Poster for: FOUNDATIONS OF QUANTUM TECHNOLOGIES Text on poster: FOUNDATIONS OF QUANTUM TECHNOLOGIES GIRTON COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 15 – 18 SEPTEMBER 2026 KEY TOPICS •Foundations of Quantum Theory •Witnesses, Measures and Monotones of Nonclassical Behaviour •Non-Classical Resources (Coherence, Contextuality, Entanglement, Negativity) •Quantum Measurement Theory and Back-Action •Quantum Thermodynamics •Decoherence and Open Quantum Systems •Quantum Control and Hamiltonian Engineering •Quantum Algorithms and Computational Models •Quantum-Processor Design and Architectures •Quantum Metrology and Sensing INVITED SPEAKERS Edwin Barnes (Virginia Tech) Iman Marvian (Duke University) Kieran Dalton (ETH, Zurich) Gerard Milburn (National Quantum Computing Centre) Sophia Economou (Virginia Tech) Robert Raussendorf (Leibniz University) Giulia Ferrini (Chalmers University) Aephraim Steinberg (University of Toronto) Andrew Jordan (Chapman University) Jayne Thompson (Nanyang Technological University) Seth Lloyd (MIT) Nicole Yunger Halpern (NIST) Matteo Lostaglio (PsiQuantum) CALL FOR ABSTRACTS www.girton.cam.ac.uk/events/foundations-quantum-technologies Submission deadline: 4th of May 2026, 23:59 AoE (flash talks & posters encouraged for ECRs/students) General Enquiries: quantum@girton.cam.ac.uk REGISTRATION & MORE INFORMATION: [QR-code]

The University of Cambridge is hosting a Foundations of Quantum Technologies conference on September 15–18th to mark the 100-year anniversary of the discovery of modern quantum mechanics.

Abstract submissions for talks and posters close May 4th.

More details: www.girton.cam.ac.uk/events/found...

Screenings are happening across the UK over the next few months and are free to attend. You can find your closest screening here: www.nebriefing.org/screening-map

Superconducting antiqubits achieve optimal phase estimation via unitary inversion A positron is equivalent to an electron traveling backward through time. Casting transmon superconducting qubits as akin to electrons, we simulate a positron with a transmon subject to particular reso...

Maybe you then need antiqubits: arxiv.org/abs/2506.04315

What’s purportedly wrong with Strunk & White’s “The Elements of Style”? I was reading the comments on this answer where several users claimed that Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style was “misinformed, hypocritical, and wrong” and “flat-out wrong or totally mislead...

[1] G. K. Pullum, 50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Apr. 2009. Original url:
www.chronicle.com/article/50-y.... PDF download from @archive.org (no sign-in required): web.archive.org/web/20260208....

[2] @archive.org: web.archive.org/web/20220811...

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What’s purportedly wrong with Strunk & White’s “The Elements of Style”? I was reading the comments on this answer where several users claimed that Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style was “misinformed, hypocritical, and wrong” and “flat-out wrong or totally mislead...

I found Pullum's critical essay, 50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice, helpful in discerning Strunk & White's rules from suggestions [1]. Pullum's essay is heavy-handed, and a counter-critique can be found in the following Stack Exchange answer: english.stackexchange.com/a/3223/695205 [2].

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The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition ebook by William Strunk Jr - Rakuten Kobo Read "The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition" by William Strunk Jr available from Rakuten Kobo. 'The Elements of Style' (1918), by William Strunk, Jr., is an American English writing style guide. It is...

I finally read The Elements of Style by Strunk & White; I should have read it on day one of my PhD. At least I read it before writing my thesis. A free copy can be found on Kobo: www.kobo.com/ebook/the-el....

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I second the Hyperion Cantos

I've only read a couple of books from the Hainish Cycle; now I'm really excited for the rest. Maybe the dispossessed will have to be next.

In the left hand of darkness at first names are used but not explained. After a few chapters some you can infer some and some are explained.

Unfortunately, it looks like you need third-party apps to create markdown-style links on @bsky.app:

GitHub - Christopher-K-Long/GitLab-Repo-Sync: Tutorial for syncing GitHub repos to GitLab with a GitLab CI triggered by GitHub Webhook. Tutorial for syncing GitHub repos to GitLab with a GitLab CI triggered by GitHub Webhook. - Christopher-K-Long/GitLab-Repo-Sync

I have finally finished mirroring my scientific @github.com repositories to @gitlab.com. Here is a tutorial by [justncodes](github.com/justncodes) which I modified: github.com/Christopher-...

Congrats on the successful year @mouhaqh.bsky.social, looks like I should your articles a read when I'm back to work!

Now is not a good time for citations: Miss-citing online-only journals and Google Scholar indexing non-existent articles cited by hallucinating LLMs. Maybe the silver lining is that this will undermine metrics such as citation counts and h-indices, forcing academics to be judged more holistically.

For example, numerical quantum optimal control techniques such as GRAPE and CRAB fall within the framework of VQAs and are used ubiquitously today to tune quantum processors.

My point is I wouldn't declare VQAs doomed—that's too strong. Most no-go theorems have loopholes and assumptions. They tell us where it is still worth looking. I would just say that VQAs' use cases are increasingly constrained, and so there are probably more promising directions.

Quantifying the effect of gate errors on variational quantum eigensolvers for quantum chemistry - npj Quantum Information npj Quantum Information - Quantifying the effect of gate errors on variational quantum eigensolvers for quantum chemistry

Given the drastic improvements in noise tolerance of VQE algorithms since colleagues and I wrote [doi:10.1038/s41534-024-00808-x](doi.org/10.1038/s415...), it may even be possible to use coherently executed shots to improve the runtime of expectation value estimation.

The large shot count is a problem. I hope that better techniques for estimating expectation values will be developed.

Given that many alternative methods for eigenvalue estimation require polynomial overlap between the initial state and the eigenstate, it may be that VQAs are still needed for initial-state preparation.

Guarantees are good but not vital. I think once there is good enough hardware someone will run the best known VQE for a molecule (like FeMoco) and it will either work or it won't. They will probably use tricks like adaptivity, pulse optimization, and error mitigation as asymptotics won't matter.

Thank you for the reference, I will add it to the read list

Adaptive, problem-tailored variational quantum eigensolver mitigates rough parameter landscapes and barren plateaus - npj Quantum Information npj Quantum Information - Adaptive, problem-tailored variational quantum eigensolver mitigates rough parameter landscapes and barren plateaus

I agree with this for non-adaptive VQAs. Last I checked, no one had proved barren plateaus cause problems for adaptive VQAs—[numerical evidence](doi.org/10.1038/s415...) suggests the contrary. There is still some life in VQAs. Nonetheless, I'm glad to have diversified my research away from VQAs.

Wish I could have gone, looking forward to #QuiDiQua4!

Thank you for sharing this! Please give us an update of you hear back from Springer Nature.

Starting next year, Android will no longer be the open computing platform we were promised: keepandroidopen.org

At a glance this looks like it considers higher orders than Fermi's Golden rule so should give a better estimate. I hadn't thought about phonon spin coupling—which seems important in your use case. Phonon spin coupling could also be studied with Fermi's Golden rule. But higher orders are better.

I think being hit by a meteroid might be harder to error correct than by a few cosmic rays...

Let me know if this helps :)

Note due to approximations the rule breaks down for large t. Differentiating this at t=0 will give the initial rate, R, where the approximations are most valid. The if amplitude damping noise is modeled as 1-e^{-t/T1} then differentiating at zero we can fit for T1 and we find T1=1/R.