Matt Leifer » News

Apologies

mleifer — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:25:19 +0000

The website has not been updated for a long time due to recent illness. There are two new preprints (see below) and the publications section has been updated. Related posts:Site Updated Reorganizing my web empire Shameless self-promotion Related posts:

FQXi Article

mleifer — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 03:10:52 +0000

Publications

mleifer — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 03:09:13 +0000

Generalized No-Broadcasting Theorem has been accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett. and Quantum Graphical Models and Belief Propagation has been accepted for publication in Ann. Phys.

Major site update

mleifer — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 03:06:58 +0000

I’ve moved most of the dynamic content to the homepage, simplified the navigation and added functionality to the sidebar. Related posts:Site Updated Quantum Foundations Resources Related posts:

Fqxi article

mleifer — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 20:11:26 +0000

A popular article about my fqxi project has just appeared on the fqxi community page. Download it here.

3 Month visit opportunity for a graduate student

mleifer — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 22:34:03 +0000

There is an opportunity for a graduate student to visit Perimeter Institute for a 3 month period to work with me on a technical project in Quantum Foundations. The main idea is to give students who are interested in quantum foundations, but working in other fields for their grad studies, the opportunity to take a break and think about quantum theory seriously for a short period. The position is funded by FQXi under my project “Abstract Quantum Probability” and the project would be selected by mutual agreement from one of the topics covered by the grant.

Funding will be provided, but the exact amount depends on Canadian immigration issues, i.e. we can only provide subsistence expenses (travel, accommodation and a per-diem for meals) to non-Canadian residents. The visit can take place at any time during the year, depending on what is most convenient for the student and myself.

If you are interested then please send your CV, a short (one or two paragraph) explanation of why you would like to visit PI and a letter of recommendation from your advisor to me at this address. There is no official deadline for applications and the search will continue until a suitable candidate is found. However, I expect there will be enough applications to make a decision by the end of September.

For further details of the possible areas of research for this project, please see the reading list below.

Information processing In generalized probabilistic theories:
- J. Barrett, Information Processing in Generalized Probabilistic Theories.
- H. Barnum, J. Barrett, M. Leifer and A. Wilce, Cloning and Broadcasting in Generic Probabilistic Theories.
Generalized subsystems in quantum theory:
- Project would be related to H. Barnum, G. Ortiz, R. Somma and L. Viola, Generalization of entanglement to convex operational theories: Entanglement relative to a subspace of observables.
Causality from Statistics
Bayesian foundations of quantum theory
- Many papers by Caves, Fuchs and Schack would be good background reading, particularly quant-ph/0404156, quant-ph/0205039, quant-ph/0206110 and quant-ph/0106133.
- M. Leifer, Conditional Density Operators and the Subjectivity of Quantum Operations.
Axiomatic foundations of quantum theory
- L. Hardy, Quantum Theory from Five Reasonable Axioms.
- C. Fuchs, Quantum Mechanics as Quantum Information (and only a little more).
- G. d’Ariano, Operational Axioms for a C*-algebraic formulation of quantum mechanics as well as earlier related papers by d’Ariano.
- Also the papers on information processing in generalized probabilistic theories and this paper by H. Barnum.

Back into the swing

mleifer — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 17:39:33 +0000

After a brief lack of blogging inspiration I’m hoping to get back into the swing, starting with this post over at fqxi on a recent Workshop.

Favicon Added

mleifer — Wed, 23 May 2007 22:57:29 +0000

I know it’s nerdy, but I now have a favicon. Cool, eh! Related posts:Publishing Online vs. Traditional Academic Publishers Quantum Foundations Resources Related posts:

Quantum Foundations Resources

mleifer — Mon, 14 May 2007 16:35:30 +0000

Since I get asked a lot, I have added a collection of links to resources on quantum foundations to the About page. Any suggestions for additions will be gratefully received, especially if you know of any good quality popular talks that can be viewed online.

P.S. In case you were thinking of asking, neither “The Tao of Physics” or “What The Bleep Do We Know?” are ever going to be added.

Changes

mleifer — Tue, 08 May 2007 02:53:04 +0000

OK, it is time to announce some changes that I alluded to in comments to an earlier post.

Firstly, I have decided to take an invitation to blog over at the new FQXi community pages. At the moment, I’m just doing this on an experimental basis for a couple of months and I am fully intending to bring my foundational musings back over here at the end of it. One reason for this is that the FQXi blogs currently work a bit more like forums than a regular blog and they are missing a number of key features, e.g. rss feeds, that I think are important. Still, I think it will be worthwhile as I will potentially be able to reach a wider audience of people working on fundamental physics who would not read this blog. For now, I will be posting links here when I write a FQXi post, so you can keep track of them. The first one on ontological vs. epistemic wave-vectors can be found here.

Secondly, I have decided that my strategy to keep this blog purely focussed on foundations and maintain another blog about technology in academia is not really working. For one thing, I can hardly ever be bothered to write posts on the other blog and it is certainly not the case that I have groundbreaking new things to say about foundations every day. Therefore, I think it would be an improvement if I allow myself to write about a wider array of subjects in fundamental science and other things that I think are interesting. Rest assured that foundations will remain the focus, so this will not become just another general physics blog and you will definitely never find me writing any posts about my pet dog.