Will Morong

Contextuality supplies the ‘magic’ for quantum computation - Nature Quantum computing promises advantages over classical computing for certain problems; now ‘quantum contextuality’ — a generalization of the concept of quantum non-locality — is shown to be a critical r...

Work like this makes me hope that there is some deeper unifying theme

www.nature.com/articles/nat...

I've been thinking about this too-- it's an interesting subject

bsky.app/profile/wmor...

Assuming you refer to (PRX Quantum 5, 010337), they use the term "partially fault-tolerant" rather than "early fault-tolerance", which does seem more appropriate for this case.

Interesting point. My mental model says one should only call a scheme FT (early or otherwise) if it is capable of correcting arbitrary errors (from some reasonable model such as random depolarizing) at a sufficiently low rate. The second bucket of applications I would call something like pre-FT QEC.

When the social media algorithm has finally been perfected, this is the only kind of post that I will ever see.

Awful for academics but great news for Borges fans

Not a physicist, but perhaps?
bsky.app/profile/carl...

Karmela's ability to weave threads from physics, culture, and society together into original insights always astounds me. Looking forward to this.

Largest genuine Entanglement: Qubits in GHZ state Please send additional references to mario.krenn@mpl.mpg.de.(last update: 08.05.2024; thanks to Thomas Monz for regularily sharing updates) Atoms: 2000.06 – 3 qubits:Rauschenbeutel, A., Nogue…

I'm a big fan of the GHZ record as a view into the development of quantum computers, and Mario Krenn's page tracking the evolution of this record:
mariokrenn.wordpress.com/2021/01/29/r...

For a fun exercise, count the number of Nobel laureates who are represented..

Big cats: entanglement in 120 qubits and beyond Entanglement is the quintessential quantum phenomenon and a key enabler of quantum algorithms. The ability to faithfully entangle many distinct particles is often used as a benchmark for the quality o...

New on arxiv: a group from IBM claim a new record for the largest GHZ state, of 120 qubits* arxiv.org/abs/2510.09520

* terms and conditions (postselection) apply

Thank for you your feedback! I will try to improve this in the future, but meanwhile if there are any specific terms in this article that it would help to have more explained please ask away.

And thanks to you for reminding me that I had a half-finished little blog post on the subject

What makes quantum physics special? A brief tour through eighty years of answers (photo credit: one of the most popular images used to abstractly convey quantum physics. original author unknown)

🧪 New blog post: What makes quantum physics special (or "strange" or "weird")? I take a whirlwind tour through 80 years of attempts to pinpoint the answer, from early thought experiments to recent developments inspired by thinking about quantum computers.

wmorong.github.io/wills-blog/b...

well, at least he knows?

So, the number of gates required in going from 15 to 21 increases by hundreds... but asymptotically, we eventually expect this to scale roughly like O((log N)^2), is that correct? Do you have any sense of the approximate size where this asymptotic scaling starts to be a more reasonable estimate?

Imposter syndrome! Just push through it.

Really appreciate that all the talks were immediately and freely available, with a nice platform that makes it easy to navigate and see the slides. Hope other conference organizers take note!

A screenshot of a google search result for "2*pi*(8 kpc)/(220 km/s)" which is roughly the time it takes the Sun to go around the Galaxy. In the screenshot, google's calculator has popped up and parsed the expression correctly, but then returns the result 3 899 243.9 years, and answer which is off by 2 orders of magnitude.

PSA to scientists: Google calculator appears to no longer do basic unit conversion correctly!

n.b. the correct answer here is 223.4 Myr, a factor of about 60 larger than Google's answer.

🔭 🧪

If I "believe in" an emergent difference between quantum and classical systems, in the spirit of quantum Darwinism, should I put yes or no? Honestly not sure.

Contextuality supplies the ‘magic’ for quantum computation - Nature Quantum computing promises advantages over classical computing for certain problems; now ‘quantum contextuality’ — a generalization of the concept of quantum non-locality — is shown to be a critical r...

Then there are claims that other quantities like contextuality are really the secret sauce:
www.nature.com/articles/nat...

Not clear to me that we get a complete answer from these developments, though, either technically or conceptually.

Well, one noteworthy claim is that you can do universal QC with little entanglement at any given time:
journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...

A quantum computer only needs one universe The nature of quantum computation is discussed. It is argued that, in terms of the amount of information manipulated in a given time, quantum and classical computation are equally efficient. Quantum s...

Why do quantum computers work? Although it's missing some modern developments, I think this twenty-year old (!) article from Steane is still provocative. His answer: entanglement allows them to avoid representing unnecessary intermediate results in some calculations.

arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph...

Founder Effects in Physics The legacy of Dan Kleppner and Norman Ramsey

Some thoughts on the influence of the late Dan Kleppner and Norman Ramsey on the culture of AMO physics: open.substack.com/pub/chadorze...

As a physics journalist, it is fairly wild to see the names of the PIs with terminated grants: Misha Lukin, Philip Kim, Lisa Randall, Subir Sachdev, John Doyle...
bsky.app/profile/benn...

Measuring Pair Correlations in Bose and Fermi Gases via Atom-Resolved Microscopy An innovative way to image atoms in cold gases could provide deeper insights into the atoms' quantum correlations.

Paper: journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...

See also the nice writeup from Physics mag: physics.aps.org/articles/v18...

Can't stop thinking about these lovely pictures of atoms doing their thing from the Zwierlein group. Left: bosons condensing into a Bose-Einstein condensate. Center: fermions avoiding each other. Right: molecules paired up.

Makes sense- thanks for the context!

Neat! Something that's never been clear to me about this line of classical time crystal work: to what extent do you see it as a genuinely new thing versus more of a (valuable) reinterpretation or reassessment of older work on, e.g., nonlinear driven classical systems?

Blog on Indefinite Pause As the US government pursues massive attacks upon my host institution, it is impossible to continue with my normal activities. The blog will be on pause.

One of the finest explainers of quantum physics for the public is, for now, a victim of political suppression.

@mattstrassler.bsky.social

profmattstrassler.com/2025/04/17/b...

To be clear, one of my major grants is among the 75 stop work orders sent to Cornell yesterday. This means that, as of yesterday, we are not allowed to spend on this grant. The grant funds the work of several graduate students, all of whom are extremely dedicated & doing outstanding research