quantum computing

8 posts

What does a quantum Bayes’s rule look like?

7 min read
Analysis Scicomm Science Bayes's rule Bayesian network Bayesianism Choi operators commutativity completely positive trace-preserving map noise correction Physical Review Letters principle of minimum change probability quantum computing quantum information theory stochastic processes unitarity variational Bayesian inference

Bayes's rule is one of the most fundamental principles in probability and statistics. It allows us to update our beliefs in the face of new evidence. In its simplest form, the rule tells us how to…

What does it mean to interpret quantum physics?

7 min read
Scicomm Science Bohmian mechanics classical physics Copenhagen interpretation hidden variables many-worlds interpretation Nirmalya Kajuri nonlocality QBism quantum computing quantum cosmology quantum entanglement quantum physics quantum superposition wavefunction

The United Nations has designated 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. Many physics magazines and journals have taken the opportunity to publish more articles on quantum phys…

Who funds quantum research?

4 min read
Analysis Science artificial intelligence Bruce Schneier Drew Weissman drug development Katalin Karikó Majorana 1 Microsoft Research mRNA vaccines Nathan Sanders Normal Eisen Physical Review B Physics World public AI public quantum quantum computing quantum technologies topological qubit Winfried Hensinger

An odd little detail in a Physics World piece on Microsoft’s claim to have made a working topological qubit: Regardless of the debate about the results and how they have been announced, researchers a…

Majorana 1, science journalism, and other things

8 min read
Scicomm Alexei Kitaev Ben Feringa Cassandra Willyard curiosity curiosity-driven research David Thouless Duncan Haldane Fraser Stoddart Jean-Pierre Sauvage John Kosterlitz Majorana 1 Majorana fermions Microsoft National Science Day Nobel Prizes quantum computing science journalism The Hindu topological order

While I have many issues with how the Nobel Prizes are put together as an institution, the scientific achievements they have revealed have been some of the funnest concepts I’ve discovered in science,…

When cooling down really means slowing down

5 min read
Scicomm Albert Einstein atomic cooling atomic trap Bose-Einstein condensate Bose-Einstein statistics Carl Wieman Claude Cohen-Tannoudji collisional cooling diatomic molecules Eric Cornell Harvard University laser cooling Massachusetts Institute of Technoogy NaLi niobium nitride quantum chemistry quantum computing S Pancharatnam Satyendra Nath Bose Shivaramakrishnan Pancharatnam Sisyphus cooling spin polarization superconductors superfluids University of Waterloo Wolfgang Ketterle

Consider this post the latest in a loosely defined series about atomic cooling techniques that I've been writing since June 2018. Atoms can't run a temperature, but things made up of atoms, l…