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...

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...

We are now at 999 codes. What should be our 1000th? If we pick yours, we will feature you in a post about the code. Comment, reply, message, and spread the word.

After 3 1/2 years of work my course on quantum computing is finally finished — the "Director's Cut" of Understanding Quantum Information and Computation is now available. arxiv.org/abs/2507.11536

"For quantum computers to get significant speed-up, they need to take advantage of special structure. They do not offer significant speed-up for unstructured problems, so we do not expect to be able to just throw them at anything." Andrew Childs arxiv.org/pdf/2408.16175

From Barbara Terhal: On July 17-18 a small symposium "Dreams of Quantum" will be held in honor of David DiVincenzo's work and retirement at RWTH Aachen. The event can be attended by all via a Zoom link. www.quantuminfo.physik.rwth-aachen.de/cms/~bmmwed

"We're likely to experience a DeepSeek moment in quantum." www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqPw...

Lots of good Lie group stuff in this post by @dwierichs.bsky.social, as it related to circuit compilation: pennylane.ai/qml/demos/tu...

"for U.S. developed nanotechnology to compete in the current era, the United States must rethink the entirety of its ... framework, within which nanotechnology knowledge is created, innovation is protected, and products are commercialized by industry." nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/2572...

The integer eigenvalues of angular momentum in a 2D space with periodic boundary conditions are scaled by the radius (for sufficiently large radii). Turns out there is a continuum of angular momenta! arxiv.org/abs/2506.03254

Happy to see our book "Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics" published in English www.panmacmillan.com/authors/fran.... Unlike other popular science books, we explain quantum and its applications in the way working physicists use and understand them, without shying away from the many-body problem.

"AIP projects a 13% drop in first-year enrollment in fall 2025 compared with fall 2024. ... One in six of the responding chairs reported that at least one faculty member in the department has had their federal grant funding reduced or canceled." digital.physicstoday.org/physicstoday...

"Skinny" US budget out today w/ many cuts to specific programs + NSF now at 15% overhead. Silver lining: "[ NSF] Funding for Artificial Intelligence and quantum information sciences research is maintained at current levels."

Absolutely maximal entangled states are maximally entangled along any bipartition. We extend this to continuous variables and show this property is generic among infinitely squeezed states. In contrast, it doesn't exist for states on more than six qubits. arxiv.org/abs/2503.15698

Here are slides for my @qip2025.bsky.social tutorial on quantum error correction. doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

Quantum community should be aware that this kind of misleading advertising is happening. www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGXT...

ArXiv quant-ph needs to be split up! Paul Ginsparg lists Daniel Gottesman's proposed subcategories at his @aspenphysics.bsky.social talk. He is looking for feedback: please reply, dm, or email.

Our third tutorial of QIP 2025 is “Quantum error correction: a guided tour" by Victor Albert (@vva.bsky.social) from NIST and QuICS, who will gently introduce and visit increasingly important corners of the mega-field of QEC (Sun Feb 23, 9am-12:30pm, Room 302ABC). Overview below:

Slides from my talk @aspenphysics.bsky.social AI+Quantum conference overviewing use cases of AI in quantum error correction + semantic literature search. doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

Adam Brown at his @aspenphysics.bsky.social talk updates us on the dramatic improvements in LLM performance on technical exams and makes a compelling case that this improvement will continue for another five years. Not one but many Einsteins coming up!

NSF is back on! new.nsf.gov/executive-or...

OTOH, not so good news from @NSF: "all review panels, new awards and all payments of funds under open awards will be paused as the agency conducts the required reviews and analysis" new.nsf.gov/executive-or...

Re federal funding freeze from UMD: "The university has not received overarching stop-work orders or suspension notices. Work on grants and cooperative agreements should continue ... unless the Office of Research Administration (ORA) has provided other guidance."

Happy 10th anniversary QuICS!

2025 REU-CAAR is out! @domwilliamson.bsky.social and I are looking for an REU summer student on bivariate bicycle codes. Yifan Hong and Yu-Xin Wang have a nice project on QLDPC codes. Shubham Jain is looking to find record breaking qutrit codes. www.cs.umd.edu/projects/reu...

Congrats to Justyna Zwolak, Norm Yao, Zohreh Davoudi, Vedika Khemani, Douglas Stanford, Adam Kaufman, Stephen Eckel, Barry Bradlyn, Amir Safavi-Naeini, Mary Wootters, and the rest of the PECASE winners! www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-up...

"We do not yet have proven exponential quantum speedups for end-to-end applications in machine learning, optimization, quantum chemistry, or materials science that guarantee substantial commercial and financial value." arxiv.org/pdf/2501.05694

Have SIC-POVMs finally been found? @sflammia.bsky.social arxiv.org/abs/2501.03970

A "modern perspective" "from the archives" circa 2003. digital.physicstoday.org/physicstoday...

x.com/victorvalber... Xmas afternoon quantum catchup

Here are slides from my Simons Center for Geometry and Physics talk on tiger codes --- a new paradigm for intrinsically multi-mode many-body CV physics. drive.google.com/file/d/1PKjp...

Second @seanski44.bsky.social Computerphile video is out; more up to date stuff this time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqHVs5zhD5g

Here is a video I did with computerphile that explains four basic principles of quantum mechanics -- discreteness, superposition, uncertainty, entanglement -- in order of complexity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5A_oupZOCE

Hello BlueSky, anyone quantum out here?