The semester is finally over, so it's time for me to post the memes my students made for extra credit on their final (Physics 438b: Quantum Mechanics). As always, good memes are the result of my inspiring teaching, bad memes are the result of kids these days. Let's start it off!

The same quantum tunneling honored by this year’s #NobelPrize is driving #URochesterResearch @machielblok.bsky.social is building quantum systems that do what classical computers can’t—inspired by the same fundamental questions uofr.us/48o7I0K #QuantumPhysics #QuantumComputing

What it really feels like interacting with your physics heroes! Such a beautiful and fundamental prize 🤩 www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physi...

In the excitement over today's well-deserved #nobel announcement for Clarke, Devoret and Martinis, I looked up the 2017 symposium in honor of John Clarke's scientific achievements at UC Berkeley that I attended as a postdoc. I was thrilled to find the recordings on YouTube tinyurl.com/mrx6umcr

sc circuits!! www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physi...

We are hiring in theoretical quantum info / complex systems ! apply.interfolio.com/173432

Fridge day! @bluefors.com @urochester.bsky.social

This is what democracy looks like! A people united will never be defeated. We want federal forces out of DC NOW! #WeAreAllDC #FreeDC

Why are so many people so obsessed with “Google Scholar fraud”? Another example of someone creating a few citations — no, you don’t get a job/promotion because you have 132 citations. And the “meta study” found 144 suspected cases out of 1 million (!) profiles.

Mark Saffman reviews the remarkable recent progress on quantum computing with neutral atoms. podcast.newquantumera.com/57

What connects The Matrix, to Hilbert Space, to Spins with large angular moment? Our recent PRX on efficient qudit control with large-spin rotations ! www.rochester.edu/newscenter/h... #URQuantum #Rochester #Quantum #Qudits

In Trento for the BeyondQubit workshop. Looking forward to a conference dedicated to Qudits! #quantum #qudits #beyondqubit

Ended cqs-12 with an amazing public talk by Nicole Yunger Halpern on quantum steampunk #cqs2025

Final day of cqs-12 kicked off by Pedram Roushan from Google Quantum AI on simulating lattice gauge theories and condensed matter systems with Willow #cqs2025 #quantum #Rochester

Misha Lukin at cqs-12: We got a preview of these very impressive new results on repeated error correction in neutral atoms, posted on the arxiv today arxiv.org/pdf/2506.20661 #cqs2025 #qec #quantum

🌟 Excited to speak, have played a small advisory board role, and be back here after the last one 6 years ago for the Rochester Conference on Coherence and Quantum Science (CQS-12)! CQS is special, dating back to 1960, bringing together Nobel Laureates & field pioneers #CQS2025

You guys my students threw me a surprise tenure party

Off to a great start of CQS-12 with a keynote by Donna Strickland about the quantum and coherence properties of lasers and including a tribute to Joe Eberly #cqs12 #quantum #coherence #rochester

New paper out! We resonantly couple a superconducting heavy-fluxonium qubit ⚛️ to a macroscopic membrane 🥁 oscillating at a few MHz. ~300 repeated interactions let us track its quantum motion, observe back-action & probe non-commuting operators. Diósi–Penrose next? (1/8) arxiv.org/abs/2505.21481

10 days left for early-bird registration for CQS-12! Hope to see you in Rochester in June for many quantum interactions! If you can not attend yourself, please consider sharing with colleagues or group members. #CQS12 #quantum #QIS

Move over, qubits: Quantum computing based on higher-dimensional 'qudits' (working with a Hilbert space of dimension d>2) offers potential advantages — but the devil could be in the details. A short 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

"If I could go back in time to my old self, I would tell her: why waste time with qubits" says Christine Muschik in a very nice qudit overview article in @nature.com www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Here we go! #aps #globalsummit

🌟 The 12th Rochester Conference on Coherence and Quantum Science (CQS-12) will be held June 23-27, 2025 in Rochester, NY! 🌟 CQS has a rich history dating back to 1960 and brought together Nobel Laureates & field pioneers. www.sas.rochester.edu/quantum/cqs/... #CQS2025 #QuantumScience #Physics

Another great batch of quantum memes!

Cool cats. Physicists at UNSW are the first to succeed in creating and manipulating quantum superpositions of a single, large nuclear spin. 🧪⚛️ ow.ly/gH2j50UZv88

This is the one article to read on contemporary (and future) U.S. politics. Laid out analytically and clearly. There is a hint of optimism (which I do not share but do appreciate).

As social and traditional media continue to favor "catastrophizing" and "liberal outrage", the growing group of (wannabe) pundits keep upping their dramatic predictions and drowning out the few actual experts with insightful analyses. Trump pays off for both far-right and liberal grifters.

First time I am hearing about Quantum Circuit Born Machines. From a brief glance at the paper, this looks like it could be an important result! I’m a little surprised it is not discussed more in the #quantum sphere here. Thoughts?

Hey, University of Rochester researchers! Did you know there's a starter pack for you?! Check it out, follow your colleagues, and reach out to @urochester.bsky.social to be added to the pack! go.bsky.app/AhmHd8J

Beautiful work by the Morello group on creating a Schrödinger cat state in nuclear spin qudits (www.nature.com/articles/s41...) Along with a visually stunning video www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJVM...

Rainy weekend project: condense 125 years of quantum physics into 1! The "Quantum Year" calendar is interactive. Feedback welcome. #IYQ2025 #QuantumYear #QuantumComputing

It is graduate admission season! Question to colleagues: How do you read/write recommendation letters. I have no issue identifying the best of the best. But between all the 'warm', 'strong', 'enthusiastic' recommendations, how can they be distinguished?

If I would be dictator for a day, I would mandate that you are only allowed to published graphs that show the full range of the y-axis.

I'm teaching quantum again this semester. Midterms are the second weeks of February and March, final is first week of May. Set your meme calendars accordingly

My take on different interpretations of quantum mechanics is that I will devote serious thought to them as soon as they make one (1) testable prediction

I was thrilled to hear about the surface code when Alexei Kitaev visited @caltech.edu in April 1997. It's heartening to see the hardware catching up with the theory of quantum error correction. There's still far to go but this is encouraging progress. www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-comp...

2-dimensional analogies are often used to motivate physical concepts in our 3+1 dimensional world. But a world with 2 space and 1 time dimensions would look *very* different from our world Some crucial differences:🧵 1/10

Let me know if you want your #quantum tagged posts to be listed in this quantum feed: bsky.app/profile/did:... .

We had heard about the challenges posed by motherhood within academia, but what about the previous stage? @ecfreewoman.bsky.social & I wrote our story for @science.org on how the academic system makes it almost impossible for women to even plan for a family ❤️‍🩹: www.science.org/content/arti...

Dad: [Hands waving] Magnets work because quantum field theory reveals spin, an intrinsic angular momentum from Lorentz symmetries. In bulk elements with unpaired electrons, exchange interactions align spins, creating a coherent macroscopic magnetic moment and fields, sweetie.

Fun feature! Creating a word cloud based on your google scholar scholargoggler.com

Turns out you can play Bach on an MRI scanner.

95% of articles/videos about quantum computing say "the number of states of qubits grows exponentially", and then show something like this (see pic) BUT THIS IS EXACTLY THE SAME FOR CLASSICAL BITS! You're literally showing 2^n states of n two-state bits. That's how math works. What is your point?

Love this Amsterdam (Ajax) Rochester (Kodak) connection!

The quantum future!

It's happening, right? 🧪

Pretty f’ing impressive, if taken at their word. "Logical computation demonstrated with a neutral atom quantum processor” [claiming up to 28 logical qubits in 256 physical, implementing real error-corrected algorithms] arxiv.org/abs/2411.11822 #Quantum #Science #QuantumComputing #AtomComputing

NEW: Ranga Dias is no longer employed by the University of Rochester, months after a university probe found he engaged in research misconduct www.wsj.com/science/univ...

Hey, all! Please share/ReBleep/apply! The Uni of Toronto has a faculty opening in Theoretical Quantum Optics (broadly construed). See jobs.utoronto.ca/job/Toronto-... #Quantum #QuantumOptics #Optics #QuantumInformation