April-June 2022 Archive

Links

• $(\partial_x)\dgg = -\partial_x$ [more] (The momentum operator is not both Hermitian and anti-Hermitian, otherwise $p=0$ always.)
• Mermin, There is no quantum measurement problem
• Girvin, Introduction to Quantum Error Correction and Fault Tolerance, 2019 Les Houches Summer School
• Kastoryano’s lecture notes for Quantum Error Correction
• Witten, Notes on Some Entanglement Properties of Quantum Field Theory (Reeh-Schlieder Theorem)
  • Stephen J. Summers, Yet More Ado About Nothing: The Remarkable Relativistic Vacuum State (in the language of C*-algebra and GNS states)
  • Edward Witten, Why Does Quantum Field Theory In Curved Spacetime Make Sense? And What Happens To The Algebra of Observables In The Thermodynamic Limit?
  • Concentration of Measure Inequalities in Information Theory, Communications and Coding (Second Edition)
• SE
  • hmm
  • Distinguishing two coins, SE (How Far Can We Go Beyond Linear Cryptanalysis? [pdf warning])
  • Verification = composite hypothesis testing. This is Valiant and Valiant $\norm{p^{-\mathrm{max}}{\Theta(\epsilon)}}{2/3}/\epsilon$. Clement notes that $\norm{p^{-\mathrm{max}}{\Theta(\epsilon)}}{2/3} = \Theta(\sqrt{N})$
  • Sample complexity of distinguishing two Gaussian distributions?
• Sepehr Assadi, CS514 Sublinear algorithms for big data, Rutgers, Fall 2021 [WM]
• Clément Canonne [twitter], USyd [WM for 2020 course]
  • Probability toolbox
  • Topics and Techniques in Distribution Testing: A Biased but Representative Sample (The 2-norm can be estimated up to a multiplicative error $(1\pm\epsilon^2)$ with $O(\sqrt{N}/\epsilon^4)$)
  • A Survey on Distribution Testing: Your Data is Big. But is it Blue?, TOC 2020 Tolerant testing applied to quantum?

• Kretschmer, The Quantum Supremacy Tsirelson Inequality, Quantum 2021 (Only quantum can sample $\E{\av{z

  U

  0}^2} > (1+\Omega(1))/2^n$)

• França and Garcia-Patron, A game of quantum advantage: linking verification and simulation
• I want bounds on the Shannon entropy based on Rényi-2 entropy. $H_2 \le H_1$ (Wikipedia), so I need an upper bound
• Życzkowski, Renyi extrapolation of Shannon entropy, 2003 (Harremoës and Topsøe’s loose bound) \(H_1 \le \ln N + \frac{1}{N} - \exp(-H_2)\)
• $T_2$ can be greater than $T_1$

  And as so often, almost everything that is physically possible is also realized in nature (although the case $T_1 < T_2 < 2 T_1$ is really extremely rare), as described by Malcolm H. Levitt in his highly recommendable NMR text book “Spin dynamics” (2nd ed., section 11.9.2, note 13):

  The case where $T2 > T1$ is encountered when the spin relaxation is caused by fluctuating microscopic fields that are predominantly transverse rather than longitudinal. One mechanism which gives rise to fields of this form involves the antisymmetric component of the chemical shift tensor (not to be confused with the CSA). [. . . ] Molecular systems in which this mechanims is dominant are exceedingly rare (see F. A. L. Anet, D. J. O’Leary, C. G. Wade and R. D. Johnson, Chem. Phys. Lett., 171, 401 (1990)).

• Pataphysics
• Complexity Year in Review 2021 (Good classical and quantum LDPC codes, the complexity of gradient descent, the acrobatics of BQP, Stephen Wiesner)
• Words known better by males than by females , and vice versa
• BIRS workshop on Probability and Quantum Information Science
• SSC [Apr links] [Fbe links] (No Mar)
  • Why do I suck?
  • Magnets and garlic are enemies
  • Why Rome?
  • Early lessons from the war in Ukraine
  • Neuroimaging on small samples are just noise
  • Vitamin D and Covid RCT
  • Who wrote up Banach’s thesis?
  • Less or more sleep? Alexey Guzey: “Comfortable modern sleep is an unnatural superstimulus. I claim that if you sleep as much as you want, you’ll probably sleep too much and become more susceptible to depression.” Natália Mendonça’s rebuttal
  • NLP consensus?
  • Many black-white disparities in important life outcomes are mostly or entirely eliminated after controlling for youth standardized test scores
  • Kasper Vinken againsts modularity of the brain?
  • The dangers of high status, low wage jobs
  • Epstein-Barr virus associaated with multiple sclerosis. Gregory Cochran predicted this twenty years ago.
  • Ecercise and depression
  • Brain Efficiency: Much More than You Wanted to Know
  • What went wrong with eugenics?
  • Survival of the prettiest
• Gilyén and Poremba, Improved Quantum Algorithms for Fidelity Estimation
• Dawid et al, Modern applications of machine learning in quantum sciences (268 pages)

QIP2022 [playlist]

• Angus Lowe, Learning quantum states without entangled measurements, thesis, University of Waterloo [QIP talk]
• Hastings and O’Donnell, Optimizing Strongly Interacting Fermionic Hamiltonians (Classically, optimizing linear spin models is trivial. Goemans-Williamson gives a nontrivial approximation in the case of quadratic spins. Cubic spins are impossible. Quantum = double the degree.)
  • What are Gaussian states evolved under low-depth circuit ground states of? Berry et al, Improved techniques for preparing eigenstates of fermionic Hamiltonians, npj Quantum Information 2018
• Soleimanifar and Wright, Testing matrix product states (Use rank tester on the increasing subsets of qubits [1],[1,2],[1,3],…,[1,n]. Use $O(nr^2)$ copies. What if we allow only local measurements?)

QUTIP2022

• Huang, Preskill and Flammia are preparing a paper on foundations of quantum learning in noisy environments [Huang’s QIP2022 talk], utilizing Steve’s ACES (Average Circuit Eigenvalue Sampling), which itself unifies RB protocols. (I think the main first idea is random compiling: same unitary, different gate compilings) Quadratically fewer experiments than Estimating gate-set properties from random sequences self-consistent shadows for the noisy implementation of entire gate-sets

• Zhu et al, Generative Quantum Learning of Joint Probability Distribution Functions

• Nielsen’s notes on blogging

You need to unlearn a lot from blogging, and from online writing in general.

A media form which does this better than blogs is academic journals. Although it is possible to subscribe to a journal, it’s very uncommon to expect to read a journal entire. And the reason is that the form is designed so that each article finds its own audience. For instance: the title and abstract are designed to make it super-easy to not read a paper. They say “Oh, unless you have these interests and this background, you should ignore this”. They’re sometimes described as “marketing” for papers, but really they’re better thought of as [anti-marketing]. In particular: they set the right expectations, and help drive away the wrong kind of reader. That’s invaluable not just for the reader, but perhaps even more for the author.

There’s something strangely difficult in writing just for oneself. As far as I can tell, almost no-one can do it productively. We think better when the stakes are higher, and one of the best ways of raising the stakes is to make a document into something you’re sharing with people whose good opinion you desire.

• Maria Schuld’s look for cases that break the benchmarking and beware of your own “cultural” bias (e.g. QI, ML cultures)
• Algorithms for decision making, MIT Press 2022
• Fedorov, Gisin, Beloussov and Lvovsky, Quantum computing at the quantum advantage threshold: a down-to-business review (A simple language review about current status of quantum computing)
• Suvrat Raju on the recent “solution” to the black hole information paradox by Calmet, Casadio and Steve Hsu
  • Lessons from the Information Paradox
  • The Gell-mann amnesia

it has been my position for a few years (which not everyone agrees with) that the information paradox can be resolved by replacing the no-hair theorem by a principle of holography of information. This is the result, which we have developed with several collaborators that, in an appropriate UV-completion of gravity, all the information inside the black hole is available outside, which is very different from the no-hair theorem. But the results of Calmet et al. do not establish such a principle and should not be conflated with our results. They only establish a more-limited result: that some information is available outside.

• Lin and Tong, Near-optimal ground state preparation, Quantum 2020
• Gharibian and Le Gall, Dequantizing the Quantum Singular Value Transformation: Hardness and Applications to Quantum Chemistry and the Quantum PCP Conjecture (Guided local hamiltonian, “Hartree-Fock method typically recovers 99% of the total energy–citing
  • Whitfield, Love and Aspuru-Guzik, Computational Complexity in Electronic Structure, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics 2013)
• Bravyi, Chowdhury, Gosset and Wocjan, On the complexity of quantum partition functions (Approximating partition function to a relative error is as hard as computing local observables in thermal equilibrium, while approximating to an additive error is DQC-1 complete
  • Chowdhury, Somma and Subaşı, Computing partition functions in the one clean qubit model, PRA 2021)
• Dalzell, Hunter-Jones, and Brandão, Random quantum circuits anti-concentrate in log depth, PRX Quantum 2022 [talk]

Musics

• ravenclaw [Hoshimachi Suisei “Still Still Stellar” Reaction + Analysis

  ‘Murder Voice’](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-je8r_e49y0)

• eightiesheadachetape, what we did in the desert
• Polyphia, Playing God [unplugged: tim henson]
• Ben Tamale, Sunrise

Manga

• Ayashimon, Kaku Yuuji
• Dandadan, Tatsu Yukinobu
• Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction, Honobono Fuufu
• Blue Lock, Kaneshiro Muneyuki, Ch 1-95, 108-154
• Chi no wadachi (A Trail of Blood), Oshimi Shuuzou, Ch 1-28, 74-122
  • credditeur

Oshimi Shuzo seems to have had a very complicated childhood due to his mother (which is why he always write women as antagonists in his works, although nuanced and mysterious ones). He seems to have found his path, so maybe Sei’s life will reflect this.

My source is this review of the manga by a French newspaper. I translated the relevant comments shared by the author to the reviewer

https://www.lemonde.fr/les-enfants-akira/article/2019/09/01/manga-les-liens-du-sang-ou-le-joug-d-une-mere-toxique_5505102_5191101.html

« Pour moi, l’adolescence n’est pas le doux souvenir d’une époque révolue. C’est un nœud de problématiques toujours bien ancrées au fond de mon cœur » […] « Je ressens de la peur à chaque fois que j’essaie de m’y confronter. Et pourtant, au-delà de la douleur se cache une excitation quasi sexuelle. A travers mes histoires, j’espère faire retrouver à mes lecteurs cette part cachée en eux. »

“For me teenage years are not a sweet memory of a bygone era. They’re a knot of issues still tightly bound deep in my heart.” […] I feel afraid every time I try to confront it. Yet, hidden beyond the pain is a a sort of sexual tension. I hope that through my stories my readers can rediscover this hidden part of their selves.”

« Je pense que ce sont les femmes que j’ai rencontrées jusqu’à présent qui ont formé ce goût pour un certain type de personnage féminin. J’ai toujours eu peur des femmes […] Pas des femmes réelles, mais de l’image que je m’en fais. L’ombre de ma mère plane sur elles. En même temps, je déteste ma propre masculinité, j’ai l’impression que c’est “sale”. Au fond de moi, j’espère pouvoir surmonter toutes ces représentations, vaincre mes peurs, me libérer de ma mère et me lier à une femme. »

I think that the women I met so far are the ones who shaped my taste for a certain type of female character. I’ve always been afraid of women […] Not of real women, but of how I picture them. The shadow of my mother looms over them. All the while, I hate my own masculinity, it feels dirty to me. Deep inside I hope that I’ll be able to overcome these ideas, win over my fears, free myself from my mother and form a relationship with a woman.”

[…] Shuzo Oshimi insuffle ses propres sensations et ses expériences d’adolescent qui s’ennuie intellectuellement dans une petite bourgade de la préfecture Gunma, au centre du Japon. Il donne d’ailleurs à Seiichi la même année de naissance que lui. Au collège dans les années 1990, l’auteur découvre et s’éprend des écrits sulfureux de Baudelaire ou encore du marquis de Sade. « Ce qui m’intéresse (…) c’est de pouvoir extérioriser des émotions qui n’auraient jamais pu être révélées autrement qu’à travers ce rapport de soumission »

Shuzo Oshimi finds inspiration in the feelings and experiences that he went through as a bored teenager in a small locality of the Gunma prefecture, right in the center of Japan. He even gave Seiichi his own birthdate. In middle school during the 90s, the author discovers and falls in love with the salacious writings of Baudelaire as well as the Marquis de Sade. “What attracts me is the possibility of externalizing emotions whose existence could only be revealed through a relationship of submission.”

Jusqu’à présent, Shuzo Oshimi n’avait pas autant égratigné la figure maternelle. « Je me suis rendu compte que les dilemmes ressentis dans la relation avec ma mère forment un des thèmes fondamentaux qui m’habitaient. C’est pour ça que j’ai décidé de le mettre au cœur de ce manga. »*

Shuzo Oshimi had yet to attack the mother figure in his work, at least as forcefully. “I realized that the dilemmas I feel in the relationship with my mother are behind one of the fundamental themes that I’ve been haunted with. This is why I decided to put it at the core of the manga.”

Anime

• Invincible