Universe à la Carte
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Hi, my name is Campbell. I'm a PhD student studying theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge. I'm not an expert on all topics covered in this blog but I think sometimes curiosity trumps expertise. I hope you find the content informative and maybe even a little entertaining!
Universe à la Carte
5M ago
Link to manuscript (currently being processed by arXiv):
Or copy and paste the following into the search bar:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kRpsJJVZoQqSxOFuqcmUbSUSzNMQq7kL/view?usp=sharing
Authors
Mircea Bejan, Campbell McLauchlan, Benjamin Béri
Abstract
The classical simulation of highly-entangling quantum dynamics is conjectured to be generically hard. Thus, recently discovered measurement-induced transitions between highly-entangling and low-entanglement dynamics are phase transitions in classical simulability. Here, we study simulability transitions beyond entanglement: noting that ..read more
Universe à la Carte
3y ago
"This is not a drill! I repeat, this is not a drill!"
......
There's a strange couple of sentences. If you were an alien, plonked down on Earth with only a dictionary in hand, wouldn't those two exclamations strike you as a bit odd? Why repeat what you have just said, particularly when the content is apparently so urgent? Why use so much redundant waffle?
Well despite what we might think, an alien would probably not find the repetition of an urgent message particularly surprising. The features of information are the same, regardless of the language you speak, whether that be English ..read more
Universe à la Carte
3y ago
If you ask a person on the street what they know about string theory, probably the most common answer (after "absolutely nothing") will be that it's untestable, maybe even unscientific. There hasn't been a single real world prediction produced from that esoteric, hopelessly complicated theory. But on the contrary, if you were feeling cheeky you might say that string theory has made one prediction that is put to the test every single day: what goes up must come down. It predicts the existence of gravity. In fact, it might be the only theory in which the equations of gravity naturally fall into ..read more
Universe à la Carte
3y ago
In 1828, a twelve-year-old girl decided that she wanted to fly. She was being looked after by her Governess at the time, while her mother was away receiving treatment for one of her commonly recurring illnesses. While thinking about that immense distance between her and her only remaining parent, it occurred to her. If she were able to fly, she could visit her mother wherever she was in the world in almost no time at all! There was a slight problem though: nobody had ever been able to fly before. No matter, she thought. She would simply have to invent a method of flying all on her own. Powered ..read more
Universe à la Carte
3y ago
In October, following leaks, secrecy and scepticism, a short paper was finally released online by the journal Nature. In it, researchers at Google claimed to have achieved “quantum supremacy.” They stated they had performed a computation that would take 10,000 years to complete with the world’s best supercomputer, but which only took them a few minutes on a new type of device called a quantum computer. To achieve this, the team at Google had to imprint a tiny network of superconductors on a computer chip, cool it to thousandths of a degree above the lowest temperature physically possible, and ..read more