Past Events

Scott Sheffield (MIT): 4D Hex and Baby Yang-Mills

October 20, 2026

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3:00PM - 4:00PM EDT

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Jefferson 368

In Person

Abstract: The 2D O(n) model is a very close analog of 4D lattice Yang-Mills. The quest to understand the former (mass gap, scaling limit, etc.) has been colloquially called the "baby Yang-Mills problem" or the "half million-dollar-problem." Now, several...

Zijian Song (Stony Brook): A potential method for logical gates via anyon permutations

August 7, 2026

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11:00AM - 12:00PM EDT

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Jefferson 368

In Person

Speaker: Zijian Song Title: A potential method for logical gates via anyon permutations Abstract: We construct explicit constant-depth local unitary circuits that realize general anyon permutations in Kitaev's quantum double models. This construction...

Guoliang Yu (Texas A&M): A Proof of Gromov’s Simplicial Volume Conjecture under a Mild Condition

July 20, 2026

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3:30PM - 4:30PM EDT

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Jefferson 368

In Person

Speaker: Guoliang Yu Ttitle: A Proof of Gromov’s Simplicial Volume Conjecture under a Mild Condition Abstract: I will report on recent joint work with Qiaochu Ma on Gromov’s 1986 conjecture that closed manifolds with positive scalar curvature should have...

Gian Michele Graf (ETH Zurich): An elementary derivation of the periodic table of topological matter

June 5, 2026

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3:00PM - 4:00PM EDT

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Jefferson 356

In Person

Speaker: Gian Michele Graf Title: An elementary derivation of the periodic table of topological matter Abstract: Band insulators and superconductors are of topological interest, depending on the dimension of physical space and on their symmetry classes...

William Simon (Tufts): Quantum Advantage in Resource Estimation

June 3, 2026

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3:00PM - 4:00PM EDT

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Jefferson 368

In Person

Title: Quantum Advantage in Resource Estimation Abstract: When will quantum computers be useful? Resource estimation - the process of determining how many qubits and operations are needed to run an algorithm - is central to answering this question...

Carter Gustin (Tufts): Quantum Simulation of Renormalized Quantum Field Theory Hamiltonians

May 20, 2026

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3:00PM - 4:00PM EDT

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Jefferson 368

In Person

Speaker: Carter Gustin Title: Quantum Simulation of Renormalized Quantum Field Theory Hamiltonians Abstract: The most accurate ab-initio calculations of hadronic structure have been achieved through lattice QCD, which is classically computationally...

Peter Love (Tufts): Non-contextual approximations, Magic, and Correlation energy

May 13, 2026

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3:00PM - 4:00PM EDT

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Jefferson 368

In Person

Title: Non-contextual approximations, Magic, and Correlation energy Abstract: What distinguishes quantum from classical computation? Contextuality, entanglement and more recently magic are leading measures of nonclassicality. I will describe non...

Michael Douglas (Harvard): Formalization of QFT

May 6, 2026

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3:00PM - 4:00PM EDT

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Jefferson 368

In Person

Speaker: Michael Douglas Title: Formalization of QFT Abstract: Interactive theorem proving with the Lean 4 theorem prover, Mathlib and AI coding assistants has recently become a powerful method for checking and developing rigorous mathematical proofs. In...

Kaifeng Bu (Ohio State): Hamiltonian Decoded Quantum Interferometry for General Pauli Hamiltonians

April 29, 2026

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3:00PM - 4:00PM EDT

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Jefferson 368 and Zoom https://harvard.zoom.us/j/779283357?pwd=MitXVm1pYUlJVzZqT3lwV2pCT1ZUQT09

Hybrid

Speaker: Kaifeng Bu (Ohio State) Title: Hamiltonian Decoded Quantum Interferometry for General Pauli Hamiltonians Abstract: Decoded Quantum Interferometry (DQI) has been recently proposed as a new quantum algorithm for optimization. Hamiltonian Decoded...

Sasha Geim (Harvard): A fault-tolerant neutral-atom architecture for universal quantum computation

March 3, 2026

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4:00PM - 5:00PM EST

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Jefferson 256 and Zoom https://harvard.zoom.us/j/779283357?pwd=MitXVm1pYUlJVzZqT3lwV2pCT1ZUQT09

Hybrid

Passcode: 657361 Speaker: Sasha Geim Title: A fault-tolerant neutral-atom architecture for universal quantum computation Abstract: Quantum error correction enables coherent computation on encoded logical qubits while simultaneously removing errors from...

Henrik Dreyer (Quantinuum): Superconducting pairing correlations on a 98-qubit trapped-ion quantum computer

February 10, 2026

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4:00PM - 5:00PM EST

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Zoom https://harvard.zoom.us/j/779283357?pwd=MitXVm1pYUlJVzZqT3lwV2pCT1ZUQT09

Virtual

Passcode: 657361 Speaker: Henrik Dreyer Title: Superconducting pairing correlations on a 98-qubit trapped-ion quantum computer Abstract: The Fermi-Hubbard model is the starting point for the simulation of many strongly correlated materials, including high...

Yasuyuki Kawahigashi (University of Tokyo/RIKEN): Tensor networks, fusion categories and operator algebras

October 23, 2025

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4:00PM - 5:00PM EDT

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Jefferson 368

In Person

Passcode: 657361 Speaker: Yasuyuki Kawahigashi Title: Tensor networks, fusion categories and operator algebras Abstract: Certain 4-tensors have been used to study two-dimensional topological order, and we identified them with bi-unitary connections in...