Sophie @ Emergence of classicality, Dublin

willmccutcheon

Sophie went to Dublin’s Trinity College on monday (15-19th July) to attend and present at The Templeton foundation’s international conference “Emergence of Classicality: New Perspectives on Measurements in Quantum Theory” (EoC24) bringing together leading experts on topics in the foundation of quantum physics. Joining an esteemed program of speakers she followed Jaroslaw Korbicz to present “Equilibration of objective observables in a dynamical model of quantum measurements” (https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.18016).

The conference is devoted to quantum measurement, quantum paradoxes, the emergence of classicality and objectivity, quantum thermodynamics, equilibrium of closed systems and experiments. Alongside pontificating on foundational questions of QM they enjoyed some local culture and joined a Cèilidh….all together now… join hands, swing across in a star, face partners, set twice. Spin partners and dance a grand chain round…. 2, 3, 4… and from the top…

Welcome Samuel!

dylandanese

We warmly welcome Samuel Donachie. Arriving from Paris, France, where he’s currently studying physics at the Sorbonne University, Samuel is here to stay with us for his Masters internship.

His scientific interest lies in exploring quantum information on the platform of optics. Outside of studies and physics he enjoys getting exercise with gymnastics and climbing, playing video games, and reading fantasy novels.

Let’s make this stay memorable!

Congrats Sophie and Mariana!

mehulmalik

Last week was a big one for BBQLab with our PhD students Sophie and Mariana both winning poster prizes at two different conferences across the UK!

Sophie won the runner’s up best poster award at the Bristol Quantum Information Technologies Workshop (BQIT:24) for her poster on “Certifying the dimensionality of a quantum channel” and Mariana won the best poster award at the Scottish Conference in Optical Technologies (SCOT) for her poster on “A multiplexed programmable quantum photonic network.” Mehul also had the privilege of giving a keynote talk at the SCOT conference, which brought together the optics and photonics community in Scotland.

Congratulations both!

Congratulations Suraj!

sophiengineer

A congratulations is in order for our group member Suraj Goel!

Suraj gave talks at the SPIE Photonics Europe and SPIE Optical Systems Design 2024 conferences in Strasbourg, presenting our work on reconfigurable quantum optical circuits, and multi-plane neural networks at each conference respectively.

He won the best paper award (2nd Place) at computational optics session for his talk on “Characterization of scattering systems using multi-plane neural networks“. We are very proud of him and the only thing left to ask is what will he spend his prize money on!?

Arxiv: A dynamical model of quantum measurements

sophiengineer

We are happy to announce our most recent arXiv submission: Equilibration of objective observables in a dynamical model of quantum measurements (https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.18016). There are many unanswered questions when it comes to quantum measurements. One such question: how can something seemingly irreversible, like a measurement, arise from unitary (and therefore reversible) dynamics? We find that the answer lies in quantum thermodynamics and the idea of equilibration-on-average!

In this paper, we work within the framework of the Measurement Equilibration Hypothesis (MEH) to construct a set of objectifying observables, best at objectively encoding the measurement statistics of a system. Our work has foundational implications for the emergence of classicality, as well as providing a step towards a fully physical model of quantum measurements. This work was carried out in collaboration with Dr. Max Lock and Dr. Tom Rivlin from the Quantum Information and Thermodynamics group (QuIT Physics) at TU Wien.