged to take advantage of this opportunity.
Eligibility: Open to US scientists, i.e., US citizens or those affiliated with a US institution.
• Preference will be given to junior scientists (advanced graduate students and recent PhD’s) and faculty at undergraduate (RUI) institutions. Members of under-represented groups are especially encouraged to apply.
• In general, those who have current grants with travel funds are not eligible. Partial institutional support is permissible.
• US scientists participating in the Nordita or Mittag-leffler programs in Sept. or Oct. who wish to extend their stay to include the conference week are eligible for lodging support that week.
• Transatlantic travel must use US flag carriers (even if more expensive).
Application process: Applications must be submitted by e-mail to Chris King c.king at neu.edu
Send a CV with a cover letter containing a brief description of research interests. Those who want to extend their stay should also describe their plans and/or interest in this. Graduate students and new PhD’s should arrange for one (at most two) letters of recommendation to be sent separately.
Application Deadline: 15 July 2010
Selection Process: Applications will be reviewed by a selection committee of Charles H. Bennett, Alan Aspuru-Guzik, Julio Gea-Banacloche, Christopher King (chair), Marius Junge, Mary Beth Ruskai (PI) and Wim van Dam. We expect to notify applicants by the start of August.
Questions: Contact the PI, Mary Beth Ruskai, by e-mail to marybeth.ruskai at tufts.edu
2010 MICHIGAN QUANTUM SUMMER SCHOOL
The 2010 Michigan Quantum Summer School on Quantum Simulation and Metrology has funding available to host ~60 students. There is no registration fee and a double-occupancy dorm room is provided at no cost, however transportation and dining expenses need to be covered by the attendees. We still have ~20 positions available for students or postdocs. Please forward this email to interested members of your research group and direct them to the website below for registration prior to June 15, 2010.
Thanks,
Aaron Leanhardt
2010 MICHIGAN QUANTUM SUMMER SCHOOL
August 2-13, 2010, Ann Arbor, MI
Organizers: Aaron Leanhardt, Luming Duan, Hui Deng, and Christopher Monroe
http://www.umich.edu/~mctp/SciPrgPgs/events/2010/MQSS10/index.html
The 2010 Michigan Quantum Summer School will serve as an exploratory workshop on Quantum Simulation and Metrology. The summer school is designed to serve a graduate student and postdoc audience, although all are welcome to attend. The school will be held Aug. 2-13, 2010 in Ann Arbor, MI, with a registration date of June 15, 2010. The workshop will cover simulation of many-body, strongly-correlated systems with controllable quantum platforms as well as classical computers, squeezed state and entangled state preparation, and their use to achieve high-precision measurements and to implement quantum information processing. For further information, including invited speakers and registration, please see the website above.
US NSF Travel Grant Program for Nordita/Mittag-Leffler
Conference on Quantum Information Theory 4-8 Oct. 2010
This program will provide funds to support travel and lodging for US scientists to participate in the
International Conference on Quantum Information Theory to be held in Stockholm Sweden during
4-8 October 2010. Information on the conference is available at
The program is contingent on funding expected from the US National Science Foundation and will
be administered by Tufts University. It is intended to cover most of the costs of travel and lodging.
In addition, funds are available to cover lodging for 1-2 weeks before or after the conference to
participate in the fall programs at Nordita and Mittag-Leffler or to engage in collaborative research
at other institutes in Scandanavia. For information on these programs see
Those not constrained by teaching obligations are encouraged to take advantage of this opportunity.
Eligibility: Open to US scientists, i.e., US citizens or those affiliated with a US institution.
• Preference will be given to junior scientists (advanced graduate students and recent PhD’s)
and faculty at undergraduate (RUI) institutions. Members of under-represented groups are
especially encouraged to apply.
• In general, those who have current grants with travel funds are not eligible. Partial
institutional support is permissible.
• US scientists participating in the Nordita or Mittag-leffler programs in Sept. or Oct. who
wish to extend their stay to include the conference week are eligible for lodging support that week.
• Transatlantic travel must use US flag carriers (even if more expensive).
Application process: Applications must be submitted by e-mail to Chris King c.king@neu.edu
Send a CV with a cover letter containing a brief description of research interests. Those who want
to extend their stay should also describe their plans and/or interest in this. Graduate students and
new PhD’s should arrange for one (at most two) letters of recommendation to be sent separately.
Application Deadline: 15 July 2010
Selection Process: Applications will be reviewed by a selection committee of Charles H. Bennett,
Alan Aspuru-Guzik, Julio Gea-Banacloche, Christopher King (chair), Marius Junge, Mary Beth
Ruskai (PI) and Wim van Dam. We expect to notify applicants by the start of August.
Questions: Contact the PI, Mary Beth Ruskai, by e-mail to marybeth.ruskai@tufts.US NSF Travel Grant Program for Nordita/Mittag-Leffler
Conference on Quantum Information Theory 4-8 Oct. 2010
This program will provide funds to support travel and lodging for US scientists to participate in the
International Conference on Quantum Information Theory to be held in Stockholm Sweden during
4-8 October 2010. Information on the conference is available at
The program is contingent on funding expected from the US National Science Foundation and will
be administered by Tufts University. It is intended to cover most of the costs of travel and lodging.
In addition, funds are available to cover lodging for 1-2 weeks before or after the conference to
participate in the fall programs at Nordita and Mittag-Leffler or to engage in collaborative research
at other institutes in Scandanavia. For information on these programs see
Those not constrained by teaching obligations are encouraged to take advantage of this opportunity.
Eligibility: Open to US scientists, i.e., US citizens or those affiliated with a US institution.
• Preference will be given to junior scientists (advanced graduate students and recent PhD’s)
and faculty at undergraduate (RUI) institutions. Members of under-represented groups are
especially encouraged to apply.
• In general, those who have current grants with travel funds are not eligible. Partial
institutional support is permissible.
• US scientists participating in the Nordita or Mittag-leffler programs in Sept. or Oct. who
wish to extend their stay to include the conference week are eligible for lodging support that week.
• Transatlantic travel must use US flag carriers (even if more expensive).
Application process: Applications must be submitted by e-mail to Chris King c.king@neu.edu
Send a CV with a cover letter containing a brief description of research interests. Those who want
to extend their stay should also describe their plans and/or interest in this. Graduate students and
new PhD’s should arrange for one (at most two) letters of recommendation to be sent separately.
Application Deadline: 15 July 2010
Selection Process: Applications will be reviewed by a selection committee of Charles H. Bennett,
Alan Aspuru-Guzik, Julio Gea-Banacloche, Christopher King (chair), Marius Junge, Mary Beth
Ruskai (PI) and Wim van Dam. We expect to notify applicants by the start of August.
Questions: Contact the PI, Mary Beth Ruskai, by e-mail to marybeth.ruskai@tufts.ed
Why does the world look classical?
A few days ago we posted a new paper.
General Bound on the Rate of Decoherence [arXiv:10045405]
Cesar A. Rodriguez-Rosario, Gen Kimura, Hideki Imai, Alan Aspuru-Guzik
We establish the necessary and sufficient conditions for a quantum system to be stable under any general system-environment interaction. Quantum systems are stable when the time-derivative of their purity is zero. This stability provides a dynamical explanation of the classicality of measurement apparatus. We also propose a protocol to detect global quantum correlations using only local dynamical information. We show how quantum correlations to the environment provide bounds to the purity rate, which in turn can be used to estimate dissipation rates for general non-Markovian open quantum systems.
[SciRate]
The paper could have been alternatively titled: “Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for System Stability Under Any Coupling to the Environment”. In this post, I want to discuss briefly our first result of the paper:
$$left[ frac{d}{dt}mathbf{P}^mathcal{S}_tright]_{t=tau} = 0; Leftrightarrow ; left[rho^mathcal{S}_tauotimes I^mathcal{E},rho^mathcal{SE}_tauright] =0$$.
We were interested in finding universal decoherence stability criteria that depended on the structure of the system-environment state, but was independent of the particular Hamiltonian dynamics. We focused on the measure of decoherence called “Purity”, in particular the rate of change of purity. We found that there exist system-environment states that preserve the purity of the system independent of the details of the interaction Hamiltonian. These states are given by the commutator in the equation above vanishing, and we call them “Stable System States” or SSS for lack of a better name.
SSS states are sparse topologically and not-dense: they are quite rare. But, at the same time, they include states whose system part looks very classical. On first sight, since they are rare, this would raise the question of why does the world looks classical to us. However, the equation above also implies that these states are stable under decoherence, and thus can be long-lived.
In other words, we can prove how classical states emerge naturally in the world without any assumptions of the dynamics! This provides a non-equilibrium thermodynamical explanation to why our universe looks classical.
Reuters Interviews Daniel Lidar
Reuter’s ScienceWatch recently posted an interview with Prof. Daniel Lidar from USC where they discuss Daniel’s most important papers, focusing on decoherence free subspaces. Daniel was very kind to mention my own work on Open Quantum Systems with initial correlations during the interview.
===
“The theory of its operation is rudimentary and attempts to improve its performance are still made in an almost haphazard way”
-Sadi Carnot on engines
APS March Meeting, in the City of Roses
I spent last week in Portland for the APS March meeting. It was one of my favorite APS meetings so far. First, the city has some free public transportation, is walkable, and very fun. I got to see many old friends. And I ended up giving two talks.
The first talk was on our PRL paper Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory for Open Quantum Systems with Unitary Propagation.
The session was very interesting, with many proposals for how to expand the realm of applicability of TD-DFT. My boss was supposed to give this talk, but ended up canceling his trip at the last minute.
The second talk was on our paper Linear assignment maps for correlated system-environment states.
This talk was part of the OQS and Decoherence session. For some reason, this session is always on Friday afternoon, which is always the least attended day at the APS, as many leave the conference early. Can this be changed? Still, I got all the usual questions about negative maps, so people were somewhat interested.
How are the sessions organized? How are the days chosen, how are the talks in the session organized? I don’t know. Hopefully, next year, my talk will be at a reasonable day and time.
—
At dawn of day, when you dislike being called, have this thought ready: “I am called to man’s labour; why then do I make a difficulty if I am going out to do what I was born to do and what I was brought into the world for? Is it for this that I am fashioned, to lie in bedclothes and keep myself warm?” “But this is more pleasant.” “Were you born then to please yourself; in fact for feeling, not for action? Can’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants, the spiders, the bees each doing his own work, helping for their part to adjust a world? And then you refuse to do a man’s office and don’t make haste to do what is according to your own nature.” “But a man needs rest as well.”
-Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, on how hard it is for a roman emperor to get up in the morning
Universe as Quantum Information
Vlatko Vedral, from Oxford/CQT Singapore is promoting his new layperson book.
Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information
An infuriatingly theologically focused video interview can be found here. I’ll assume The Guardian editing is to blame.
Although I am always highly critical of all popularizations of quantum mechanics, I’ll admit I’m biased towards liking this one. Vlatko’s work on the thermodynamics of quantum information have influenced my own interests, and I’m currently working with several people in his group. I can’t wait for this book to come out.
—
I know it is hopeless. Hell ain’t big enough to hold us back. Come one, let’s pick a fight. We hunt for trouble tonight! -AstronautalisPicture of Obama Feigning Interest in Excitonics
Flipping through the NY Mag photo gallery titled A History of Obama Feigning Interest in Mundane Things, I found a picture of Excitonics Center‘s Vladimir Bulovic.
Click for A picture of Obama Feigning Interest in the Excitonics Center
The old story of Obama’s visit can be found here.
—
Dr. Peter Venkman : Back off man. I’m a scientist.
-Ghost Busters
Quantum Stochastic Walks
It took some time with the printing proofs, but finally, the paper has been published.
Quantum stochastic walks: A generalization of classical random walks and quantum walks
We introduce the quantum stochastic walk (QSW), which determines the evolution of a generalized quantum-mechanical walk on a graph that obeys a quantum stochastic equation of motion. Using an axiomatic approach, we specify the rules for all possible quantum, classical, and quantum-stochastic transitions from a vertex as defined by its connectivity. We show how the family of possible QSWs encompasses both the classical random walk (CRW) and the quantum walk (QW) as special cases but also includes more general probability distributions. As an example, we study the QSW on a line and the glued tree of depth three to observe the behavior of the QW-to-CRW transition.
Phys. Rev. A 81, 022323 (2010)
Previously: video abstract
—
Man, you come right out of a comic book. -Enter the Dragon
The Nucular Family
Friends have asked me many questions about Obama’s nuclear plan. Although, I am not a nuclear physicists, I did get trained, have been around and/or managed radioactive material while at a Oak Ridge National Lab and University of Texas.
What surprised me was that although I tried to explain each of the different risks, trying to distinguish between radiation exposure and material toxicity, my friends demanded, begged, for apocalyptic scenarios of devastation. This is very much like discussing air travel safety by discussing TWA Flight 800 only, ignoring statistics, ignoring how cars are much more dangerous, and only focusing on what is relevant for a bad blockbuster movie.
Let me be clear, I am not defending nuclear plants disasters, I am not dismissing all the risks of nuclear powered plants. I am surprised how it is impossible to discuss the risks. Any risks involves understanding the different kinds of dangers multiplied by the possibilities of those happening. Without this, benefit, cost and risks analysis are impossible. Without this analysis, public policy cannot be discussed. Why are we so afraid of the dangers of nuclear power, but we are never worried about all the dangers of coal-powered plants? Why, cognitively, these dangers feel so different in our heads? Why in the public eye, nuclear power isn’t about environmental science and economics, but about the apocalypse? This raises many questions about the nature of fear in society, questions I have no answers to.
For example, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance is a standard medical (and general science) technique. It doesn’t have to do with atomic energy, just with the fact that each of the atoms we are made up has a nucleus that consists of protons and neutrons. However, the ‘nuclear’ name had such negative connotations that the name was changed to “Magnetic Resonance Imaging”. Why is this?
My dad has gone through several medical techniques in the past years, including MRI (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance), PET Scan (Positron Emission Tomography) and Radioactive Iodine treatment. He is concerned about the effects of all those nuclear things. I tried explaining how the techniques are very different, containing no radiation, or different kinds of radiation, emphasizing that there is no heavy-metal toxicity in each of these, discussing what does the half-life of iodine really mean to his body by considering that iodine is water soluble, explaining that microwave ovens aren’t dangerous or nuclear, nor are TVs, nor cellphone radiation is of nuclear origins. I did spend significant time talking to my family about this, and maybe it was my fault, maybe I talked over the heads. I was unable to dispel irrational fears in my family, fears that weakened their spirits while my dad was going through an already difficult medical process.
Maybe I was unable to reach them because we meant different things. Maybe there is a very significant difference in the meaning of nuclear to them and to me, a difference in meaning I wasn’t able to overcome with all my explanations.
Why is it so hard for the general public to discuss these issues? Why is discussing nuclear power a taboo? I propose to blame cognition, an image in the mind. After the end of World War II, after the cold war, after The Hulk, the term “nuclear” started carrying a lot of overhead, a lot of imagery and meaning beyond its semantic nucleus of the word [pun].
- Bruce Banner, Physicist, demonstrating the effects of Nucular Power
My proposal is the following. There are two different kinds of ‘nuclear’ in the public mind:
- nuclear as in nuclear family, nucleus as in “the core”
- nuclear, as in atomic bombs, as in neon glowing toxic rods, as in mutated turtles that learn ninjitsu, as in Cold War, as in nucular.
However, there is only one nuclear in the physicists’ mind, which refers to the core of the atom, which refers to protons and neutrons, which refers to the forces that keep the nucleus stable and make the existence of matter possible, a meaning which is closer to nuclear family than to nucular. It has nothing to do with mutagen, or Homer Simpson and is as far from a nuclear wasteland as Bernoulli’s principle is from crash landing. The same applies to the word “atomic”, that to the general public feels more like “ka-BOOM” than “a tiny piece of anything”.
Is this why there are many public figures that mispronounce nuclear in favor of nucular? Is it that their minds want to distinguish between these two definitions? A linguist at Berkeley suggests this as he explains ‘nucular’ as a folk etymology, not as mispronunciation.
Phonetically, in fact, nuclear is pretty much the same as likelier, and nobody ever gets that one wrong. (“The first outcome was likular than the second”? )
Maybe there are two different meanings of nuclear in the public mind, maybe the nuclear taboo and the word nucular are signs of this. Maybe this is why discussing the dangers and possibilities of nuclear power is so difficult.
What is the solution? I see only two options:
- invent an euphemism for the word “nuclear” in nuclear power. Call it “freedom power”, “awesome fuel” or “funky style”,
- start calling everything nucular, trying to reunite both misleading diverging meanings. Like, “the nuculus of the cell contains the DNA” and “nucular families are the basis of society”
I don’t see any other option that could allow having a public discussion of the pros/cons of nuclear power as public policy, instead of nuclear disaster as a Nostradamus predictions. An apocalyptic image, even if unfounded, has a lot more power than statistics, power that brings out pure fear, preventing all rational discussion. Remember when the news focused on the dangers of black hole creation when the LHC started, instead of actually explaining what the particle accelerator actually does?
Nucular is fear.
If there are any social psychologists around there, can you contact me with references about the origin, nature and effects of fear in society?
—
Vamos a seguir bailando!
Vamos a seguir contento!
y sigamos vacilando!
Vamos a seguir en esto,
porque un dia de estos.
Que tu veras que va llegar un demonio atomico.
y atracata acangana! y nos va limpiar.
Despues de muerto no se puede gozar!
-El Gran Combo
Minus Two Fish 