Daily Archives: December 7, 2021

The theory group on 'Fundamental Processes in Quantum Physics' at the Center for Optical Quantum Technologies of the University of Hamburg announces a postdoctoral position in theoretical physics.

The underlying project aims at developing novel quantum and hybrid algorithms for quantum simulation based on a Rydberg tweezer platform for ultracold atoms. Applications to relevant computational and optimization problems are envisaged.

Ideally a close interface with the underlying driven many-body Rydberg physics will be established. Research is performed in the above theory group with an immediate link to the corresponding experimental groups.

For more information and/or details please contact Prof. Dr. Peter Schmelcher at the below given email (see also https://www.physik.uni-hamburg.de/en/ilp/schmelcher.html).

We are looking for a strongly motivated and highly skilled postdoctoral researcher who shares the excitement of doing research in theoretical physics. The position will be available for a two years period with a possible extension up to five years.

To apply, please send a meaningful CV (including the names of potential references) with a

cover letter to pschmelc@physnet.uni-hamburg.de.

Salaries are paid according to the German standards. Recruitment will continue until the position is filled.

Link:

Postdoctoral position in Quantum Physics job with UNIVERSITY OF HAMBURG | 273815 - Times Higher Education (THE)

Theres a lot of discussion about time in the world of quantum physics. At the micro level, where waves and particles can behave the same, time tends to be much more malleable than it is in our observable realm of classical physics.

Think about the clock on the wall. You can push the hands backwards, but that doesnt cause time itself to rewind. Time marches on.

But things are much simpler in the quantum realm. If we can mathematically express particulate activity in one direction, then we can mathematically express it in a diametric one.

In other words: time travel actually makes sense through a quantum lens. Whatever goes forward must be able to go backward.

Related: Googles time crystals could be the greatest scientific achievement of our lifetimes

But it all falls apart when we get back to classical physics. I dont care how much math you do, you cant unbreak a bottle, untell a secret, or unshoot a gun.

As Gidon Lev points out in a recent article on Haaretz, this disparity between quantum and classical physics is one of the fields biggest challenges.

Per Levs article:

Hawking demonstrated that regarding black holes, one of the two major theories leads to an error.

According to his calculations, the radiation emitted by the hole is not a function of the material the hole swallows, and therefore, two black holes that formed by different processes will emit the same exact radiation. This meant that the information on every physical particle swallowed into the black hole, including its mass, speed of movement, etc., disappears from the universe.

But under the theory of quantum mechanics, such deletion is impossible.

Levs article goes on to explain how Stephen Hawking eventually conceded (he lost a bet) that the information entering a black hole wasnt gone. He, of course, couldnt explain exactly where it went. But most physicists were pretty sure it had to go somewhere nothing else in the universe just vanishes.

Fast forward to 2019 and two separate research teams (working independently of each other) publishedpre-print papers seemingly confirming Hawkings hunch about the persistence of information.

Not only were the papers published within 24 hours of each other, but the lead authors on each ended up sharing the 2021 New Horizons Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics.

What both teams discovered was that a slight change in perspective made all the math line up.

When information enters a black hole it appears to be lost because, for all intents and purposes, its no longer available to the universe.

And thats what stumped Hawking. Imagine a single photon of light getting caught in a black hole and swallowed up. Hawking and his colleagues knew the photon (and the information that was swallowed up with it) couldnt be deleted.

But, according to Hawking, black holes leak thermal radiation. And that means they eventually lose their energy and mass and fade away.

Hawking and company couldnt figure out how to reconcile the fact that once a black hole is gone, anything thats ever been inside it appears to be gone too.

Thats because they were looking in the wrong places. Hawking and others were trying to find signs of the missing information leaking out simiarlyalong a black holes event horizon.

Unfortunately, using the event horizon as a starting point never panned out the numbers didnt quite add up.

The 2021 New Horizons Prize winners figured out a different way to measure the area of a black hole. And, by applying the new lens to measurements over various stages of a black holes life, they were finally able to make the numbers add up.

If these two teams did in fact demonstrate that even a black hole cant render information irreversible, then there might be nothing physically stopping us from time travel.

And Im not talking about that hard-to-explain, gravity at the edge of a black hole, your friends would get older while you stayed young kind of time travel.

Im talking about real-life Marty Mcfly time travel where you could set the dials in the DeLorean for 13 March 1986 so you could go back and invest in Microsoft on the day its stock went public.

Now, much like Stephen Hawking, I dont have any math or engineering solutions to the problem at hand. Ive just got this physics theory.

If information can and does escape from black holes, then its only logical to assume that other processes which we only see in quantum mechanics could also be explained through classical physics.

We know that time travel is possible in quantum mechanics. Google demonstrated this by building time crystals, and numerous quantum computing paradigms rely on a form of prediction that surfaces answers using whats basically molecular time-travel.

But we all know that, when it comes to quantum stuff, were talking about particles demonstrating counter-intuitive behavior. Thats not the same thing as pushing a button and making a car from the 1980s appear back in the old Wild West.

However, that doesnt mean quantum time travel isnt just as mind-blowing. Translating time crystals into something analogous in classical physics would mean creating donuts that reappear on your plate after you eat them or beer that reappears in your glass no matter how many times you chug it.

If we concede that time crystals exist and information can escape a black hole, then we have to admit that donuts or anything, even people could one day travel through time too.

Then again, nobody showed up for Hawkings party. So, either it isnt possible or time travelers are jerks.

Read the original:

This amazing new physics theory made me believe time travel is possible - TNW

PARIS, Dec. 3, 2021 At the meeting of the 8thAtos Quantum Advisory Board, a group of international experts, mathematicians and physicists, authorities in their fields, Atos reaffirmed its position as a global leader in quantum computing technologies. In particular, the quantum hybridization axis (convergence of high-performance computing (HPC) and quantum computing) positions the company at the forefront of quantum research, converging its expertise. Atos has invested, along with partner start-ups Pasqal and IQM, in two major quantum hybridization projects in France and Germany.

Held atAtos R&D center, dedicated to research in quantum computing and high-performance computing, in Clayes-sous-Bois, in the presence of Atos next CEO, Rodolphe Belmer, and under the chairmanship of Pierre Barnab, Chair of the Quantum Advisory Board, Interim co-CEO and Head of Big Data and Cybersecurity, this meeting of the Quantum Advisory Board was an opportunity to review Atos recent work and to take stock of future prospects.

Artur Ekert,Professor of Quantum Physics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford,Founding Director of the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore and member of the Quantum Advisory Boardsaid We are truly impressed by the work and the progress that Atos has made over the past year. The company takes quantum computing seriously and it gives us great pleasure to see it becoming one of the key players in the field. It is a natural progression for Atos. As a world leader in High Performance Computing (HPC), Atos is in a unique position to combine its existing, extensive, expertise in HPC with quantum technology and take both fields to new heights. We are confident that Atos will shape the quantum landscape in years to come, both with research and applications that have long-lasting impact.

In the field of quantum hybridization Atos is the only player and the company is already enablingseveralapplications in the areas of chemistry, such as catalysis design for nitrogen fixation, and for the optimization of smart grids. Atos is also involved in two additional quantum hybridization projects, which are currently being launched:

The EuropeanHPC-QS(Quantum Simulation) project, which starts this December 2021, aims to build the first European hybrid supercomputer with an integrated quantum accelerator by the end of 2023. It is intended to be a first major brick of the French quantum plan. Atos is involved in this project alongside national partners including the CEA, GENCI, Pasqal and the Julich Supercomputing Centre. Pasqal will provide its analog quantum accelerator and Atos, with its quantum simulator, theQuantum Learning Machine(QLM), will ensure the hybridization with the HPCs at the two datacenters at GENCI and Julich.

TheQ-EXAproject, part of the German Government quantum plan, will see a consortium of partners, including Atos, work together to integrate a German quantum computer into an HPC supercomputer for the first time. Atos QLM will be instrumental in connecting the quantum computer, from start-up IQM (also part of theAtos Scalerprogram) to the Leibniz Supercomputing-LRZ centre.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), one of the worlds largest and most respected research centres, based in Geneva, has recently acquired an Atos Quantum Learning Machine (QLM) appliance and joined the Atos User Club. The Atos QLM, delivered to CERN in October, will be made available to the CERN scientific community to support research activities in the framework of theCERN Quantum Technology Initiative (CERN QTI), thus accelerating the investigation of quantum advantage for high-energy physics (HEP) and beyond.

Building on CERNs unique expertise and strong collaborative culture, co-development efforts are at the core of CERN QTI. As we explore the fast-evolving field of quantum technologies, access to the Atos Quantum Learning Machine and Atos expertise can play an important role in our quantum developments roadmap in support of the high-energy physics community and beyond, saysAlberto Di Meglio, Coordinator of the CERN Quantum Technology Initiative.A dedicated training workshop is being organized with Atos to investigate the full functionality and potential of the quantum appliance, as well as its future application for some of the CERN QTI activities.

Atos is the world leader in the convergence of supercomputing and quantum computing, as shown by these two major and strategic projects we are involved in in France and Germany. At a time when the French government is expected to announce its plan for quantum computing, the durability of our Quantum Board, the quality of the work carried out and the concrete applications of this research in major projects reinforce this position, commentsPierre Barnab, interim co-CEO and head of Big Data and Cybersecurity at Atos.

The Quantum Advisory Board is made up of universally recognized quantum physicists and includes:

As a result of Atos ambitious program to anticipate the future of quantum computing and to be prepared for the opportunities and challenges that come with it Atos Quantum Atos was the first organization to offer a quantum noisy simulation module which can simulate real Qubits, the Atos QLM and to propose Q-score, the only universal metrics to assess quantum performance and superiority. Atos is also the first European patent holder in quantum computing.

Photo, from left to right:

About Atos

Atos is a global leader in digital transformation with 107,000 employees and annual revenue of over 11 billion. European number one in cybersecurity, cloud and high performance computing, the Group provides tailored end-to-end solutions for all industries in 71 countries. A pioneer in decarbonization services and products, Atos is committed to a secure and decarbonized digital for its clients. Atos is a SE (Societas Europaea), listed on Euronext Paris and included in the CAC 40 ESG and Next 20 Paris Stock indexes.

Thepurpose of Atosis to help design the future of the information space. Its expertise and services support the development of knowledge, education and research in a multicultural approach and contribute to the development of scientific and technological excellence. Across the world, the Group enables its customers and employees, and members of societies at large to live, work and develop sustainably, in a safe and secure information space.

Source: Atos

More:

Atos Confirms Role in Quantum Hybridization Technologies at Its 8th Quantum Advisory Board - HPCwire

With admirable clarity, astronomer and physicist Marcelo Gleiser explains what a Theory of Everything is and is not: Its not about every detail of life that happens to us.

Its the search for a single, underlying force that unites the four fundamental forces of nature gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force into one single underlying force. Why havent we found it? Well, first, he says, We do not see this unity because it is only manifest at extremely high energies, well beyond what we can perceive even with our most powerful machines.

But second and more significantly there is a real question, Gleiser contends, whether science is by nature suited to finding such a force:

As the physicist Werner Heisenberg, of Uncertainty Principle fame, once wrote, What we observe is not Nature itself but Nature exposed to our methods of questioning. What we can say about Nature depends on how we measure it, with the precision and reach of our instruments dictating how far we can see. Therefore, no theory that attempts to unify current knowledge can seriously be considered a final theory or a TOE, given that we cannot ever be sure that we arent missing a huge piece of evidence.

That makes a lot of sense if we think about it. A Final Theory developed by science-minded people in ancient civilizations would not have included what we can learn from the microscope, the telescope, magnetic resonance imaging We are all at the mercy of what we cant know. As Gleiser puts it,

How are we to know that there isnt a fifth or sixth force lurking out there in the depths? We cannot know, and quite often, hints of a new force are announced in the media. To put it differently, our perennially myopic view of nature precludes any theory from being complete. Nature doesnt care how compelling we think our ideas are.

Generally speaking, the more we know, the more we find out we dont know. We fill in blanks and then more blanks appear beside them. One of the blanks, instead of just being filled in, may lead to a whole new discovery.

As Gleiser puts it, The very process of discovery leads to more unknowns. And they may be smaller or larger.

For example, in 1977, Carl Woese (19282012) almost accidentally discovered a huge and significant Third Kingdom of life, the Archaea which are neither bacteria nor more complex life forms (eukaryotes).

The fifth and sixth forces may be out there too.

Science is not, at any time in the foreseeable future, going to be all tied down and delivered in a box.

You may also wish to read: Can quantum physics, neuroscience merge as quantum consciousness? Physicist Marcelo Gleiser looks at the pros and cons of current theories. The problem is, if we assume that the mind is nothing more than the brain, there may be nothing we can discover about how it works.

and

Does science disprove free will? A physicist says no. Michael Egnor: Marcelo Gleiser notes that the mind is not a solar system with strict deterministic laws. Apart from simple laws governing neurons, we have no clue what laws the mind follows, though it does show complex nonlinear dynamics.

Also: Astronomer: We cant just assume countless Earths out there. He points out that the Principle of Mediocrity is based on faulty logical reasoning. Marcelo Gleiser notes that the starting point of the Mediocrity Principle assumes countless Earths. Thats not a conclusion from evidence. Its bad logic.

Link:

Physicist: Science, by Nature, Can't Have a Theory of Everything - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

UNSW Engineering, Scientia Professor Andrea Morello has been recognised for his outstanding outreach work in the physics field by the Australian Institute of Physics New South Wales (AIP NSW).

Prof. Morello is a renowned international leader in the field of quantum computing and has led the development and launch of the worlds first bachelors degree in Quantum Engineering at UNSW Sydney.

In its eighth year, the AIP NSW Community Outreach to Physics Awardis presented to individuals that seek to achieve activities that engage and contribute to public participation within physics communities.

Prof. Morellos outreach achievements include a popular YouTube channel, contribution to science initiatives for students, and artistic collaborations.

His YouTube video series on explaining quantum computing, building quantum computers and quantum phenomena in everyday life has attracted over 10 million views.

Prof. Morello has contributed to several popular science initiatives to engage students and younger audiences, including the National Youth Science Forum and World Science Festival, as well as being featured in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Science elevator pitch series.

I am truly honoured by this award. As much as I love basic research, pushing the boundaries of human knowledge isn't worth much if I don't share it with the public, Prof. Morello said.

I have been fortunate to have, over the years, the opportunity to interact with many outstanding science communicators, who have involved me in their activities, and inspired me to work on outreach myself.

In a ceremony on Friday, Prof. Morello was presented the AIP NSW Community Outreach to Physics Award. Photo: Supplied.

Collaborations with visual and literary artists have also seen him engage with wider audiences.

Visual art created by UNSW Art & Designs Professor Paul Thomas, inspired by Prof. Morellos quantum bits and quantum chaos research, has been exhibited internationally.

And together with award-winning writer Bernard Cohen, Prof. Morello has initiated a project to work with NSW schools to develop experiential learning activities that bring together science and creative writing.

I thank my creative arts collaborators, Professor Paul Thomas and Bernard Cohen, who helped me see things from a very different perspective and find new angles to convey the fascination for science through different channels.

UNSW Dean of Engineering Professor Stephen Foster congratulated Prof. Morello on his outreach achievements.

Congratulations to Prof. Morello on receiving this prestigious award acknowledging his relentless advocacy work in fostering closeness between science and the community, reflecting UNSWs Values in Action.

UNSW Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic, Professor Merlin Crossley also applauded Prof. Morellos engagement initiatives.

Through his depth of knowledge Prof. Morello has helped inform the public, here in Australia and across the world, about the opportunities and prospects for quantum computing that are now appearing on the horizon, said Prof. Crossley.

The Australian Institute of Physics is an organisation dedicated to promoting the role of physics in research, education, industry and the community.

Here is the original post:

UNSW researcher honoured for outreach in the physics community - UNSW Newsroom

How do you convey the yawning abyss of infinity that is a black hole to a person who hasn't immersed themselves in non-Euclidean geometries with infinite dimensions, the 'math side' of superstring theory, and the century-long pursuit of a unified theory of physics?

If you're Dr. Valery Vermeulen, you mix it into an LP.

Mikromedas AdS/CFT 001, which is now available through Ash International, is the product of more than a year of production work. In a lot of ways, though, it's an electronic music album that has been in the making since Vermeulen was a teenager.

"Even at a young age, I was always interested in science and music," Vermeulen told me when we spoke a couple of weeks ago. "I started playing piano I think when I was seven years old. I also got into physics and science. I stumbled across quantum physics around 16. We had a library and I am a curious person."

That brush with quantum physics in a library started a decades-long fascination with quantum gravity, the elusive goal of physicists to bridge the gap between the two great theories of the universe: Einstein's General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

The best, and maybe only, hope to tie these two seemingly contradictory theories together runs right through the point in space where the two theories intersect behind a veil of darkness we can never peer behind: the singularity at the heart of a black hole.

Using streams of data from black hole mergers simulations of particle behavior at the event horizon of a black hole and the influence of Jazz legends like Oscar Peterson, Vermeulen attempts to sonify the unseeable interior of the most exotic object in the known universe.

The result is a sometimes haunting, always deeply fascinating seven-track album that aims to unify science and art as much as it does relativity and quantum mechanics.

Dr. Vermeulen pursued two separate tracks in his early life, studying for a Ph.D. in mathematics and performing as a street busker in Antwerp. "People sometimes ask me, 'Are you a scientist or an artist?', but I regard it all as creativity," Vermeulen said.

Living two seemingly separate lives had its challenges, though. "It was very difficult," he told me, "but I embrace it now. It took a long time to accept that these are both sides of who I am."

If only physics were that easy to bring together.

In the century-plus since Albert Einstein published his theory of general relativity in 1915, its predictions have been tested and verified more times than anyone has bothered to count.

But problems for relativity, and physics generally, began even before it was proposed. In 1900, Max Planck published a paper showing that light, under certain conditions, appeared to behave as if it was matter, and not a wave of energy as physics had long determined.

Things got curiouser and curiouser for physics in the 1920s as physicists like Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg delved deeper into the bizarro world of the subatomic.

Here, particles could be in multiple places at once. They could either be a particle or a wave but not both and which one it was depended on how the observer wanted to measure it.

Here, a famous cat could be both alive and dead at the same time. And two entangled particles could appear to communicate instantaneously across vast distances in defiance of Einstein's proof that the speed of light was the fastest anything could ever hope to move in the universe.

In the century since the foundation for quantum mechanics, it too has been tested and verified many times over. It has even been the basis of revolutionary technological innovations like lasers and quantum computers.

Above the atomic level, Einstein's general relativity theory reigns supreme, but it falls apart the moment you cross beneath atomic scales. Quantum mechanics, whose only governing law appears to be the laws of probability, stops abruptly at the edge of the atom.

That edge, so clearly defined, is maddeningly difficult to bridge. The search for a single theory that can encompass both, a theory of everything, is one of the great scientific challenges of the day. Everyone seems to agree that black holes may hold the key.

There, inside a black hole, the mass of billions upon billions of stars can occupy a single point in space of infinite density, smaller than any subatomic particle. But that mass exerts such incomparable gravity that light is as much a prisoner to it as the poor infalling star that is ripped apart like cosmic tissue paper.

There, relativity and quantum mechanics may be united as quantum gravity, if only we could see it but a black hole keeps its secrets well.

It is the attempt to plumb the depths of that hidden space that inspired Vermeulen to compose his new album.

Vermeulen earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics in 2001, studying what he helpfully called "the mathematical part" of superstring theory. He has worked for years as a data scientist, but he has made some efforts previously to combine his two great passions, earning a Master's in Music Composition along the way.

"There was a former series," he said, "the sonification of a journey from the Earth to the center of the Milky Way. I was using a lot of sonified data streams in that first EP, but it was never released. But I wanted to take it a step further.

"Then I was like wait, maybe I can use deeper mathematical structures as a basis, which brought me back to one of my dreams, quantum gravity. Can I maybe work with that and combine it with music?"

When talking about the interior of a black hole where quantum gravity might reside, all one has to go on is math, the very theoretical, post-doctoral kind. Even the album title, Mikromedas AdS/CFT 001, takes as inspiration the wild, mind-bending idea that reality can be seen as a 3D projection of a 2D reality as it exists on a sphere an infinite distance away from us. At least, that's how Vermeulen described it to me. I don't know what any of that even means.

However, it's a fitting analogy. Using data pulled from gravitational waves produced by black hole mergers, black hole simulations, and other black hole data from universities in several countries, Vermeulen had a lot of numbers to work with, but how does one project those numbers into something you can hear?

"So the data I used, there are some data streams that I simulated myself, but I also got a lot of data from external sources like universities," he said. "I also worked with Thomas Hertog, a former collaborator with Stephen Hawking, and with Thomas I worked on gravitational waves, and there are a lot of gravitational waves in the album."

"Theyre rather boring," he added. "You change the frequency and you get a whooping sound."

Musical, they are not.

"The solution I found was three-dimensional renderings of those gravitational waves," Vermeulen said.

In order to do that, he had to see the data differently, not as numbers on a line graph, but almost as if it was fluid. "The gravitational waves can be expressed in three dimensions as sums of spherical harmonics basically theyre solutions to fluid equations.

"This gave me a lot more opportunities. Then I made two-dimensional cuttings of the three-dimensional fluctuating structures, and those are 2D evolving shapes, and those you can sonify and print to wavetable synthesis."

In addition to the black hole mergers, Vermeulen used simulations of the behavior of massive and massless particles at the event horizons of different black holes to translate the environment just at the event horizon into something you can hear.

Between all of these different data streams, Vermeulen was able to create a vast array of samples and instruments fed by these data streams, and from there, he could build the sonified black holes of the album.

"Theres two phases in the compositional process," Vermeulen explained.

"In the first phase, Ill make a whole database of sonified samples. So, for example, with 1000 different simulations, I can make 1000 different sounds. And the other thing is to make instruments. Instruments are fed by data, or you can map knobs and controls to those instruments."

Using Ableton, Vermeulen was able to weave together the compositions using a combination of scientific data and his artistic sensibility.

"Its an aesthetic, artistic decision in the second part that I make. I use this material, and then I try to get an abstract feeling, of course its also about emotions even if its abstract, and then I just make compositions. I make an arrangement and focus a lot on the sound design and mixing. Ive been mixing for over a year on the album to get everything as I want it to sound."

The process of taking something as mathematically impenetrable as the interior of a black hole and making it accessible to our senses is an important part of the scientific process, Vermeulen believes.

"Im interested in making connections between abstract geometrical, mathematical structures and sonification. Those objects are cold, dead objects. Theyre not active, so I try to find a way to activate them, to make a link between geometry and sound using sonification.

"One of the things in my Ph.D., the geometries I was studying were infinite dimensional. I would love to make them tangible, to bring science closer to people, to let them see. Science is just an approach to look at reality, its not a replacement for reality."

While we might never "see" behind the veil of the event horizon of a black hole to discover its secrets, experiencing that mystery is important in itself. It is something that Vermeulen hopes to continue to explore in his work going forward. You can find more of his work on his artist website or on his Instagram.

Go here to read the rest:

Forget Spotify Wrapped, groove to the sound of black holes colliding - TechRadar