QDNL Visitor’s Programme Update: Francesca Fama and Quinten Tupker
QDNL invites talented individuals to participate in our community through multiple collaborative channels. The goal is to leave no talent behind by accommodating the goals and educational trajectory of prospective members.
Our visitor programme aspires to further broaden the international appeal of Quantum Delta NL by offering sabbatical stays and supporting exchange visits for Ph.D. students, postdocs, and other stakeholders across the QDNL network.
Our outgoing visitors serve as ambassadors who visit leading institutions across the globe not just to learn the latest techniques and innovations, but also to spread our knowledge while helping form important collaborations.
This time we highlight two outbound visits. Last year, Francesca Fama and Quinten Tupker both visited host institutes in the United States.
Francesca Fama, PhD applicant at the Institute of Physics of the University of Amsterdam, visited the Jila institute in Colorado, where she was hosted by Murray Holland.
Francesca shares about her visit:
‘During my visit to Murray Holland's theory group, the primary goal was to advance the understanding and modeling of our Sr machine in Amsterdam, as well as the exploration of future direction and possible tests and measurements.
I’ve learned diverse numerical methods to simulate open quantum systems and used them to simulate different quantum phenomena relevant to our system. An example is the study of a strong coupling regime of an atom-cavity system, with the presence of Doppler and transit time broadening. The simulations enabled the exploration and comparison of a variety of regimes challenging to replicate in an experiment. From this study, I believe I understood better the interplay between different parameters and was able to make predictions for the apparatus in Amsterdam.’
‘While there's a prevalent interest in the quantum community for cold and controlled experiments, my focus extended to thermal sources. This direction aligns with the broader interest in compact and transportable setups. Going in this direction the work carried out during my visit had been focused on simulating a real model of a thermal beam, incorporating usually discarded effects. However, we concentrated on a mean-field description of the phenomena, and therefore no study of quantum noise or linewidth calculation was possible during my stay. To address this, I am actively maintaining contact with the group and continuing to improve and complete the code. This ongoing effort aims at simulating relevant quantities for the clock community.’
Quinten Tupker, PhD student at the research institute for mathematics & computer science (CWI), visited Rutgers University in the state of New Jersey, US, where he was hosted by Mario Szegedy.
Quinten shares about his visit:
‘I had met Mario Szegedy, professor of computer science at Rutgers University, earlier and he had invited me to come back some time. Since one of my supervisors at the CWI was on leave for some time, this seemed like an ideal time to visit.
We started a project together, however, Mario was quite busy with exams around the time and other projects. Nevertheless, I learnt about how quantum complexity theory relates to certain quantum error correction codes. Our project is continuing online. I connected Mario to Michael Walter in the form of a joint seminar every Monday. And we visited IBM where I anticipate giving a talk in the future.’
‘I also visited Zhan Wei at Princeton (nearby) who specializes in classical and quantum space bounded complexity (also my area) and we discussed several problems. After Rutgers, on separate funds, I visited nearby Shelby Kimmel at Middlebury college, a collaborator of Stacey Jeffery. Here we focused on whether span programs can be seen as simplicial complices of a certain kind, connecting complexity and topology potentially.’
‘On personal funds, I visited some friends at MIT and Harvard in Boston and saw the departments there, which is personally valuable in exploring future career steps and making connections including Yihui Quek who may return to the CWI for a visit. Then, as I was visiting family in Victoria, Canada, I visited Bruce Kapron at the University of Victoria and had a tour at D‐wave in Vancouver. While these did not lead to new projects, seeing different departments, different ways of working and meeting people was very valuable for me. For a student it is not always clear what the most effective way of working is and this kind of exposure can be clarifying. I believe this was so for me.’
