The International Year of Quantum Science and Technology with Paul Cadden-Zimansky

The New Quantum Era, a podcast by Sebastian Hassinger. And Kevin Rowney.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Sure. Yeah. Alright.

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.

Right. Right.

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

Right.

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. We do need to work on this.

Yeah.

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. There's actually about over 70 countries cosponsoring that

resolution.

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

actually Ghana is involved. Yeah. It's

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. 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.

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.

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.

Yes.

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

Exactly. But what

are we pointing at?

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

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.

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.

Quantum sensors. Yeah.

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.

on your

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?

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.

They may be listening.

If they're listening, yeah, next year

of loss.

They subscribe to the podcast. Yeah.

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

that direction.

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.

year is,

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.

Right.

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

Well, here's the first one right here.

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?

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

You just go nuts. Yeah.

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.

part of? Right.

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.

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?

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.

Yeah.

Other resources.

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.

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.

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.

Right.

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.

Wow.

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. 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.

Right. That's really cool.

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.

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.

Mike and I did the classic. Yeah.

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

Yes.

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?

Yes.

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. So that that's that's a problem.

For starters. Yeah.

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.

So next week? Yeah. Yeah.

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

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.

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.

I saw that

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?

The left right. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

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

rerun the entire yeah. Calculation.

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.

Oh, that's great, man.

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.

Right.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Have you thought about making it an open source

project? Yeah. I think it's probably it's on GitHub, the the Oh, okay. Cool. JavaScript into those Already. Yeah. Which we we should probably link to that repository if people wanna get it. But you can, you know, download That's

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.

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?

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

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

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

mixed states. Yes.

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.

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.

Oh, thanks so much for having me. Yeah.

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.

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.

Oh, yeah.

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.

So fantastic.

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

back. Yeah.

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

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

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.

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.