aspuru-list April 2010

aspuru-list@lists.fas.harvard.edu

17 participants
74 discussions

[Aspuru-Guzik group list] Borivoje's talk today has been moved to our group meeting tomorrow

by Alejandro Perdomo

Dear group, The talk of Borivoje today at 1:30pm has been moved to our regular group meeting tomorrow Friday at 2:30pm in M102. Here are the details of his talk, Title: Probabilistic theories: Classical, Quantum and Beyond Quantum Abstract: Quantum theory makes the most accurate empirical predictions and yet it lacks simple, comprehensible physical principles from which the theory can be uniquely derived. A broad class of probabilistic theories exist which all share some features with quantum theory, such as probabilistic predictions for individual outcomes (indeterminism), the impossibility of information transfer faster than speed of light (no-signaling) or the impossibility of copying of unknown states (no-cloning). A vast majority of attempts to find physical principles behind quantum theory either fall short of deriving the theory uniquely from the principles or are based on abstract mathematical assumptions that require themselves a more conclusive physical motivation. Here, we show that classical probability theory and quantum theory can be reconstructed from three reasonable axioms: (1) (Information capacity) All systems with information carrying capacity of one bit are equivalent. (2) (Locality) The state of a composite system is completely determined by measurements on its subsystems. (3) (Reversibility) Between any two pure states there exists a reversible transformation. If one requires the transformation from the last axiom to be continuous, one separates quantum theory from the classical probabilistic one. A remarkable result following from our reconstruction is that no probability theory other than quantum theory can exhibit entanglement without contradicting one or more axioms. Cheers, -A -- Alejandro Perdomo-Ortiz Ph.D. Candidate in Chemical Physics. Harvard University 12 Oxford St #482, Cambridge, MA, 02138. perdomo(a)fas.harvard.edu

14 years

[Aspuru-Guzik group list] David Chandler student/postdoc visit time

by Leslie Vogt

Dear theory people, There is time for students and postdocs to meet with David Chandler from 9:45-10:25 this Friday, 4/16. If you are interested, please email me ( lvogt(a)fas.harvard.edu). We will meet in the theory lounge area outside of Alan and Adam's offices. (Judy - can you please forward this to the Heller and Shakhnovich groups?) Thanks, Leslie -- Leslie Vogt Aspuru-Guzik Group Chemistry and Chemical Biology Harvard University

14 years

[Aspuru-Guzik group list] Talk by Borivoje tomorrow

by Alejandro Perdomo

Dear group, Tomorrow, Thursday, we have one more meeting. Borivoje, who is a visitor in our group for this month, will be presenting a talk tomorrow (see Title and Abstract below). Hope you can make it. The talk will be at 1:30pm in the Division Room M102. I will announce the details for our regular Friday's group meeting tomorrow. I am up this time :). Cheers, *Details Borivoje's talk* Title: Probabilistic theories: Classical, Quantum and Beyond Quantum Abstract: Quantum theory makes the most accurate empirical predictions and yet it lacks simple, comprehensible physical principles from which the theory can be uniquely derived. A broad class of probabilistic theories exist which all share some features with quantum theory, such as probabilistic predictions for individual outcomes (indeterminism), the impossibility of information transfer faster than speed of light (no-signaling) or the impossibility of copying of unknown states (no-cloning). A vast majority of attempts to find physical principles behind quantum theory either fall short of deriving the theory uniquely from the principles or are based on abstract mathematical assumptions that require themselves a more conclusive physical motivation. Here, we show that classical probability theory and quantum theory can be reconstructed from three reasonable axioms: (1) (Information capacity) All systems with information carrying capacity of one bit are equivalent. (2) (Locality) The state of a composite system is completely determined by measurements on its subsystems. (3) (Reversibility) Between any two pure states there exists a reversible transformation. If one requires the transformation from the last axiom to be continuous, one separates quantum theory from the classical probabilistic one. A remarkable result following from our reconstruction is that no probability theory other than quantum theory can exhibit entanglement without contradicting one or more axioms. -- Alejandro Perdomo-Ortiz Ph.D. Candidate in Chemical Physics. Harvard University 12 Oxford St #482, Cambridge, MA, 02138. perdomo(a)fas.harvard.edu

14 years

[Aspuru-Guzik group list] from Peter

by Anna B. Shin

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Peter Love <plove(a)haverford.edu> Date: Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 2:24 PM Subject: Re: building access cards To: "Anna B. Shin" <anna(a)chemistry.harvard.edu> Hi Anna, Can you send this to the group. Peter Peter and I would like to invite you to a party next Saturday, starting at 6pm. We mostly want to celebrate our being in Boston now and my getting the job at Tufts. It would be great if you could join us for that! Of course, spouses/partners/kids are also welcome. Our address is: 358 Broadway, #3 Cambridge, MA If coming by metro the closest stop is Central. If you need directions etc, my phone# is 1-626-203-2823. Our apartment is on the top floor of a building that is mostly taken up by a "Health Training Center". The entrance is to the side of the building. We'll prepare some food and drink but anything else of that variety you'll like to bring would be welcome. Hope you can come! Anna & Peter

14 years

[Aspuru-Guzik group list] Volunteer?

by Alan Aspuru-Guzik

First-come first-served, who wants to be the host for a student lunch with David Chandler on Friday? Alan Aspuru-Guzik (Sent from my mobile phone and might contain typos. Thanks for understanding.)

14 years

[Aspuru-Guzik group list] REMINDER: April 15, 2010 - Patanjali Kambhampati - Excitonics Seminar

by rtavilla＠rle.mit.edu

Center for Excitonics Seminar Series Announcement The Center for Excitonics is an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science and Office of Basic Energy Sciences The Center for Excitonics invites you to join us at the next seminar of the Spring 2010 series. Please forward this information on to others who might be interested in attending this and other center seminars. Title: State-Resolved Exciton Dynamics in Quantum Dots Presenter: Patanjali Kambhampati Organization: Department of Chemistry, McGill University Date: April 15, 2010 Time: 3:00 - 4:00pm Place: 34-401A (Grier A) Center URL: www.rle.mit.edu/excitonics Seminar URL: www.rle.mit.edu/excitonics/patanjali-041510.html Abstract The semiconductor quantum dot is one of the canonical systems in nanoscience. Whereas the nanometer size of these materials is obvious, the richer and more meaningful issue is the presence of quantum confinement effects conferred by virtue of size. One may qualitatively describe quantum dot electronic structure like the textbook particle in a sphere. However, this simple picture misses the vast majority of the processes which ultimately control the functionality of the quantum dot. Our goal is to obtain a detailed picture of the rich inner workings of the quantum dot. We introduce a mixed time/frequency domain ultrafast spectroscopic approach which we denote State-Resolved Exciton Dynamics. We have applied this approach to resolve several long standing issues central to quantum dot science: 1) Hot exciton relaxation dynamics: radiationless transitions on the nanoscale 2) Optical gain: recovering predictions from theory and revealing new physics 3) Electronic structure of multiexcitons: creation of an artificial periodic table 4) electron-phonon interactions: quantizing piezoelectricity The power of this approach is reflected by our ability to predict aspects of unrelated experiments, e.g. single dot blinking and multiple exciton generation. In addition to the basic science of excitons in nanoscale materials, these fundamental results have advanced the design principles for a broad range of applications including: LEDs, lasers, solar cells, THz radiation sources, piezoelectrics, and non-classical light. Bio Patanjali Kambhampati received a B.A. in Chemistry from Carleton College in 1992, and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin in 1998. His doctoral work focused on ultra-high vacuum surface studies of adsorbate-substrate charge transfer excitations and surface enhanced Raman scattering under the supervision of Alan Campion. From 1999 – 2001 he was a Postdoctoral Associate with Paul Barbara, also at the University of Texas at Austin. His postdoctoral work focused on femtosecond laser spectroscopy of condensed phase chemical dynamics of the solvated electron and intramolecular electron transfer. From 2001 – 2003 he was involved in early phase work in a fiber optic startup based in Los Angeles. At McGill University, where his group focuses on ultrafast dynamics in quantum dots, he was an Assistant Professor from 2003 – 2009 and is presently an Associate Professor.

14 years

[Aspuru-Guzik group list] Alan's calendar

by Anna B. Shin

Dear Group, For scheduling meetings with Alan, please send Google Calendar invitations to Peg Tamiso at *aspuru.assistant(a)gmail.com* (not Alan or me). Peg (or I) will schedule meetings in Alan's calendar. Thanks, Anna Anna B. Shin Laboratory Administrator Aspuru-Guzik Research Group Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology Harvard University 12 Oxford Street Cambridge, MA 02138 617.496.9964 office 617.694.9879 cell 617.496.9411 fax http://aspuru.chem.harvard.edu/

14 years

[Aspuru-Guzik group list] [theochem-announce] Prof. Makri's talk has been postponed

by Lee-Ping

Dear all, Please note that Prof. Nancy Makri's talk initially scheduled this week has been postponed until the fall semester. The next talk will be Prof. Roger Kamm (MIT) on Wednesday, April 21st. Regards, Lee-Ping Wang Van Voorhis Group _______________________________________________ theochem-announce mailing list theochem-announce(a)mit.edu http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/theochem-announce

14 years

[Aspuru-Guzik group list] [iic-colloquium] IIC Colloquium tomorrow: "Academic and Research Environments in Asia and Europe" with Frank Baetke

by Rosalind Reid

This is just a reminder of tomorrow's IIC Colloquium: ********************** Academic and Research Environments in Asia and Europe: Towards Petascale Systems April 14, 2010, 4:00 pm Room G-115, Maxwell Dworkin, 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge Frank Baetke, HP Worldwide Director, High Performance Computing, Research Universities & Research Labs, Hewlett Packard Abstract Academic and research HPC environments in Asia and Europe have undergone significant changes in recent years. Widely established standards have helped to ease cross-site and cross-country collaboration and load balancing. In this talk, examples of typical environments will be shown and future trends and new challenges, including the potential use of HPC clouds, discussed along with highly specialized sites with dedicated environments. In particular, the European Community maintains a European Roadmap for Research Infrastructures and has recently established a high-end computing initiative (PRACE) as part of that roadmap. It is seen as an essential component to maintain Europe’s technological competitiveness, to keep Europe attractive for researchers and to support innovative industrial developments. Background, structure, planned system architectures and concepts for petascale computing will be discussed. About the Speaker Frank Baetke manages Hewlett Packard’s Global HPC-Technology Program for academic and research institutions. He is a director and board member of HP-CAST, the worldwide user group of HP-HPC; an advisory board member of the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC); and a member of the Indian Supercomputing Conference (HiPC) steering committee. He also serves on the committees of several international high-performance computing conferences. Baetke was Assistant Professor (Akademischer Rat) at the Technical University of Munich and joined Convex Computer Corporation in 1986, then HP’s High Performance Computing Division via acquisition of Convex in 1995. Frank Baetke holds a master’s degree (Dipl.-Ing.) in engineering and a Ph.D. (Dr.- Ing.) in applied physics from the Technical University of Munich. He has published numerous articles in the field of high-performance computing as well as contributions in related areas. He is a member of German Society of Informatics, the Society of Astronomy, ACM, IEEE and the Max Planck Society. He became a Fellow of the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC) in 2009. He is based in Munich, Germany. --------------- Reception in the Maxwell Dworkin lobby 3-4 pm. (Refreshments courtesy of Hewlett Packard.) _________ Mark your calendar for these upcoming IIC Colloquia: Wednesday, Apr. 21: Pavlos Protopapas, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and IIC/SEAS Wednesday, Apr. 28: Daniel Janies, Biomedical Informatics, Ohio State University Wednesday, May 5: Jeannette M. Wing, National Science Foundation For more information about IIC colloquia and other events : http://iic.harvard.edu/events/upcoming _______________________________________________ iic-colloquium mailing list iic-colloquium(a)seas.harvard.edu https://lists.deas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/iic-colloquium

14 years

[Aspuru-Guzik group list] Quantum Beer - Wednesday April 21st, 8pm at Cambridge Brewing Company

by Cesar A. Rodriguez-Rosario

Dear Quanta in the Boston Area: We are having another *Quantum Beer Night.* When? *Wednesday April 21st at 8:00pm* Where? *Cambridge Brewing Co.* http://www.cambridgebrewing.com/ *1 Kendall Square, Bldg 100 Cambridge, MA 02139 * http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=cambridge+brewi… We had a lot of fun at the last Quantum Beer, a really big group of quantum computing people from all over Boston enjoyed Belgium food and drinks at Publick House. We will be switching venues every time, and this time it will at the CBC. There, they brews their own beer and have a nice space for big groups of people. Don't miss it! Cheers! Cesar -- Cesar A. Rodriguez-Rosario, Postdoctoral Fellow Harvard University Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Box#34 12 Oxford St, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA rodriguez(a)chemistry.harvard.edu

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aspuru-list April 2010