The New Quantum Era

Sebastian Hassinger: 00:01

The New Quantum Era, a podcast by Sebastian Hassinger.

Sebastian Hassinger: 00:06

And Kevin Rowney.

Speaker of the UN General Assembly: 00:30

The assembly will now take a decision on draft resolution 8 stroke 78 stroke l 70 entitled International Year of Quantum Science and Technology 2025. May I take it that the assembly decides to adopt draft resolution a stroke 78 stroke l 70. It is so decided.

Sebastian Hassinger: 01:01

That was a portion of the proceedings of the General Assembly of the United Nations meeting on June 7, 2024, where they passed a resolution making 2025 Year of Quantum Science and Technology. And today's guest is going to be someone who's gonna discuss that with us. Well, we've we've got it

Kevin Rowney: 01:20

we're kind of excited. This is doctor Paul Ken Ziminski we're interviewing today. He's associate professor of physics at Bard. You know, really interesting guy. He's a real leader on this whole effort, and, lots more to say on, really interesting facets of outreach, communications to the larger public on the subject of quantum computing and quantum mechanics.

Sebastian Hassinger: 01:40

Let's take a listen. Welcome back to the podcast. Kevin is back with me on this episode. Very happy to have him back. And Great to hear.

Sebastian Hassinger: 02:27

Joining us. Thank you. Also joining us, special guest, Paul Kaden Zemansky. He's associate professor of physics at Bard University, director of the physics program there, and also is on the executive committee at APS that has been looking at the UN move to declare 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. And Paul just shared with us on Friday that the UN had actually passed the resolution.

Sebastian Hassinger: 02:57

So now it is official 2025. 2025 will be the year of quantum. And so we immediately, of course, wanted to get Paul on to to discuss it. So, welcome, Paul. Thanks for joining us.

Sebastian Hassinger: 03:09

And what's the year of quantum gonna be?

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 03:12

That's a great question. So thanks, Kevin and Sebastian for having me. So the I mean, this is basically a 100th birthday for quantum mechanics. So quantum mechanics, generally, we date back to 1925. And, it's not so much to me about what happened in 1925 per se.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 03:30

It's really about the whole past 100 years of all the development. And, you know, it started as something where, a few of us sitting around were like, we should, we should have a 100th birthday party for quantum mechanics because quantum mechanics is, like, brought a lot of joy to our lives, and we should share that with as many people as possible. And so the the idea sort of grew out of a number of different interest that people have, and we could talk about the, you know, the different groups with different interests. But I think that the commonality was, everybody who understands how important quantum mechanics is, would like everyone else who doesn't understand springboard to springboard to, having more events, more outreach activities, developing new methods of reaching people, and focusing the sort of global attention on quantum mechanics for for next year. So that was kind of the the original goal.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 04:33

And, the the way you go about making that happen is you gotta send an invitation for the birthday party. Right. And so, so first, it's a few people talking on themselves. We started having, I think, more and more people on these Zoom calls internationally from all over the world. And then that grew into, various societies and institutes getting on board.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 04:56

So in my case, it was with the APS, the American Physical Society who really got behind this early on, but also places like the German Physical Society, the Chinese Optical Society is now founding partner, etcetera. SPIE, which is the engineering photonics, optica, which is another optics society. So, and then dozens of physical societies around the world, we're like, yes, we think this is a good idea. It goes next to the international unions. So for people aren't familiar, there are these international unions.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 05:29

The earliest ones date from just after World War 1. So they're kind of in the League of Nations era. Wow. You know, formed to, like, instead of having wars, maybe we would have some international sign of cooperation. Wow.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 05:41

And, so we went to, like, International Union of Pure and Applied Physics and chemistry, crystallography, etcetera. And they're all like, yes, we endorse this sort of thing. And then it goes up to the nation state level. So it goes to the country level and we started at UNESCO, which is the scientific cultural arm of the United Nations, which is centered in Paris. And, so my fellow members of the executive committee who are much more seasoned, in science diplomacy than I am like went there and made the rounds and and lobbied various nations.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 06:12

And last year, we had, about 60 countries cosponsoring this resolution at UNESCO. Right.

Sebastian Hassinger: 06:19

And that was an unusually high number, I think. Right? Some real numbers.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 06:23

Yeah. I mean, these years vary, but I'd say in general, you know, this seems to be, an idea that people really got behind. And Right. With a lot of these international year type celebrations, there's no particular reason to have it on, like, the year it's on. So for example, this year is the international year of, camelids.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 06:44

So celebrating camels and alpacas and things like that. There's nothing particularly special I think going on in 2024 about camels. Oh, you know, worthwhile thing to focus attention.

Kevin Rowney: 06:53

Sure. Yeah. Alright.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 06:54

But we have this 100th birthday party, aspect to it. So we have a nice anniversary to focus on. And the amazing thing is that at this same moment, there's all this excitement around what's coming next in quantum. So you know, the working title for this originally was the Quantum Century Project. And it was really about, both the past 100 years and the next 100 years.

Sebastian Hassinger: 07:19

Right. Right.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 07:20

And so this moment of all these different countries already having their quantum initiatives is being passed.

Sebastian Hassinger: 07:25

Right.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 07:26

Suddenly realizing, oh, like, we need to do more work thinking about quantum education on outreach coincides exactly this moment. So it's lined up exceptionally well to have a really amazing year. And so I think because of that, a lot of countries like got behind it. Right. And we're realizing, like, oh, yeah.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 07:43

We do need to work on this.

Sebastian Hassinger: 07:45

Yeah.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 07:45

So, so UNESCO was basically last year getting through there. They endorsed the idea, and then, this spring has been going to United Nations. And as you mentioned, you know, the official resolution declaring next year that National Quantum was passed on on Friday. It's basically by acclamation. So every country in the world said we're good with this.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 08:06

There's actually about over 70 countries cosponsoring that

Sebastian Hassinger: 08:10

resolution.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 08:11

So I said, yeah, we we actually wanna put our names on this as well, including, like, you know, US, China, India, but in all sorts of, you know, smaller countries. And it's

Kevin Rowney: 08:19

actually Ghana is involved. Yeah. It's

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 08:20

pretty Yeah. So the the Ghanaian delegation was the one who stepped up and said, you know, we really care about this issue. They they care a lot as they said in their speech at the UN General Assembly on Friday about, hey, we wanna we want this brought to Africa too. Right? Yeah.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 08:34

And, you know, this is not just about rich, rich countries, but we need to start in all these developing countries. Like, we wanna be part of this this new quantum revolution as well.

Kevin Rowney: 08:44

It's such an interesting topic. And, you know, one of the primary goals we heard the Canadian representative give around the intro was just a public awareness is a primary objective. And I agree with you. I mean, for me, this is the subject of study creates great joy. But for a lot of people, I mean, it's very aggressive mathematical abstractions and very counterintuitive physical outcomes.

Kevin Rowney: 09:06

Right? So, I mean, it's always a challenge, right, doing good communication about this stuff because it can be so, in a certain sense, intimidating and even baffling. How do you how do you make that breakthrough here in this, public awareness goal?

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 09:20

Yeah, I think that's exactly the right question. And, you know, for me, it's something that I have a lot of concern about because I teach at a liberal arts college, right? And I'm encountering people who are not just physics majors or science majors, and I have to communicate with them about like why this is important.

Kevin Rowney: 09:37

Yes.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 09:38

And so I think that, right now we have this thing, quantum mechanics, which is so central to all the physical sciences, and is something but at the same time is not something where you can sort of point at an object and say that's the that's the quantum. Right? Like you can point I mean, you can point at a camel and say that's a camel and we're so

Kevin Rowney: 09:58

Exactly. But what

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 09:59

are we pointing at?

Sebastian Hassinger: 10:00

How many of them would fit through the head of a pair the Ivo needle, though? That's the question.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 10:04

And so, but I guess I turn it around and say, you know what? Since it underlies everything, you can point at any object and say, let's take a look at that object and see how quantum affects that. Right. And, but I think telling those stories with out the abstraction, and it's fine to tell stories with the abstraction, but I think that translation is what we really need to work on as a community as a whole. And you know, so I have various stories that I worked up and I tell to certain audiences in different cases, but I think we're trying to crowdsource this as much as possible.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 10:38

So another way of looking at this is since everybody has realized this is a a critical issue to inform many people about, And at the same time, it's so challenging to communicate about. Let's all get together and work on communicating in this year, and we'll see what we come up with. With. And we'll fail. I made some experiment lots of times.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 10:55

But the good stories, the good ways of of pointing things out, the good, the good objects that point to and say, here's a story about that that, quantum underlies. And not just about the technical aspects of, like, explaining quantum mechanics, but just, you know, how does quantum mechanics affects geopolitics or economies or philosophy? Like those types of questions is not necessarily a technical story. I think as we tell more and more of these stories in this year, the ones that resonate with different sectors of the public all over the world we picked up. Right?

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 11:26

So we're kind of throwing down the gauntlet both to like, you know, people to ask around the world to say, hey, this is a chance to be introduced for the first time or reintroduced to quantum and we'll take whatever questions you wanna give us. And then the other side for people who know something about Quantum is a challenge like, okay, do your best to explain in a approachable, friendly, engaging way, non threatening way, like what it is that you think is interesting by quantum.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 11:54

And I

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 11:54

think one of the piece of advice I give to people doing quantum outreach is, you know, think about what you're enthusiastic about. Right? And that your audience will not necessarily remember the things you said, but they'll remember your enthusiasm. Right. And if you make that emotional connection, like, you've you've you've won the battle there.

Sebastian Hassinger: 12:14

Right. Right. Right. It's so interesting because, you know, we talk about this a lot, on the podcast with guests that there there is this unique moment right now where a 100 years of quantum, mechanics and quantum science is sort of starting to transition into quantum technologies. It's it's becoming more explicitly the engine of a particular piece of technology, quantum computer, quantum networking, quantum communications, quantum cryptography.

Kevin Rowney: 12:42

Quantum sensors. Yeah.

Sebastian Hassinger: 12:43

Quantum sensors. Yeah. And in large part, I mean, what has been a challenge in science communication, how do you develop a quantum intuition and how do you develop a sense of what quantum the quantum realm is about, is now a matter of of skills and and creative, ideas for how to what to do with these things. Right? I mean, we we'll need this kind of quantum intuition in order to to come up with the innovation around, the applications of quantum computing, for example, which are not entirely clear at this point.

Sebastian Hassinger: 13:14

Right? I mean, that's a huge challenge. I think, as you said, there's sort of this last 100 years and then the next 100 years, which which gives us a really unique kind of, threshold moment. And also back to what you were saying about, Ghana, the, Ghani's delegation, it's it's a bit of a do over, moment. Right?

Sebastian Hassinger: 13:34

I mean, this is a brand new, tech field of technology, and we get to hopefully build it from the ground up, learning from the mistakes of prior technology fields where there's been, you know, not the kind of equality and diversity inclusion that we'd like to see. And also, as we've seen in classical computing, it ended up being a hyper concentration of the supply chain, which causes all kinds of geopolitical effects that maybe aren't great, which we would like to avoid as well. So there's a lot

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 14:07

on your

Sebastian Hassinger: 14:08

plate as as a member of this committee. Is is there now that it's passed, is there sort of a transition to starting to make more concrete plans for next year at APS?

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 14:20

Yeah. So the way I frame this is, you know, this started out as very much a grassroots thing with, you know, a few scientists and historians of science, like, talking about this idea. And as I went over it, sort of gradually moved its way up to, like, sort of larger and larger groups of institutions and nation states in the United Nations. So we've gone as high up the chain as we can go. We can't go to the intergalactic federation or whatever for the declaration of Yeah.

Sebastian Hassinger: 14:43

They may be listening.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 14:45

If they're listening, yeah, next year

Kevin Rowney: 14:47

of loss.

Sebastian Hassinger: 14:48

They subscribe to the podcast. Yeah.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 14:49

There you go. So, so now it has to move back down. Right? So now it has to go from, you know, nations all the way back down. And because we built up a network to go up to that level, that it makes it a little bit easier, a little faster to go back down

Sebastian Hassinger: 15:03

that direction.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 15:04

So just to give some some examples of how this would work. I mean, there is a steering committee that, will oversee a global fund, which sees things at the sort of highest level. So if you think about the sort of global issue of, you know, how do we make sure that, you know, region like Africa is included in all this and make sure that there are resources transferred from wealthier countries to poor countries centered around sort of quantum outreach. That's what that committee will oversee and there is a sort of global fund which, people can contribute to, businesses can sponsor, the international or quantum. Right.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 15:37

If they like, and, that that will be sort of the main task at that high level. As you move down to like, let's say individual countries, right? Each individual country reacts to United Nations declaration in different ways. But let me give one example. Brazil has a sort of National Science Week that the Ministry of Education, runs in the country every fall.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 15:59

And they look to the UNESCO and United Nations to see what sort of the theme of the

Sebastian Hassinger: 16:04

year is,

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 16:04

if there's a theme of the year. So what we hope is that by this, resolution passing for to declare next year the quantum year, that Brazil will say, oh, our thousands of, events around the country next year are gonna be have a quantum theme to them. Right? And so that just activates that type of thing. In other countries like United States, nobody pays any attention to what the United Nations says.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 16:28

Right? This means this means effectively nothing, I'm afraid. Sadly. But sadly. But, you know, there are places like the APS organizations that will, you know, be doing things.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 16:38

So they're the APS has their biggest, sort of meeting of the year in in March, and it's in Southern California next year. So they're doing some plans for having a sort of public outreach, event around that. But what we really hope is that as many different organizations, companies Yeah. Institutions, schools, etcetera. Think of like, realize, oh, there is this unique opportunity.

Sebastian Hassinger: 17:03

Right.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 17:03

All gathered around quantum as a theme for the year and do something. So Yeah. That that's how it has to filter down to, like, the individual level. And at some sense, you know, that's the most impactful level of if somebody can do whatever they do to facilitate, some sort of quantum outreach that involves, like, 2 or 3 people, like, that's that's what we're going for. We just need Yeah.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 17:23

As many of those as possible. There's many different types of audiences in many different places.

Sebastian Hassinger: 17:27

Well, here's the first one right here.

Kevin Rowney: 17:29

And and and and, Paul, so, I mean, if if somebody is on the the podcast listening right now and they they feel inspired to get involved somehow, I mean and they they don't really know you yet. I mean, what's their best route if they're feeling inspired and capable to, go to the barricades with you?

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 17:46

Right. So I I would say the, there are maybe maybe 3 things. So number 1 is, like, if you wanna give money, you can give money. And you can go like that. You can do that.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 17:56

But if you want to do something, you're like, oh, yeah. I wanna do something about quantum. You you're free to initiate that as you like. Right? So this is a 4th year declaration.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 18:04

You don't need our approval to do any of these things.

Kevin Rowney: 18:06

You just go nuts. Yeah.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 18:07

And yeah. So do what you like. What we'll have, towards the end of the year, it'll be a way for people who are doing events or have resources they developed that are online to submit those to the, great or the I y q website, which is Yes. Justquantum 2025.org. And then we'll have, you know, map a global map and things like that, and we'll be featuring different resources.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 18:27

So people wanna do, like, that type of thing, go ahead and do that. Start planning. But even maybe more simply in terms of facilitating things happening, sometimes it's just about thinking of like, well, who do I know or what organization do I know that I should be

Kevin Rowney: 18:40

part of? Right.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 18:41

Right? So, I mean, I'll give a personal example. We happen to have a speaker who was an astronomer, and she's involved with this program called Astronomy on Tap, where they do events at pubs, around astronomy, mostly in the US, but also around the world. Right? And they have, you know, events every week.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 18:59

And so I just sent her an email and say, hey. Could for next year, could you direct people to, like, try to do a quantum themed event? And she's like, oh, yeah. Sure. So it didn't take much work for me of just sending one email, and she already has a network.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 19:13

Right. But even for any individual, think about an email sent to a local school board saying, Oh, hey, I noticed that next year is like this big 100 years of quantum mechanics, UN declared, etcetera. What is the school doing about quantum next year? Right? And maybe that goes nowhere, but maybe that prompts people to do things.

Sebastian Hassinger: 19:33

And will there be on the IYQ website, will there be sort of like sections for, you know, I'm an educator. What can I, you know, what are some ideas of what sections for, you know, I'm an educator? What can I, you know, what are some ideas of what I could do in my classroom, that kind of thing?

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 19:44

Yeah. So I think we'll we'll we'll build up more of those and feature more of those. I think you guys have have talked probably about the q twelve initiative in the United States, which is, you know, that's kinda one of the main goals and and, people from that were involved early on these discussions. So I think we're we're gonna try to, like, take good resources that people will develop from across the spectrum and feat feature those and direct people towards those. Some of them will be housed on our website.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 20:09

A lot of them will be, like, pointing towards

Sebastian Hassinger: 20:10

Yeah.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 20:11

Other resources.

Sebastian Hassinger: 20:13

Yeah. Yeah. And you mentioned corporate sponsorship. I think, you know, given that across the board, every single National Quantum Initiative I'm aware of globally has, you know, workforce development and skills development as a top priority. It would definitely behoove large corporations to think about sponsoring this effort because that start it's a very, very long process to get to a PhD level training in physics.

Sebastian Hassinger: 20:39

And there are more and more challenges that are going to require those kinds of skills. So, we need to get cracking, definitely.

Kevin Rowney: 20:47

And throughout our podcast, I mean, there's, numerous, cases where, well, you know, the the inspiration, for an individual to get into this, see a complicated formidable field came from just to get one, you know, primary contact with the mysteries, right, of of that whole, area. So I don't know. It's it's really this is a great opportunity to draw new talent in the field.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 21:05

Yeah. And I would say I think about it as broadly as possible. So on the one hand, in terms of the word quantum, like, there is this excitement around this quantum information technologies. And that's a great story that people will be telling. On the other hand, you know, we have a 100 year track record of all sorts of different existing technologies that you can point to.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 21:23

And it is the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, right? So some people don't care about technology, but they do care about like, well, how does the world around me work, right? Right. And how does the natural world work? And, quantum is not just about physics, right?

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 21:37

It's about chemistry, it's about many other things, everything physical has quantum in it. And it's not necessarily just about learning the sciences, it could be about learning how quantum affects politics and why these national quantum initiatives. Right. And at the same time, it's not just about reaching those members of the public or young people who are going to become the future quantum scientists, right? I think that, you know, on the one hand, even if you just cared about those people and developing that workforce, those people live in an ecosystem of information.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 22:05

And, you know, if their grandparent learns a little more of quantum and says the grandkids like, oh, I was hearing more about that. Like that type of interaction can set Right. Expectations for the social environment. And I think if you think, about, you know, people in different parts of the world, many individuals, like, will tell their kids, like, oh, being a doctor is a good profession to go into.

Sebastian Hassinger: 22:28

Right.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 22:28

And so they'll peep kids will get that in their head. I had a student recently who whose parents told him, like, don't don't go into, like, science. Like, that's not a good track path to go into.

Kevin Rowney: 22:38

Wow.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 22:38

There's, like, you'll end up in the poor house. And I was like, that's not a message that that you would hear in the US, but he he was from another country. And so if more people around the world get the message, no. Actually, this is like it's a respectable field. Right.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 22:51

There's there's plenty of if you wanna make money, there's plenty of money to be made. And, the future possibilities are unknown, but very exciting.

Sebastian Hassinger: 23:00

Right. That's really cool.

Kevin Rowney: 23:02

So much potential. And and, Paul, I understand your your team at at Bardview have been working with a a bunch of, if I'm not mistaken, fellow, well, students under your supervision around brand new innovations on visualization of these complex systems. I I wonder if we could segue to that to that topic. So so interesting. It it gateways directly to this, international year of of quantum technology.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 23:22

Yeah. So so this is about just sort of one strand of my own sort of, you know, research and pedagogy interests. I was actually doing a kind of tutorial with a couple students who were working their way through Nielsen and Chang's book on, you know, quantum information.

Kevin Rowney: 23:37

Mike and I did the classic. Yeah.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 23:40

And, you know, we got through about, you know, one and a half chapters of it, with a with a couple of undergrads. But, when we came to, you know, understand a single cubit and this block sphere representation of that

Sebastian Hassinger: 23:52

Yes.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 23:53

They asked me this question of, okay, so is there a 2 cubit visualization? And my answer was no. Like, because I just thought about the number of dimensions was like, no, it's not possible. But then I kinda went home. It was winter break, and I was sort of thinking about, like, well, like, what do we mean?

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 24:09

Like, what what do we want out of visualization? We want a map of the different quantum states of cubit states. What would we like to get out of that map? And what are the tricks we might be able to use to create a map that allows us to see the 2 qubit states and how those evolve.

Sebastian Hassinger: 24:24

Yes.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 24:24

So, so it took a bit of, like, you know, thinking and, calculating, but, basically came up with a way of doing that. And the trick is to use, sort of subspaces of the full space. So a full 2 cubits space, there's 2 problems with that. Even if we're just talking about pure quantum states. So problem number 1 is that's gonna be 6 dimensions.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 24:46

So that that's that's a problem.

Kevin Rowney: 24:47

For starters. Yeah.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 24:48

For starters. And problem number 2 is that topology of these spaces is also, problematic to visualize. So even in two dimensions, there's something called a projected plane, which, is not a visualizable space. It's 2 dimensional space, but like I cannot think about this, what the space looks like. So, we we have to, essentially take a subspace, a sort of a cross section of this fuller space and come with a visualization for that.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 25:15

And we thought about different ways of doing that, but, we just, had this paper, accepted to the American Journal of Physics, which is I think one of the premier education journals in the country. And it's gonna be the cover story next month. So I was excited about that on Thursday. Yeah. So I got that news on Thursday, and then Nguyen passed the resolution on Friday.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 25:34

So it was a good good

Kevin Rowney: 25:35

So next week? Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 25:38

And, that paper's up in the archive. People can find it there now.

Sebastian Hassinger: 25:41

Yeah. We'll link to it in the show notes. And you you also I'll also put a link to the the website that you shared with us where you can actually play with some of these visualizations. It's really fun, actually.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 25:51

Yeah. And so the the point of these visualizations is, you know, the paper itself, I would say you probably need a kind of, like, undergraduate familiarity with quantum mechanics to read through the whole thing. But you can take pieces of that and translate that down to a much lower level of, like, here's a sort of first image to point to to understand the map of quantum states. And I'm actually working with, a group called CPAP, which does physics education posters primarily for high schools. And they have posters about, you know, gravitation and nuclear physics and things like that.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 26:20

So we're developing a quantum poster for next year. And I've taken some of these pictures and translated those downstream to, like, the sort of high school level, or just, like, kind of cartoons. But they tell you this sort of very basics, in this case, just of single cubits. And, I think one one thing I realized in sort of working on this paper was that everybody is drawing their block sphere incorrectly. Or maybe I saw that.

Kevin Rowney: 26:45

I saw that

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 26:46

in the paper. That's what Yeah. So put it more charitably, like, there there this this sphere is this map of sort of all possible single qubit states. But if you try to think about, okay, I wanna read from a point on the map to particular values like probabilities or particular numbers in my state vector representation or particular entries in my density matrix. Like, can you read off those numbers from your map?

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 27:11

Can you go back and forth? Or given the numbers, can you plot that on the map? And, it turns out that people have picked the block sphere typically to have a radius of 1. And the reason for that is that they like to think about state vectors as being normalized, having length length of 1. And so they're like, well, then the points on the surface of the sphere, which are the pure states, those should, those should be at a sort of distance one from the center.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 27:34

But it

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 27:34

turns out if you just make a minor switch, and I'm sure there's other people who know this, but I never found it anywhere in textbooks or on the Wikipedia article or whatever. If you make a switch and change the radius to be 1 half and scale it, all of a sudden, like all the numbers and the density matrix and the column vector representations and the probabilities all become much more directly readable off the diagram. And so it's really simple. I mean, I ran across this video over the weekend of this guy who was talking about, calculating density matrices. So the for those who don't know, a density matrix is is something you would use to figure out if you have a, you know, a cubit that might be in this state, might be in this state, or might be in this state, but you don't know.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 28:14

It's a kind of epistemic probability. Like, how can I encapsulate that at 1 matrix? And so, in this case, he uses an example of like, well, maybe you have a spin points up, 1 third chance of that, 1 third chance is pointing down, and 1 third chance is pointing to the right. And then you go through this long algebraic calculation to figure out what this matrix is. But when we got to the end of that, I realized, you know what?

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 28:36

I could have found that matrix in my head. I can think about the picture and I know how to move those points around and I know the points, and I could just read off the entries from that. And that's kind of stunning that, like, you could just do that without doing a bunch of algebra. And then there would be a follow-up question of, like, that was a matrix written down in a particular coordinate system, particular basis. And if I ask the follow-up question, like, instead of writing that in the the up down basis, write that in the right left basis.

Kevin Rowney: 29:01

The left right. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 29:02

Like, you would most people would go back to the drawing board. They would have to bring in some other unit turning matrices to do I

Kevin Rowney: 29:08

rerun the entire yeah. Calculation.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 29:10

I I can again do that in my head. Right? And just because I understand, the geometry of the block sphere with this adjustment about the radius. And, pretty much everybody I showed this to realize is like, oh, this is actually much better. But I think we're probably gonna have an easier time getting the United Nations to declare a national year than getting people to change their blogosphere radius.

Kevin Rowney: 29:33

Oh, that's great, man.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 29:34

We'll we'll see. But anyway, so that's that's the start of the paper. So they're talking about that. And in this 2 qubit visualization, which was useful mainly because it allows you to have, like, again, a single point moving sort of through a space. And this this space turns out to be kind of a weird shape.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 29:50

It's a it's a donut with a donut shaped hole in it. Mhmm. So if you imagine like a a cream filled, well, I guess not properly, like a a regular donut with, with, with a donut shape hollowed out in inside the donut. You, you, you bit into the donut, there's, there's a hole inside. So you move through that space.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 30:06

And this is why it's hard that's much harder to visualize. This is why we made these online visualizations.

Sebastian Hassinger: 30:11

Right.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 30:11

You actually can get a very nice set of a sub subset of states, 2 qubits states that exist. And it also a lot of the logic gates that use in quantum information, like, you know, CNOT gates, Hadamard gates, notation gates. Like, those all just map within the subspace and map points in the subspace to itself.

Kevin Rowney: 30:30

And So so really a really powerful pedagogy tool in that respect Because, I mean, the gates the gates could be formidable for people who are, like, getting into the subject anew. Yeah.

Sebastian Hassinger: 30:38

Well, and that was my first thought when I was playing with the 2 cubic gate visualization is is are you gonna do it would be great just to have buttons of the standard gates down below and, like, hit it and just watch the transformation of the state. That would be super powerful.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 30:52

That's something we'd like to work on. So, I mean, I work at a undergraduate only institution. So Bard College doesn't have a graduate program or graduate student. So it kind of is up to whether there's an undergrad who wanders in my office, who's like, I wanna do a program or project related to this, whether it happens or not.

Sebastian Hassinger: 31:07

Well, I mean, I've heard the International Year of Quantum is coming up, so maybe there'll be more motivation.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 31:13

Yeah. And if if somebody sees those and like, I wanna make a better updated version, like, please, I'll send you the codes. You can copy them as much as you'd like.

Sebastian Hassinger: 31:20

Have you thought about making it an open source

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 31:23

project? Yeah. I think it's probably it's on GitHub, the the Oh, okay. Cool. JavaScript into those Already.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 31:27

Yeah. Which we we should probably link to that repository if people wanna get it. But you can, you know, download That's

Sebastian Hassinger: 31:33

a whole other sort of we talked about sort of, you know, education communication, but I I think there's a huge role potentially for the International Year of Quantum to enlist more software developers to start working on these open source projects. Because the thing I've learned from working with the Unitary Fund, who do a bunch of micro grants to support open source quantum software development and do a unitary hack, which is on right now, annually to to enlist people to start hacking away at at quantum software repos is that a a classical developer can be very useful in these, these software development projects without having a PhD level of quantum knowledge necessarily. So, it's a great sort of collaboration starting point between someone who's more, more classically skilled in front of somebody who's got the the quantum skill base.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 32:26

Right. And, yeah, you don't need a lot of background, and the the most complicated visualization on there was programmed by a student who I think he started as a junior undergraduate. Right?

Sebastian Hassinger: 32:36

Amazing. That's awesome. That's awesome.

Kevin Rowney: 32:39

Cool. A lot a lot of great motivators to read the paper. I mean, you know, like Yeah. Just the the beauty of the visualization, you know, the ability to do, you know, in your head basic calculations for the density matrices. So it's a it sounds like a a strong and very exciting read, so I can't wait to take it at, at greater length.

Kevin Rowney: 32:55

Thank you for that, forwarding that to us. That was really

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 32:57

cool. I think that I mean, one thing that the paper foregrounds a little bit that I'm a big evangelist on is, introducing much earlier mixed states and and density matrices. Just the concept of

Kevin Rowney: 33:09

mixed states. Yes.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 33:10

And the the the the barrier to that though has been, okay, it was challenging enough to deal with sort of vectors, the pure states, but all might be matrices. Yeah. Now you're into tensors and things like that. So it's incredibly useful to have, like, you know, a visualization that you can turn to, like, before you get to the math. Here's this.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 33:29

I mean, most people in their head have a kind of a visual image of a vector. And so even when I talk about a complex abstract Hilbert space vector, people will still rely on the idea of that. But if I say, when you talk about a matrix, what's the picture in your head? You may not have any picture. Right?

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 33:46

And so, part of this is sort of giving you more of a picture in your head for, like, here's a here's a sort of point in space that corresponds to a matrix that you can move around, which is, I think gonna be, I think very useful for moving downstream. This idea of mixed stage, which I think are so so incredibly important to understanding the sort of basic categories of things in quantum mechanics. Yeah. Mhmm.

Sebastian Hassinger: 34:08

So beautiful. Really cool. That's really great. It is, and it it does feel like, you know, a a poster child, if you will, for the type of thing that I I hope we see more of during this international year of quantum because it makes it more accessible. It's a tool for building intuition and and, you know, introducing and putting more attention on these incredibly powerful concepts that that have enormous potential for us all, as the science and the technology develops.

Sebastian Hassinger: 34:37

So, thank you so much, Paul, for joining us. This has been really, really great. I'm super excited about the UN resolution. I'm super excited about what you have planned for for 2025.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 34:48

Oh, thanks so much for having me. Yeah.

Kevin Rowney: 35:28

Wow, that was so cool. Yeah, just a really ambitious effort really, the public outreach on helping people understand both the joy and the power of these ideas. I mean, it's such an ambitious project. I'm I'm really impressed they took this one on. But, you know, now is the time.

Kevin Rowney: 35:43

It's this, you know, centennial year of the right wing. 1925. So pivotal, right, the history. So, yeah, really cool stuff. And also, I gotta tell you, man, I'm I was just excited to have, you know, it's a little bit back and forth on the subject of visualization of quantum systems.

Kevin Rowney: 35:57

It's been a private obsession or fascination of mine for some years. I mean, how to take that on. So your brand new research breakthrough in that subject was actually pretty cool.

Sebastian Hassinger: 36:06

Yeah. Really cool. Yeah. And I I really liked I mean, you know, it really was a concrete example of the type of thing that the International Year of Quantum hopefully will will enable and promote. It's such a difficult subject to, to build from scratch a quantum intuition.

Paul Cadden-Zimansky: 36:25

Oh, yeah.

Sebastian Hassinger: 36:26

Yeah. And it's it you know, I think that things like that are you know, it it'd be very easy just to sort of take as rote the block sphere, and, you know, sort of the the the music notation, formatting of of writing circuits. But they both have significant drawbacks, and they're both things that need that constant, you know, reassessment and improvements that will make them more powerful and more accessible. So it was really great to see that.

Kevin Rowney: 36:52

So fantastic.

Sebastian Hassinger: 36:53

Yeah. It was awesome. So, yeah, thanks, Kevin. Thanks for rejoining us on the podcast. I'm really happy to have you

Kevin Rowney: 36:59

back. Yeah.

Sebastian Hassinger: 36:59

Yeah. Yeah. You were missed. You were missed. The fans were clamoring for your return.

Kevin Rowney: 37:05

You're killing me. Thank you. You're very kind.

Ghana delegate to the UN: 37:20

Ghana also thanks UNESCO and ANTAC for all the support provided prior to the negotiation of the resolution, as well as all delegations who have co sponsored the resolution. Lastly, we look forward to an observance that will make a difference and invite all member states, members of the specialized agencies, observers of the general assembly, as well as organizations within the United Nations System, and other international regional organizations, academia, civil society, the private sector, and other relevant stakeholders to support the implementation of this resolution. Proclaiming 2025 as the international year of quantum science and technology. I thank you for your attention.

Kevin Rowney: 38:08

Okay. That's it for this episode of The New Quantum Era, a podcast by Sebastian Hassinger and Kevin Roney. Our cool theme music was composed and played by Omar Costa Hamido. Production work is done by our wonderful team over at Podfi. If you are at all like us and enjoy this rich, deep, and interesting topic, please subscribe to our podcast on whichever platform you may stream from.

Kevin Rowney: 38:37

And even consider, if you like what you've heard today, reviewing us on iTunes and or mentioning us on your preferred social media platforms. We're just trying to get the word out on this fascinating topic and would really appreciate your help spreading the word and building community. Thank you so much for your time.