Guidelines for term projects
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The final month of the course you will be working on a term
project. Here is some information and guidelines for the project:
Structure:
Your project can be about any topic within quantum computation,
quantum information and the broader field of information-oriented
quantum physics. You choose a topic yourselves, but it must be
approved by the instructor. You should work together preferrably in
groups of three, or alternatively two or four if there is a good
reason for it.
Format:
The project consists of two parts, a written report and a
presentation. You will write a report about your chosen topic, which
should be about 5-10 normal typed letter-size pages. Unless every part
of your report is written collectively by every member of the group,
you should also indicate which group member is primarily responsible
for which part of the report. You will also present the results of
your project for the other students and the instructors. This should
be an oral presentations, preferrably assisted by digital or plastic
slides, and should cover the most important parts of what you have
worked on and be prepared to answer questions about your
work. Every member of the group needs to contribute during
the presentation, and each group member will be graded individually
for their part. The total length of the presentation should not be
significantly longer than 20 minutes.
Although you will be graded individually, you should however still
be familiar with all the material in your project, including the parts
that you were not personally primarily responsible for.
Dates:
You should notify Birgit and Jan and get approval for your project
topic and the composition of your group by Thursday November
10. The presentations will be held during section time on
Wednesday November 30 and during lecture time on
Thursday December 1. The presentations may be held in
a different location than the regular classes, more information on
this later. You should be done writing most of your written report
before the presentations, but you can use the feedback you get during
the presentation to make improvements to the report during the
following week. The final deadline for handing in the report is then
during the final lecture, which is on Thursday December
8.
Suggested topics
The following are some suggestions on broad topics for term
projects. There are very few references on this page, but if you
look at the web page for for Spring 2005, you
can find an extensive list of references for some topics there just
below the lecture notes, although this list needs some cleaning (also,
the notation used in referencing journals may or may not be clear to
you, ask us if you need help to interpret it). You should also be able
to find plenty of material (perhaps even too much) for most of the
topics online just by googling. You can also ask us if you want us to
recommend some reading material. If you find some references that you
think are especially good, then let us know, and we can add it to the
webpage for future use.
As you can see, the by far largest body of topics suggested so far is
under physical realizations of qubit systems. This is just because
this is what the majority of students have selected in past semesters,
and because it is where the the heaviest research focus is these days,
but feel free to select one of the less worked-on topics if you want
to. Contact us if you have any questions about any of the topics or
need some guidance or advice in choosing one.
- Physical realizations
- Nuclear spin qubits
- Realization of quantum teleportation
- Josephson junction qubits (superconductors)
- NMR-based quantum computing
- Quantum dot qubits
- Quantum computing with molecular magnets
- Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics (see e.g. this Caltech
webpage)
- Bose-Einstein condensates and quantum control
- Quantum computing in optical lattices
- Electrons on liquid helium as qubits
...and let us know if you find some exciting new ones!
- Adiabatic quantum algorithms
This is a paradigm for quantum calculations which is very different
from (although formally equivalent to) the circuit model we have been
using in class. Here are some papers exploring the subject:
paper1.pdf
paper2.pdf
paper3.pdf
- Kitaev's phase estimation algorithm This has a number of
applications, among others speeding up quantum calculations without
entanglement and significant speedup in solving differential
equations. Some references: paper.pdf
paper.pdf
- Quantum error-correcting codes
- Teleportation, more in-depth
- Quantum communication
- Limits on quantum measurement
- "Interpreting" Quantum Mechanics
What is a measurement? What are the fundamental differences between
Quantum Mechanics and classical non-deterministic theories? Why should
quantum computers be more powerful than classical ones (or should
they?). Copenhagen interpretation, many-worlds interpretation and
consequences thereof if any. Lots of topics to explore here, but if
you do though, make sure you choose something that you can write
something more scientific than just an opinion piece on.
These are just suggestions, feel free to suggest others (although we
do reserve the right to approve or not approve your suggestion).