Quantum Error Correction with James Wootton

Key Takeaways:

[3:23] James introduces himself.

[4:20] James talks about his engagement in game development using the public IBM Cloud quantum systems.

[5:40] James explains why he said he expected the field of quantum computing to be more accessible by starting with hobbyists.

[7:02] James talks about the theory behind quantum computing.

[8:23] James speaks of how to engage people in quantum computing by proving Einstein was wrong in how he saw quantum mechanics.

[12:39] What are some of the things that James has seen that were sort of super inventive ways to use quantum computing in a game context?

[14:20] James talks about the quantum emoji generator.

[15:26] James shares his opinion in regard to Quantum Chess.

[16:48] James talks about a new game called Quantum Odyssey

[18:08] James shares an experience working with kids when he was at the University of Basel.

[19:55] James talks about his passion for quantum error correction.

[20:41] James tells the difference between quantum error correction and quantum error mitigation.

[24:18] Sebastian talks about mitigation strategies.

[27:00] Could it be that lots of the statistical tradecraft with respect to analyzing data and attempting to interpret its meaning in the presence of acknowledged errors and the signal is perhaps a foundational part of QAM? 

[28:01] What are the major and most interesting themes to James these days? 

[29:36] James explains the threshold theorem.

[34:33] What is the current math result in terms of the threshold of error occurrence that you need to get to get over the hump?

[35:16] James talks about the experimental results where people have built minimal examples of quantum error-correcting codes

[36:01] James talks about a recent experiment made at IBM quantum.

[36:40] What does surface code mean?

[39:20] Are there any other types of errors that quantum error correction has to struggle with? Or are the bit flip and phase error the two main aspects?

[41:55] James talks about the recent research on silicon spin qubits.

[45:39] Sebastian and Kevin share the highlights of an amazing conversation with James.

Mentioned in this episode:

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Tweetables and Quotes:

“It's better if we start off by building a little bit of intuition, and then bringing in the maths, it's important to bring in the maths but I think it's better when the maths is describing an intuition that people already have and that's the starting point.” — James Wootton

“There have been experimental results already where people have built minimal examples of quantum error correcting codes and showing that they have a beneficial effect. So that's what happens when the noise is low enough. “ — James Wootton