QIP 2010 January 23, 2010
Posted by Geordie in General.4 comments
On my way back from the conference, currently at Heathrow. It was a lot of fun. Here is a picture of me, Suzanne Gildert, Hartmut Neven from Google and Eddie Farhi at the conference dinner. The food was good and the conversation spectacular. Good times with old friends and new.
Progress on quantum chemistry using quantum computers January 17, 2010
Posted by Geordie in D-Wave Science & Technology.1 comment so far
Alan Aspuru-Guzik and his colleagues recently published the results of a very interesting experiment related to simulating a quantum system using another quantum system. The paper was published in Nature Chemistry and I think it is a very exciting piece of work.
One of the interesting aspects to the work (aside from attacking a very fundamental and important practical problem) is that it uses a very limited simulator to perform a complex task by very intelligently using the simulator in a recursive way (the original idea was published in this Science article in 2005).
This was a problem that we spent quite a bit of time thinking about, and contributed some part to. I am very happy to see it being implemented.
Now if only we could figure out how to do the same sort of thing using our hardware…
Starting and growing a “big idea” company January 7, 2010
Posted by Geordie in Presentations, World Domination.1 comment so far
Here is a presentation I gave two days ago to the technology entrepreneurship class at UBC. The presentation was mostly about managing and surviving disruptive transitions in a start-up environment. Also in here are some ideas related to intelligent design of a peculiar sort…
Interesting article for physicists on naming things December 30, 2009
Posted by Geordie in General.add a comment
Physicists name a lot of things. Here is an article by string theorist Joe Lykken on the dos and don’ts of naming things for physicists.
Synchronization of multiple coupled rf-SQUID flux qubits December 22, 2009
Posted by Geordie in D-Wave Science & Technology.4 comments
A practical strategy for synchronizing the properties of compound Josephson junction (CJJ) radio frequency monitored superconducting quantum interference device (rf-SQUID) qubits on a multi-qubit chip has been demonstrated. The impact of small (~1%) fabrication variations in qubit inductance and critical current can be minimized by the application of a custom-tuned flux offset to the CJJ structure of each qubit. This strategy allows for a simultaneous synchronization of the qubit persistent current and tunnel splitting over a range of external bias parameters that is relevant for the implementation of an adiabatic quantum processor.
Machine learning video lecture series December 21, 2009
Posted by Geordie in World Domination.3 comments
Here is Andrew Ng from Stanford giving a series of lectures on machine learning. If you would like to have a good introduction to the field this series is great.
Thinking big December 18, 2009
Posted by Geordie in D-Wave Science & Technology, World Domination.2 comments
For about two years now we have been investigating the use of volunteer-based large scale distributed computing for performing design and simulation tasks. The system and code being used is now fairly stable, and it has become an important tool for us. The system uses BOINC to manage the distribution of tasks among volunteer computers. The home page for our project is at AQUA@home.
The AQUA community currently represents a significant chunk of computing power, comprising about 5,000 cores and 10 teraflop/s sustained. As the viability of distributed automated design tools increases systems like AQUA can start playing a bigger role in experimental design and analysis and ultimately help our hardware and algorithms people design better systems.
Most basic science depends on three complementary areas: theory, simulation and experiment. I would like to try to expand the role of simulation at D-Wave.
In order to do this we need to expand the volunteer base on AQUA. I think the concept of having the world’s largest distributed supercomputer working on designing quantum computers is fascinating, and I’d like to aim for this objective. If you’re intrigued by this, you can check out the AQUA site and talk to the current community. They can answer any questions you may have. Joining is really easy and the code runs at low priority in the background. I have never found it to interfere with anything else I’m doing.
Currently I believe that the largest distributed supercomputer is running Folding@home, and is at or around the 10 petaflop/s sustained level. In order for AQUA to reach this, we’d need about one thousand times more cores than we currently have. This is an ambitious objective but given the compelling nature of the project, it might be achievable.
If you or someone you know might be interested in being part of this, please sign up and try it out!
Quantum phase transitions and non-Markovian noise December 18, 2009
Posted by Geordie in D-Wave Science & Technology.add a comment
First-order quantum phase transition in adiabatic quantum computation
M. H. S. Amin and V. Choi
We investigate the connection between local minima in the problem Hamiltonian and first-order quantum phase transitions during adiabatic quantum computation. We demonstrate how some properties of the local minima can lead to an extremely small gap that is exponentially sensitive to the Hamiltonian parameters. Using perturbation expansion, we derive an analytical formula that cannot only predict the behavior of the gap, but also provide insight on how to controllably vary the gap size by changing the parameters. We show agreement with numerical calculations for a weighted maximum independent set problem instance.
Non-Markovian incoherent quantum dynamics of a two-state system
M. H. S. Amin and Frederico Brito
We present a detailed study of the non-Markovian two-state system dynamics for the regime of incoherent quantum tunneling. Using perturbation theory in the system tunneling amplitude 
Article in The Register December 17, 2009
Posted by Geordie in D-Wave Science & Technology, World Domination.add a comment
