Adam Sørensen: Overlapping qubits

Adam Sørensen (Oslo) will give a talk with title: Overlapping qubits

Abstract: I will discuss the paper "Overlapping Qubits" by Chao, Reichardt, Sutherland, and Vidick (arXiv:1701.01062 - category: Quantum Physics!). Qubits are the bits of quantum computing. In the paper the authors take the point of view that a qubit mathematically is described by a pair of anticommuting reflections on a finite dimensional Hilbert space. Two qubits are independent if their defining operators commute. The central point of the paper is that when performing observations we should not expect two qubits to be exactly independent, rather we should expect them to be almost independent, i.e. the norms of the commutators should be small. This naturally leads to questions about almost commuting matrices, which is why I care. I will attempt to explain how questions of almost commuting matrices come up, and how the physicists answer them.  

Published Mar. 10, 2017 10:04 AM - Last modified Mar. 10, 2017 10:04 AM