John Preskill

AI Comes Up with Bizarre Physics Experiments. But They Work. | Quanta Magazine Artificial intelligence software is designing novel experimental protocols that improve upon the work of human physicists, although the humans are still “doing a lot of baby-sitting.”

AI can improve the design of experiments. “It takes a lot to think this far outside of the accepted solution,” Adhikari said. “We really needed the AI.”

www.quantamagazine.org/ai-comes-up-...

The New Quantum Era - innovation in quantum computing, science and technology | Neutral Atom Qubits with Mark Saffman In this episode of The New Quantum Era, host Sebastian Hassinger sits down with Dr. Mark Saffman, a leading expert in atomic physics and quantum information science. As a professor at the Universit...

Mark Saffman reviews the remarkable recent progress on quantum computing with neutral atoms.

podcast.newquantumera.com/57

YouTube video by National Science Foundation News Advances in Quantum Computing | Podcast

Chris Monroe recalls how fundamental research on atomic clocks led to quantum computing technologies.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B7z...

Little ray of sunshine A common saying goes, you should never meet your heroes, because they’ll disappoint you. But you shouldn’t trust every common saying; some heroes impress you more, the better you know them. Ray Laf…

A touching tribute to an inspiring teacher from a grateful former student.

quantumfrontiers.com/2025/07/27/l...

New PMA Chair Announced Physicist Hirosi Ooguri will become the next chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy.

Hirosi Ooguri takes the reins of the PMA Division @caltech.edu. Fiona Harrison was a great Chair, and I'm sure Hirosi will be a worthy successor.
www.caltech.edu/about/news/n...

Great dinner conversation with SURF students @caltech.edu⁩! (SURF = Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship).

Senate spending panel would rescue NSF and NASA science funding Its support for a flat budget is a sign of congressional resistance to drastic cuts Trump has proposed

Encouraging.

www.science.org/content/arti...

YouTube video by Curt Jaimungal Brand New Result Proving Penrose & Tao's Uncomputability in Physics!

Mathematician @evamirandag.bsky.social expounds on undecidability in fluid mechanics. This is fun: It's about rubber duckies drifting in the ocean.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgNp...

Andrew Houck, Director of the Co-Design Center for Quantum Advantage, makes an eloquent case for the value of the National Quantum Initiative Quantum Research Centers. Hey Congress, how's that reauthorization coming along?

IQC and Waterloo mourn the loss of Raymond Laflamme | Institute for Quantum Computing | University of Waterloo Raymond Laflamme, a trailblazer in quantum information processing and pioneer of the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at the University of Waterloo, died on June 19 after a lengthy battle with ca...

Raymond Laflamme 1960-2025. A great scientist, renowned for his pioneering contributions to quantum error correction. A great leader, founding director of the Institute for Quantum Computing. A great colleague and teacher whose legacy continues to inspire us.
uwaterloo.ca/institute-fo...

Yiyi Cai has done research in our group @caltech.edu for two years, including a senior thesis. She'll be a Gates Cambridge Scholar for a year, followed by PhD studies in computer science at Stanford. Congratulations, Yiyi, you'll be missed!

We hope the building will open next summer.

The building committee gets a first look at the basement of the Ginsburg Center for Quantum Precision Measurement at Caltech. We're standing where a tunnel will connect Ginsburg labs to labs in neighboring Downs Laboratory. With me are Nick Hutzler, Rana Adhikari, Michelle Effros, and Dave Hsieh.

After a long hiatus, we are finally getting around to posting our coolest undertaking during the conference--interviews with some of the biggest names in our field about the early days of QIP!

First in our lineup is our interview with the one and only John Preskill (@preskill.bsky.social)! (1/4)

Quantum automata Do you know when an engineer built the first artificial automaton—the first human-made machine that operated by itself, without external control mechanisms that altered the machine’s behavior…

Making quantum machines more autonomous might simplify the task of controlling them, and so ease the way to large-scale quantum computers that solve very hard problems.
quantumfrontiers.com/2025/04/27/q...

A delightful evening at Caltech's Venerable House.

Thanking Ashvin Vishwanath for his brilliant Lauritsen Lecture @Caltech on "The Return of Anyons," with colleagues Hirosi Ooguri, Nai-Chang Yeh, and Lesik Motrunich.

Quantum Algorithms: A Call To Action Quantum computing finds itself in a peculiar situation. The number one question asked about quantum computers by outsiders is very common sensical: What are they good for? The honest answer reveals…

If you are interested in quantum computing, I strongly recommend this insightful article by @caltech.edu
student @robbieking1000.bsky.social calling for a "scrappier approach" to finding new applications.

quantumfrontiers.com/2025/04/20/q...

Qolab Emerges from Stealth Mode with John Martinis | The New Quantum Era | Episode 48 Welcome to episode 48 of The New Quantum Era podcast! Another episode recorded at the APS Global Summit in March, today's special guest is true quantum pioneer, John Martinis, co-founder and CTO of Qo...

Very interesting discussion with John Martinis about the challenge of scaling up superconducting quantum processors and the business plan of QoLab.

share.transistor.fm/s/f599d74b

Given many identical copies of an unknown quantum state, in some cases one can easily learn the state by examining some of the copies and then erase the rest with a low energy cost. In other cases, though, learning is difficult and erasure is more costly.

Learning to erase quantum states: thermodynamic implications of quantum learning theory The energy cost of erasing quantum states depends on our knowledge of the states. We show that learning algorithms can acquire such knowledge to erase many copies of an unknown state at the optimal en...

Students Haimeng Zhao and Yuzhen Zhang decided to revisit thermodynamics from the perspective of learning theory and computational complexity. The result was this fun project.

arxiv.org/abs/2504.07341

How writing a popular-science book led to a Nature Physics paper Several people have asked me whether writing a popular-science book has fed back into my research. Nature Physics published my favorite illustration of the answer this January. Here’s the story beh…

Scientists often find that one gets a new idea by trying to explain something to someone else. This applies in particular to one who writes a popular book. [Note to self: write popular books.]
quantumfrontiers.com/2025/03/30/h...

Congratulations, Jeongwan Haah, recipient of the New Horizons in Physics Prize "for the discovery of Haah's code, in which fractal conservation laws emerge, and other models bringing discrete mathematical structures to physics"!
breakthroughprize.org/News/91

Great interview in which Ewin Tang describes how she shook the quantum world at age 18.

Thoughtful perspective from Mark Kamionkowski and @seanmcarroll.bsky.social on recent evidence indicating that dark energy may have increased (!) as the universe evolved, and on the still unresolved "Hubble tension."
www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025...

Megaquop with John Preskill and Rob Schoelkopf | The New Quantum Era | Episode 47 In this episode of The New Quantum Era podcast, your host Sebastian Hassinger interviews two of the field's most well-known figures, John Preskill and Rob Schoelkopf, about the transition of quantum c...

A fun chat with my friends Rob Schoelkopf and Sebastian Hassinger, recorded at the APS Global Physics Summit on March 17.
share.transistor.fm/s/7ec0179e

YouTube video by Quantum Science Center US QIS Summer School presentation: Dr. John Preskill, Caltech

I am having a great time at the DOE computer science PI meeting in Frisco, Texas. A wide range of wonderful talks, posters, and people. I greatly enjoyed the talk on quantum computing by @preskill.bsky.social. A longer version is at www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIQq...

Quanta Magazine reports on the beautiful recent construction of pseudorandom unitaries by Robert Huang and Fermi Ma.

With two of my students from the 1990s who made good: Hoi-Kwong Lo and Daniel Gottesman. #APSSummit25

All the credit goes to my wonderful collaborators, especially Yongtao Zhan and Zhiyan Ding.