Prakash Panangaden (McGill) visit to Edinburgh included informal discussions on TQC on Friday (July 22) at the Informatics Forum, room 5.02. Prakash kindly agreed to tell us about Hopf Algebras, quantum double groups and Q-deformed oscillators. Enquiries to Elham Kashefi.
Damian Markham from Telecome Paris (CNRS) visited QUISCO 21/7 – 14/8. He gave an extended lecture on the topic of quantum secret sharing on the 25/7 at the Informatics Forum. Enquiries to Elham Kashefi for final details.
Sharing secrets in a quantum world
Abstract: In this short lecture series we discuss various ways that quantum mechanics can be used to share secret information and control who has access to it. Secret sharing and related protocols play an important role in cryptography and have a rich mathematical structure. It is an important primitive in many network tasks, for example secure multiparty computation. In recent years various quantum versions of secret sharing and related variants have arrisen, with deep connections to several areas of information processing including error correction and the MDS conjecture. We will review secret sharing, data hiding and related other protocols to see how quantum mechanics can be used to shuffle information around and protect it in a multiparty setting.
The 14th QUISCO meeting was at Edinburgh at the Informatics Forum on the 27th July 2011. Preliminary details.
The Carnegie Trust has been a strong supporter of QUISCO and its visitor programme. A list of visitors who have been supported through its grants can be found here.
A link to the mailing list management interface has been added to the Contact Us page. Please use this to add, remove or alter your QUISCO mailing list subscription details.
The 13th meeting was on the 24th May 2011 at St Andrews University.
Mary Beth Ruskai visited Heriot-Watt 8-22 May 2011.
The twelfth meeting was held at Heriot-Watt University on the 18th March 2011.
The eleventh meeting was held on the 9th November 2010 at the Computer Science Department, University of Glasgow.
The tenth QUISCO meeting was held as part of DCM-2010, on the 10th of July 2010.
The Ninth QUISCO meeting Monday 19th April 2010 was held at Strathclyde.
Akihito Soeda from the University of Tokyo visited Strathclyde from the 22nd February to the 6th March.
Igor Jex from Czech Technical University in Prague visited Heriot-Watt 5-9 Feb and Tamas Kiss from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, visited 5-13 Feb.
Our Eighth meeting was held at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews on Wednesday 27th January 2010. Details of the meeting can be found here.
Talk: Why physicists and computer scientists should remain partners
Dr Elham Kashefi
Wednesday 20th January 2010, 4pm
Room 4.31/4.33, Informatics Forum, University of Edinburgh
Abstract: Viewing quantum systems through the lens of their computational capabilities has the potential to provide important new insights into these systems. “What makes quantum systems non-classical?” Quantum Computing approaches this from the new perspective of how quantum effects can enhance information processing and communication. This is based upon two main ways in which quantum systems exhibit non-classicality: the apparent (exponential) complexity of simulating quantum systems classically, and non-local behaviour due to entanglement. Which leads to another fundamental question in physics: “If computing predictions for Quantum Mechanics requires exponential resources, is Quantum Mechanics a falsifiable theory?” I will briefly overview how a computational thinking has contributed towards these directions highlighting many remaining exciting open questions of the field.
Talk by Dr Ernesto Galvao (IF-UFF, Rio de Janeiro)
Wednesdays 13 Jan 2010 at 14:00 in room 4.31 of the Informatics Forum
Abstract: Physical experiments generate tables of probabilities describing relative frequencies of outcomes. Harrigan et al. [1] proposed a formalism to create simple models that explain any such data set in terms of positive, normalized probability distributions over a certain number of variables (called ontic states), using indicator functions to describe measurements. I will review this formalism with some simple examples, and discuss strategies that decrease the number of ontic states to obtain models that are as simple as possible. As an application, I will describe models for informationally complete measurements on the simplest quantum systems having just two and three distinguishable states [2]. These models were obtained using a high-dimensional computational geometry algorithm [3].
References:
[1] N. Harrigan, T. Rudolph, S. Aaronson, E-print arXiv:0709.1149v2 [quant-ph] (2007).
[2] E. F. Galvao, Phys. Rev. A 80, 022106 (2009) [3] C. B. Barber, D. P. Dobkin, H.T. Huhdanpaa, ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software 22 (4), 469 (1996). See http://www.qhull.org
The latest QUISCO meeting was held on Monday 16th November 2009 at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh. Details here.
Our seventh QUISCO Meeting was at the University of Strathclyde on the 5th October, details. Our speakers were Dr S. G. Schirmer (Cambridge), Dr G. Juzeliunus (Vilnius), and Dr S. J. Gay (Glasgow).
As part of the Carnegie Quantum Coherence programme, Prof John Shumway spent 10 days at Heriot Watt and gave a Seminar and three graduate lectures on “Path integral studies of quantized conductance and Luttinger liquid behaviour in GaAs nanostructures” on the 7th, 10th, 12th and 14th August 2009 at 1415-1515, available via the SUPA video conferencing rooms.
Professor Alain Tapp from the University of Montreal visited Edinburgh University from the 8th to the 14th July 2009. He presented a talk on Monday, July 13 at the School of Informatics University of Edinburgh, on “communication complexity of measuring entanglement”.
The latest QUISCO meeting was held at Heriot-Watt University on Tuesday 23rd June 2009. Details here.
The latest QUISCO Meeting was at Glasgow University on the 1st April 2009.
There was a QUISCO session at the QNET meeting at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, in the afternoon of Friday 19th December 2008. Information on this meeting can be found at QNET meeting page.
We welcome the addition of Dr Shashank Virmani to QUISCO. Dr Virmani joins the Physics Department of Strathclyde University having previously been at Hertfordshire University. His main interests are measurement, fault tolerance, and entanglement.
Our third one-day meeting was on the 24th October 2008 at the University of St Andrews. The speakers were be Prof. Barry Sanders (Calgary), Dr. Yuan Feng (Tsinghua) , and Prof. John Rarity (Bristol). There were discussion panels and poster sessions. The talks were held in the Nisbet Room, David Russell Apartments, Buchanan Gardens, University of St Andrews, KY16 9LY. Attendance was free. Details.
Our second one-day meeting was on the 13th June 2008 at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Prof. Mark Hillery (CUNY) gave the keynote address which was on the topic of Quantum Machines. Details. Poster
Our inaugural meeting was on Thursday 27th March 2008 in Edinburgh. Our main speakers were Prof. Steve Barnett FRS (Strathclyde) and Prof. Samson Abramsky FRS (Oxford). Details: Programme. Photos from the meeting can be found here. Highlights only.
Post-Inaugural Meeting: We welcome Michael Merkl as the latest member to joing the QUISCO organising team as the student representative. Michael is currently doing a PhD at Heriot-Watt on Ultra-Cold Quantum Gases under Patrik Ohberg. We also welcome Natalia Korolkova from St Andrews to the management team, which completes the representation from all the major centres of quantum information research in Scotland.