2012 QIS Workshop in Computer and Natural Sciences

About

The workshop on Quantum Information Science in Computer and Natural Sciences is being organized by the Physics Frontier Center at the Joint Quantum Institute of the University of Maryland to help the Computer and Natural Sciences community become aware of the possibilities of developments in Quantum Information Science. This is in connection with the recent program solicitation from the National Science Foundation NSF 12-540 "CISE-MPS Interdisciplinary Faculty Program in Quantum Information Science" (PDF).

Contact Information

PFC/JQI Contact: Luis A. Orozco
NSF Contacts: C. Denise Caldwell and Dmitry Maslov
Inquiries and registration (no fee): Kate Oaks, (301) 405-1300, koaks@umd.edu

Program Information

We have tried to identify a broad group of individuals that cover the pressing issues in QI theory including complexity, architectures, algorithms, quantum control, and quantum simulation to name a few areas and then added a few experimental efforts in demonstrations of key components necessary to build the technology. We want to provide an overview of exciting new results, of directions of research, and of the importance QIS may have to especially computer scientists and mathematicians.

The program committee consists of Umesh Vazirani from The University of California at Berkeley and Carl Williams from the JQI NIST with support from Luis Orozco from JQI UMD and the JQI staff. The overall topics to cover and possible speakers not yet confirmed are listed below.

Purpose

The Joint Quantum Institute, through its Physics Frontier Center is organizing a one and a half day workshop titled “QSI in Computer and natural Sciences.” The workshop is be hosted by the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland (www.jqi.umd.edu) and will take place at the Marriott Inn of the University of Maryland University College Conference Center adjacent to the University of Maryland College Park Campus. We will hold the workshop on September 28 and 29 and expect to have 65 participants.

The workshop is part of an overall effort to respond to the January 2009 document from the United States National Science and Technology Council (US NSTC) report entitled A Federal Vision for Quantum Information Science. In particular we are interested in bringing the computer science and mathematics community to look more closely at questions related to the Power of Quantum Information: What is the true power of a general purpose quantum computer, what problems does it allow us to compute efficiently, and what does it teach us about nature?

In particular the document poses the following set of questions in the same chapter:

• What is the class of problems that are efficiently solvable on a quantum computer but not on a classical computer?
• What problems remain intractable even for quantum computers?
• Which currently tractable problems can be sped up further using quantum algorithms?
• Quantum computations are inherently prone to errors due to imperfect isolation of quantum mechanical systems from the environment. What error correction schemes can be developed to allow quantum computation to be done free of errors? (Good ideas to address this problem are already being developed.)

This workshop will promote among computer scientist and other scientists, not currently involved in Quantum Information, the solicitation from the National Science Foundation NSF 12-540 for the CISE-MPS Interdisciplinary Faculty Program in Quantum Information Science (http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2012/nsf12540/nsf12540.htm). The NSF solicitation is an effort, in response to the report of the US NSTC quoted above, to attempt to attract senior faculty to begin research efforts in QIS with the primary goal of creating a few more active research efforts that support Quantum Information Theory with the end goal of eventually having universities more willing to create junior faculty position for QI theorists.

The solicitation goals are to “promote research in the area of Quantum Information Science (QIS) by providing resources to allow QIS researchers and researchers from the CISE or MPS disciplines to actively engage in joint research efforts, addressing problems at the interface between the mathematical and physical sciences and computer and information sciences through long-term visits by faculty to a host institution.” Basically it provides support for individuals to take a sabbatical.