IQIM Postdoctoral and Graduate Student Seminar

This week's seminar features two short talks.

Joe Iverson, Graduate Student, Preskill Group
Title: Coherence in logical quantum channels
Abstract: In quantum error correcting codes, there is a distinction between coherent and incoherent noise. Coherent noise can cause the infidelity to accumulate quadratically when a fixed channel is applied many times in succession, rather than linearly as in the case of incoherent noise. I will describe how to characterize coherent noise and show how coherence can survive after we apply error correction in a stabilizer quantum code. Finally, I will argue that in the toric code, the logical noise channel becomes incoherent as the code becomes large.
Joint work with John Preskill.

Gautam Venugopalan, Graduate Student, LIGO

Title: Optomechanics for next generation terrestrial gravitational wave detectors
Abstract: With the dawn of gravitational wave astronomy, black-hole and neutron star spectroscopy are within reach of the next generation of terrestrial gravitational wave detectors. Optical loss is a major limiting factor in realizing sensitivity improvements - but if we can exploit the ponderomotive interaction at audio-band frequencies, the sensitivity could be improved by a factor of a few at frequencies between 100 Hz and 3 kHz. In this talk, I'll describe the work that is being done at the Caltech 40m prototype interferometer in testing out schemes for harnessing optomechanics for gravitational wave detectors.