Physics & Astronomy Colloquium:John Nichol, University of Rochester

Title: Qubits and their surroundings: concepts, challenges, and solutions

Abstract: Quantum computers promise revolutionary advances in computing power, but they are hard to make. One main reason for this difficulty has to do with the environment surrounding the qubits, which can create errors in quantum operations. I will discuss how we think about theenvironment of a qubit, what the environments do, and what can be done about them. As it turns out, efforts to understand and control qubit environments have motivated much of the research in quantum information processing in the past decades, illustrating the great beauty and depth of this topic.