Prof. Robert O'Connell of LSU Physics (1933-2026):

www.lsu.edu/physics/news...

obituaries.theadvocate.com/obituary/rob...

wow! that is a big surprise. I am sad to hear that also.

Yes, I have much respect for his scientific contributions.

ok, that is weird.

With conferences like TQC, referees have a batch of n papers to review & they have to pick n/4 or n/5 of them. So often they are making up reasons for rejection & have little time to write the reports. Then there is typically not checking of the reports before they are sent out.

how long are you visiting Ithaca for? (I am here at Cornell)

Congrats!

Quantum Cryptography Pioneers Win Turing Award | Quanta Magazine Charles Bennett and Gilles Brassard were recognized for their foundational work in quantum information science.

www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-cryp...

Wish I could be there! Enjoy

2026 Quantum papers! Congratulations Quantum community! It’s hard to believe 10 years have passed and we’re en route to our 10-year founding anniversary in April 2026. On that occasion we wanted to announce ...

Celebrate with us Quantum's approaching 10 year anniversary in 2026 with the publication of the 2026th paper! Do you know which paper that is?
quantum-journal.org/2026-quantum...

Metriq: A Collaborative Platform for Benchmarking Quantum Computers The fragmented landscape of quantum computer benchmarks, characterized by system-specific tools and inconsistent evaluation methodologies, hinders reliable cross-platform performance assessment. We in...

🎉🎉New paper: "Metriq: A Collaborative Platform for Benchmarking Quantum Computers" 🎉🎉

We built an open platform to run the same benchmarks across quantum hardware from IBM, Quantinuum, IQM, Rigetti, IonQ, and OriginQ, then compared them all.
scirate.com/arxiv/2603.0...

thanks for your interest.

I think the group I presented to recorded it and might post it eventually on youtube.

Thanks for your reply. I'll get back soon. Overwhelmed with various tasks at the moment

I really enjoyed the lively discussion! Thanks for the invitation

Fundamentals of quantum Boltzmann machine learning with visible and hidden units One of the primary applications of classical Boltzmann machines is generative modeling, wherein the goal is to tune the parameters of a model distribution so that it closely approximates a target dist...

I was invited by @eliesgf.bsky.social to give an online seminar to @jenseisert.bsky.social's q. machine learning group. I spoke about "Fundamentals of q. Boltzmann machine learning w/ visible & hidden units" arxiv.org/abs/2512.19819. Slides from my talk available here:

zenodo.org/records/1889...

thanks! I got your email and will reply soon. From a first glance, your paper looks interesting

Fermi-Dirac thermal measurements: A framework for quantum hypothesis testing and semidefinite optimization Quantum measurements are the means by which we recover messages encoded into quantum states. They are at the forefront of quantum hypothesis testing, wherein the goal is to perform an optimal measurem...

Joint work "Fermi-Dirac thermal measurements: A framework for quantum hypothesis testing and semidefinite optimization" with Nana Liu now online:

arxiv.org/abs/2603.04061

"new quantum machine-learning model, termed Fermi-Dirac machines, consisting of parameterized Fermi-Dirac thermal measurements"

yes, you are really right on this! It is painful to submit work to other venues.

many authors and copyeditors no longer take pride or care in their work. It is just about generating lots of content to fill up a CV, and all of these new journals are cropping up to support this need.

it seems that, nearly every month, a new journal focusing on quantum information & computing gets started. Here is a screenshot of a paper in a new one. They'll be happy to publish your papers without consideration for formatting & most authors won't care enough to check for these problems either.

Query complexities of quantum channel discrimination and estimation: A unified approach The goal of quantum channel discrimination and estimation is to determine the identity of an unknown channel from a discrete or continuous set, respectively. The query complexity of these tasks is equ...

I gave a seminar yesterday at RMIT University in Melbourne on "Query complexities of quantum channel discrimination and estimation: A unified approach" arxiv.org/abs/2511.10832 , joint work w/ Zixin Huang, @jjmeyer.bsky.social , & Theshani Nuradha

Slides available here:

zenodo.org/records/1871...

congrats!

Beyond i.i.d. submission deadline Feb. 13:

www.beyondiid2026.com

A Converse Bound via the Nussbaum-Szkoła Mapping for Quantum Hypothesis Testing Quantum hypothesis testing concerns the discrimination between quantum states. This paper introduces a novel lower bound for asymmetric quantum hypothesis testing that is based on the Nussbaum-Szkoła ...

strong theoretical development for quantum hypothesis testing:

arxiv.org/abs/2601.13970

Nussbaum-Szkola distributions are now useful for asymmetric quantum hypothesis testing, in addition to symmetric quantum hypothesis testing

Genuine multipartite Rains entanglement We introduce the genuine multipartite Rains entanglement (GMRE) as a measure of genuine multipartite entanglement that can be computed using semi-definite programming. Similar to the Rains relative en...

Joint work "Genuine multipartite Rains entanglement" w/ Hailey Murray, Sagnik Bhattacharya, M. Cerezo @mvscerezo.bsky.social, Liuke Lyu now available on arXiv:

arxiv.org/abs/2601.09590

We establish a genuine multipartite generalization of the famous Rains entanglement measure for bipartite states

List of Reviewers Not to Include:

Anyone who might reject my proposal

🎆As the year ends, I want to remind everyone that our summer school applications are open!

Please apply/encourage your students to apply here:

academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/31108

We also have a handshake link too🤝 :

app.joinhandshake.com/emp/jobs/105...

Shares appreciated!

two lurkers in the back...

I do! Next time we chat please provide me with a structural analysis of Roman aqueducts :)

wow, looks like a nice party! have a good holiday break

that's really terrible. The journals need to do checks for this before sending out papers for peer review

that is true, but this one was particularly bizarre