Blog Entries

Quantum Goblins, my first PRA

cap.fwiffo@gmail.com — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Danny and me just had our paper on quantum goblins published in PRA. This is the first publication from my Phd, and my first PRA.

After comments from the editor we changed the name from (the arXive version's) "Quantum discord and local demons" to "Quantum discord, local operations, and Maxwell’s demons"

In the paper we discuss three different types of quantum discord, the first is the original introduced by Zurek, the second was introduced by Zu [...]

The history of spin

cap.fwiffo@gmail.com — Fri, 21 May 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Yesterday at lunch Stojan and me were talking about the history of spin. Here is a very cool story about it

http://www.lorentz.leidenuniv.nl/history/spin/goudsmit.html

Quantum Mini-Golf for my iPhone?

jtwamley@ics.mq.edu.au — Sat, 15 May 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Just saw this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeeXTmVGoxs&feature=fvsr

Now if I can can this for my iPhone I would have endless fun!

NIST digital library of mathematical functions is now complete

gbrennen@ics.mq.edu.au — Wed, 12 May 2010 02:30:40 +0100

Easier than carrying around a copy of Gradshteyn and Ryzhik and more reliable than Wikipedia!

See:

http://dlmf.nist.gov/

Greetings From Leeds

llehman@science.mq.edu.au — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0100

I have now spent almost two months in research exchange in the University of Leeds and I thought it would be a good time to share some of my experiences.

I arrived in Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK in February from the summer climate of Australia. Being back in Europe after spending 12 months on the opposite side of the globe was pleasant but I was immediately reminded why I left the continent in the first place: the winters are cold and dark and people don't smile without a reason.

During th [...]

LaTeX Thesis Template for Macquarie University

jhschonf@ics.mq.edu.au — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0100

Alexei Gilchrist customised a very good LaTeX thesis template for Macquarie University, Faculty of Science students. It can be found on his blog here http://ectropy.info/2009/03/latex-thesis-templates. I have made some minor changes to the template:

1) The "hyperref" macros package is now included in the class file and can be activated by using the option "foronline" in the document class options ( \documentclass[foronline]{mqthesis} ). Citations and references [...]

This week's riddle - Light bulbs

cap.fwiffo@gmail.com — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100

No one solved the riddle from two weeks ago (hats), i'm still wating for the answer.

Light bulbs

You are standing in front of a wall with 100 light bulbs and 100 switches numbered 1 to 100.
the light bulbs are all off, and the switches have the following effect:
flipping a switch will change the state of all the bulbs that are multiples of that switch (so flipping 10 will change the state of 10,20,30,40..100)
you decide to flip [...]

This week's riddle

cap.fwiffo@gmail.com — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100

No one solved last week's riddle yet so here's a small hint.
The answer is 1, but what's the algorithm?
For all those who asked, the prisoners cannot use any special methods
like timing their answers etc... the only information each prisoner can send is a single bit (i.e either black or white) but
that has to also be his guess for the hat.

In the mean while, here's a simple one

what are the next numbers in this series

18, 46, 94, 63, 52, ... [...]

This week's riddle - Hats

cap.fwiffo@gmail.com — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0100

In a really harsh prison the sadistic warden decided to give 100 prisoners the following task:
They must stand in a line, and he will put a hat on each of their heads. The hats can be either black or white. Then each prisoner will be allowed to say one word, either "black" or "white", trying to guess what hat he has. At the end of the game, all prisoners who got their color right will be released, all the rest will be killed. If any prisoner brakes any rule (looks bac [...]

This week's riddle - Daylight

cap.fwiffo@gmail.com — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100

A few people solved last week's murder mystery. It's quite obvious that Bill killed his brother hoping the girl would come to the funeral.
While the logical connection is simple, it takes a twisted mind to see the solution. The story is that this riddle was used to test psychopaths.
This makes this weeks hike very interesting since Lauri , Ingo and me all solved the riddle. (and it's on Halloween).
As for 2000!mod2003 Gavin is the only one who solved it. I guess i owe you a beer. [...]

This week's riddle:2000!mod2003 revisited and a murder mystery

cap.fwiffo@gmail.com — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Last weeks riddle has not been solved by anyone yet. I'm giving you all a chance to try it again for another week.In the meanwhile i have a small hint: The answer is 1001 - but how do you calculate it? The beer offer still stands.And another easy but interesting riddle. This one took me 10 seconds to solve, but more about that next week....
The riddle:During his mother's funeral Bill saw the most beautiful girl he has ever seen. It was love at first sightfor him, but being distrac [...]

A great day for quantum info

gbrennen@ics.mq.edu.au — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Cirac, Wineland, and Zoller have been awarded the 2010 Franklin Medal in physics:

For their theoretical proposal and experimental realization of the first device that performs elementary computer-logic operations using the quantum properties of individual atoms.

See:

http://www.fi.edu/franklinawards/10/bf_physics.html

Thanks to Charles Clark for posting this info on Facebook.

Cellular sculpture

gbrennen@ics.mq.edu.au — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100

For those interested in cellular complexes--and if you care about quantum computing, topological phases, or quantum gravity, this means you---there is an exhibition of wire sculptures not to be missed at the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art this month. The creator, Neil Taylor, is a sculptor based in Melbourne. When finished with the cold hard scientific motifs there is plenty good warm and fuzzy art to see as we [...]

This week's riddle - 2000!mod2003

cap.fwiffo@gmail.com — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Well done to Johann, Ingo and all others who solved last week's riddle. I was surprised to find that my solution was not as good as theirs.
As i promised , this week i'll give a hard one. It took me a month to solve and i'll buy a uni bar guiness to the first person to solve it this week. Since it involves a calculation I don't want only the answer but also the general method for solving it without a computer. A mathematician friend of mine solved it in about 5 mins and said any decent mat [...]

This week's riddle - Eggs

cap.fwiffo@gmail.com — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Hi all,
The only person to send me an answer to last week's riddle was Johann. So this week I'm going for an easy one with the promise of a really hard one next week.

After building a 100 story tower, the engineers were faced with a new problem. What's the highest level from which you safely throw an egg without it braking. As usual with the budgeting of such large projects, getting money for the little things is hard and the engineers were given only two eggs to find the [...]

This week's riddle - The king's false coin

cap.fwiffo@gmail.com — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0100

This week's riddle is the one Ingo wanted to give everyone last week.

One day the king's advisor told him that one of his banks was stealing his gold by making false coins, the advisor did not know which bank . So the king collected 12 coins, one from each bank and told his advisor to find the false one using 3 measurements on scales. After thinking about it for
a moment the advisor told the king that this was a very easy task and made the measurements. What was his strategy ?

LaTeX in your email with Thunderbird

jhschonf@ics.mq.edu.au — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0100

Whilst in Canada I had a brilliant idea. I did a quick google search and couldn't find mention of it. WOW, how cool! Then I got home and had a proper look, not even that proper, and the idea has already been developed and deployed. Awwww... no unique idea for me. BUT the cool thing is you can write LaTeX equations in your emails in Thunderbird, and compile it so that the equations are included in your email as images.
This is so cool, I don't know why I haven't had this installed for ag [...]

Weekly riddle

cap.fwiffo@gmail.com — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0100

At Johann's suggestion I will try to post a riddle on the blog each week. The first person to get it right will win a chance to buy me a cup of coffee (double macchiato please), so will anyone else who gets the answer etc...

If I come across some quantum riddles I will post them as well but the ones I have at the moment are all classical.

The next one has already been solved by a few people.

The king decided to test his adviser's abilities by giving him the [...]

Back from Canada

cap.fwiffo@gmail.com — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0100
We're back from America! After more then 3 weeks abroad I'm finally back home. It was great. Here is what I did.
After a long flight which included going past 2 very unfriendly American airports (LAX and Minneapolis), I finally arrived in Waterloo. Very soon i discovered something very nice about the university there, things are actually open till late, in fact the student center is open 24hrs - wow! and it's possible to get dinner at night. Promising? yes, but it turns out Waterloo is pret [...]

Afterthoughts of the trip to Canada

llehman@science.mq.edu.au — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0100

A four-member squad of PhD students, consisting of myself, Aharon, Johann and Ressa, took an excursion to the University of Waterloo and the Fields Institute at the University of Toronto. We attended the Canadian Quantum Information Summer School and Student Conference, which I highly recommend to any beginning PhD students in the field of quantum information. In addition to that, we also had some other activities, which for me was the Workshop on Mathematics in Experimental Quantum Informati [...]