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This guide is intended for the Chapman undergraduate students who are attending this year’s APS Global Summit. It may be useful for others as well.
The APS Global Summit is a ginormous event, featuring dozens of parallel sessions at any given time. It can be exciting for first-time attendees, but also overwhelming. Here, I compile some advice on how to navigate the meeting and some suggestions for sessions and events you might like to attend.
General Advice
- Use the online schedule and the mobile app to help you navigate the meeting. If you create a login, the online schedule allows you to add things to your personalized schedule, which you can view on the app at the meeting. This is a very useful thing to do because making decisions of where to go on the fly is difficult.
- Do not overschedule yourself. I know it is tempting to figure out how to go to as many things as you can, and run between sessions on opposite sides of the convention center. This will be harder to accomplish than you imagine. The meeting gets very crowded and it is exhausting to sit through a full three-hour session of talks. Schedule some break time and, where possible, schedule blocks of time in one location rather than running all over the place.
- You will have noticed that most talks at the meeting are 12min long (10min + 2min). These are called contributed talks. Since they are so short, they are more like adverts for the work than a detailed explanation. They are usually aimed at experts and, quite frankly, many speakers do not know how to give these talks well. It is not worth attending these talks unless one of the following applies:
- You are already an expert in that research area.
- You are strongly considering doing research in that area.
- You are there to support your friends and colleagues who are speaking in that session.
- You are so curious about the research area that you are prepared to sit through a lot of opaque talks to get some idea of what is going on in the area.
- The session is on a topic that is unusually accessible or the session is aimed at undergraduate students.
- Instead, you should prioritize attending the following kinds of talks, which you can search for using the filters on the schedule:
- Plenary talks: These are aimed at a general physics audience and are usually by famous speakers (famous by physics standards anyway). Some of these might also be…
- Popular science talks: Aimed at the general public.
- Invited Sessions: These sessions consist of 30min talks by invited speakers in a common research area. There is no guarantee that they will be accessible to novices, but it is much more likely than with the contributed talks. Go to any invited sessions on areas of physics you are curious about.
- Focus Sessions: Focus sessions consist mainly of contributed talks, but they also have one or two 30min invited talks. It is not considered rude to switch sessions between talks, so do not be afraid to just attend the invited talks. They are not always scheduled at the beginning of the session. In fact, some groups deliberately stagger the times of the invited talks so that people can see the invited talks in more than one focus session.
- There are sessions that list “Undergraduate Students” as part of their target audience. A lot of these are “Undergraduate Research” sessions. It can be interesting to go to one or two of these to see the variety of undergraduate research experiences that are on offer. However, I would not advise only going to sessions on this list. For one thing, undergraduate research projects are not banned from the other sessions, so many of the best undergraduate projects will not be in those sessions. Going to sessions by topic is a better bet most of the time.
- It is helpful to filter the sessions on the schedule by the organizing Unit (Division, Topical Group, or Forum). You can find a list of APS units here. For example, if you are particularly interested in Quantum Information and Computation then you will want to look at the sessions organized by DQI (Division of Quantum Information). Sessions organized by Forums are often particularly accessible, as they tend to be about less technical issues (DEI, Education, History and Philosophy, etc.)
The next sections contain some more specific suggestions about events, talks and sessions that you might like to attend.
Orientation and Networking Events
I have never been to an orientation or networking event at the APS meeting, but then again I did not go to the APS meeting as a student. Networking is one of the best things you can do at the meeting, so do take any opportunities to meet and talk to people.
Sunday March 16
| Time | Event | Location |
| 2:00pm – 3:00pm | First Time Attendee Orientation | Anaheim Convention Center, 201AB (Level 2) |
| 3:00pm – 4:00pm | Undergraduate Student Get Together | Anaheim Convention Center, 201AB (Level 2) |
Tuesday March 18
| Time | Event | Location |
| 12:30pm – 2:00pm | Students Lunch with the Experts | Anaheim Convention Center, Exhibit Hall B |
The student lunch with the Experts is especially worth it because you get a one-on-eight meeting with a physicist who works on a topic you are interested in. You also get a free lunch. Spaces are limited, so you need to sign up for it on the Sunday, and early if you want to get your choice of expert.
Generally speaking, food is very expensive in the convention center. Therefore, the more places you can get free food the better. There are networking events, some of which are aimed at students and some of which have free meals. Other good bets for free food include the receptions and business meetings. (With a business meeting you may have to first sit through a boring administrative meeting for an APS unit, but at least the DQI meeting will feature me talking about The Quantum Times.)
Sessions Chaired by Chapman Faculty
The next few sections highlight talks and sessions that involve people at Chapman. You may want to come to these not only to support local people, but also to find out more about areas of research that you might want to do undergraduate research projects in.
The following sessions are being chaired by Chapman faculty. The chair does not give a talk during the session, but acts as a host. But chairs usually work in the areas that the session is about, so it is a good way to get more of an overview of things they are interested in.
| Day | Time | Chair | Session Title | Location |
| Monday 17 | 11:30pm – 1:54pm | Matt Leifer | Quantum Foundations: Bell Inequalities and Causality | Anaheim Convention Center, 256B (Level 2) |
| Wednesday 19 | 8:00am – 10:48am | Andrew Jordan | Optimal Quantum Control | Anaheim Convention Center, 258A (Level 2) |
| Wednesday 19 | 11:30am – 1:30pm | Bibek Bhandari | Explorations in Quantum Computing | Virtual Only, Room 1 |
Talks involving Chapman Faculty, Postdocs and Students
The talks listed below all have someone who is currently affiliated with Chapman as one or more of the authors. The Chapman person is not necessarily the person giving the talk.
The people giving the talks, especially if they are students or postdocs, would appreciate your support. It is also a good way of finding out more about research that is going on at Chapman.
Monday March 17
| Time | Speaker | Title | Location |
| 9:36am – 9:48am | Irwin Huang | Beyond Single Photon Dissipation in Kerr Cat Qubits | Ahaheim Convention Center, 161 (Level 1) |
| 9:48am – 10am | Bingcheng Qing | Benchmarking Single-Qubit Gates on a Noise-Biased Qubit: Kerr cat qubit | Anaheim Convention Center, 161 (Level 1) |
| 10:12am – 10:24am | Ahmed Hjar | Strong light-matter coupling to protect quantum information with Schrodinger cat states | Anaheim Convention Center, 161 (Level 1) |
| 10:24am – 10:36am | Bibek Bhandari | Decoherence in dynamically protected qubits | Anaheim Convention Center, 161 (Level 1) |
| 10:36am – 10:48am | Ke Wang | Control-Z two-qubit gate on 2D Kerr cats | Anaheim Convention Center, 161 (Level 1) |
| 4:12pm – 4:24pm | Adithi Ajith | Stabilizing two-qubit entanglement using stochastic path integral formalism | Anaheim Convention Center, 258A (Level 2) |
| 4:36pm – 4:48 pm | Alok Nath Singh | Capturing an electron during a virtual transition via continuous measurement | Anaheim Convention Center, 252B (Level 2) |
Tuesday March 18
| Time | Speaker | Title | Location |
| 8:48am – 9:00am | Alexandria O Udenkwo | Characterizing the energy and efficiency of an entanglement fueled engine in a circuit QED processor | Anaheim Convention Center, 162 (Level 1) |
| 12:30pm – 12:42pm | Yile Ying | A review and analysis of six extended Wigner’s friend arguments | Anaheim Convention Center, 256B (Level 2) |
| 1:54pm – 2:06pm | Indrajit Sen | ΡΤ-symmetric axion electrodynamics: A pilot-wave approach | Anaheim Marriott, Platinum 1 |
| 3:48pm – 4:00pm | Chuanhong Liu | Planar Fluxonium Qubits Design with 4-way Coupling | Anaheim Convention Center, 162 (Level 1) |
| 4:36pm – 4:48pm | Robert Czupryniak | Reinforcement Learning Meets Quantum Control – Artificially Intelligent Maxwell’s Demon | Anaheim Convention Center, 258A (Level 2) |
Wednesday March 19
| Time | Speaker | Title | Location |
| 10:36am – 10:48am | Dominic Briseno-Colunga | Dynamical Sweet Spot Manifolds of Bichromatically Driven Floquet Qubits | Anaheim Convention Center, 162 (Level 1) |
| 2:30pm – 2:42pm | Sayani Ghosh | Equilibria and Effective Rates of Transition in Astromers | Anaheim Marriott, Platinum 7 |
| 3:00pm – 3:12pm | Matt Leifer | A Foundational Perspective on PT-Symmetric Quantum Theory | Anaheim Convention Center, 151 (Level 1) |
| 5:36pm – 5:48pm | Sacha Greenfield | A unified picture for quantum Zeno and anti-Zeno effects | Anaheim Convention Center, 161 (Level 1) |
Thursday March 20
| Time | Speaker | Title | Location |
| 1:18pm – 1:30pm | Lucas Burns | Delayed Choice Lorentz Transformations on a Qubit | Anaheim Convention Center, 256B (Level 2) |
| 4:48pm – 5:00pm | Noah J Stevenson | Design of fluxonium coupling and readout via SQUID couplers | Anaheim Convention Center, 161 (Level 1) |
| 5:00pm – 5:12pm | Kagan Yanik | Flux-Pumped Symmetrically Threaded SQUID Josephson Parametric Amplifier | Anaheim Convention Center, 204C (Level 2) |
| 5:00pm – 5:12pm | Abhishek Chakraborty | Two-qubit gates for fluxonium qubits using a tunable coupler | Anaheim Convention Center, 161 (Level 1) |
Friday March 21
| Time | Speaker | Title | Location |
| 10:12am – 10:24am | Nooshin M. Estakhri | Distinct statistical properties of quantum two-photon backscattering | Anaheim Convention Center, 253A (Level 2) |
| 10:48am – 11:00am | Le Hu | Entanglement dynamics in collision models and all-to-all entangled states | Anaheim Hilton, San Simeon AB (Level 4) |
| 11:54am – 12:06pm | Luke Valerio | Optimal Design of Plasmonic Nanotweezers with Genetic Algorithm | Anaheim Convention Center, 253A (Level 2) |
Posters involving Chapman Faculty, Postdocs and Students
Poster sessions last longer than talks, so you can view the posters at your leisure. The presenter is supposed to stand by their poster and talk to people who come to see it. The following posters are being presented by Chapman undergraduates. Please drop by and support them.
Thursday March 20, 10:00am – 1:00pm, Anaheim Convention Center, Exhibit Hall A
| Poster Number | Presenter | Title |
| 267 | Ponthea Zahraii | Machine learning-assisted characterization of optical forces near gradient metasurfaces |
| 400 | Clara Hunt | What the white orchid can teach us about radiative cooling |
| 401 | Nathan Taormina | Optimizing Insulation and Geometrical Designs for Enhanced Sub-Ambient Radiative Cooling Efficiency |
Leifer’s Recommendations
These are sessions that reflect my own interests. It is a good bet that you will find me at one of these, unless I am teaching, or someone I know is speaking somewhere else. There are multiple sessions at the same time, but what I will typically do is select the one that has the most interesting looking talk at the time and switch sessions from time to time or take a break from sessions entirely if I get bored.
Monday March 17
| Time | Session Title | Location |
| 8:00am – 11:00am | Quantum Science and Technology at the National DOE Research Centers: Progress and Opportunities | Anaheim Convention Center, 158 (Level 1) |
| 8:00am – 11:00am | Learning and Benchmarking Quantum Channels | Anaheim Convention Center, 258A (Level 2) |
| 10:45am – 12:33pm | Beginners Guide to Quantum Gravity | Anaheim Marriott, Grand Ballroom Salon E |
| 11:30am – 1:54pm | Quantum Foundations: Bell Inequalities and Causality | Anaheim Convention Center, 256B (Level 2) |
| 1:30pm – 3:18pm | History and Physics of the Manhattan Project and the Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki | Anaheim Marriott, Platinum 9 |
| 3:00pm – 6:00pm | DQI Thesis Award Session | Anaheim Convention Center, 158 (Level 1) |
Tuesday March 18
| Time | Session Title | Location |
| 8:30am – 10:18am | Forum on Outreach and Engagement of the Public Invited Session | Anaheim Marriott, Orange County Salon 1 |
| 10:45am – 12:33pm | Pais Prize Session | Anaheim Marriott, Platinum 2 |
| 11:30am – 2:30pm | Applied Quantum Foundations | Anaheim Convention Center, 256B (Level 2) |
| 1:30pm – 3:18pm | Mini-Symposium: Research Validated Assessments in Education | Anaheim Marriott, Grand Ballroom Salon D |
| 1:30pm – 3:18pm | Research in Quantum Mechanics Instruction | Anaheim Marriott, Orange County Salon 1 |
| 3:00pm – 5:24pm | Landauer-Bennett Award Prize Symposium | Anaheim Convention Center, 158 (Level 1) |
| 3:00pm – 6:00pm | Undergraduate and Graduate Education I | Anaheim Convention Center, 263A (Level 2) |
| 3:00pm – 6:00pm | Invited Session for the Forum on Outreach and Engagement of the Public | Anaheim Convention Center, 155 (Level 1) |
| 3:45pm – 5:33pm | Highlights from the Special Collections of AJP and TPT on Teaching About Quantum | Anaheim Marriott, Platinum 3 |
| 6:15pm – 9:00pm | DQI Business Meeting | Anaheim Convention Center, 160 (Level 1) |
Wednesday March 19
| Time | Session Title | Location |
| 11:30am – 2:30pm | Quantum Information: Thermodynamics out of Equilibrium | Anaheim Hilton, San Simeon AB (Level 4) |
| 3:00pm – 5:36pm | Quantum Foundations: Measurements, Contextuality, and Classicality | Anaheim Convention Center, 151 (Level 1) |
| 3:00pm – 6:00pm | Beyond Knabenphysik: Women in the History of Quantum Physics | Anaheim Convention Center, 154 (Level 1) |
Thursday March 20
| Time | Session Title | Location |
| 8:00am – 10:48am | Undergraduate Education | Anaheim Convention Center, 263A (Level 2) |
| 8:00am – 11:00am | Open Quantum Systems and Many-Body Dynamics | Anaheim Hilton, San Simeon AB (Level 4) |
| 11:30am – 2:30pm | Time in Quantum Mechanics and Thermodynamics | Anaheim Hilton, California C (Ballroom Level) |
| 11:30am – 2:30pm | Intersections of Quantum Science and Society | Anaheim Convention Center, 159 (Level 1) |
| 11:30am – 2:18pm | Quantum Foundations: Relativity, Gravity, and Geometry | Anaheim Convention Center, 256B (Level 2) |
| 3:00pm – 6:00pm | The Early History of Quantum Information Physics | Anaheim Convention Center, 154 (Level 1) |
| 3:00pm – 6:00pm | Quantum Thermalization: Understanding the Dynamical Foundation of Quantum Thermodynamics | Anaheim Hilton, California A (Ballroom Level) |
Friday March 21
| Time | Session Title | Location |
| 8:00am – 11:00am | Structures in Quantum Systems | Anaheim Convention Center, 258A (Level 2) |
| 8:00am – 10:24am | Science Communication in an Age of Misinformation and Disinformation | Anaheim Convention Center, 156 (Level 1) |
The Exhibition Hall
It is worthwhile to spend some time in the exhibit hall. It features a Careers Fair and a Grad School Fair, which will be larger and more relevant to physics students than other such fairs you might attend in the area.
But, of course, the main purpose of going to the exhibition hall is to acquire SWAG. Some free items I have obtained from past APS exhibit halls include:
- Rubik’s cubes
- Balls that light up when you bounce them
- Yo-Yos
- Wooden model airplanes
- Snacks
- T-shits
- Tote bags
- Enough stationery items to last for the rest of your degree
- Free magazines and journals
- Free or heavily discounted books
I recommend going when the hall first opens to get the highest quality SWAG.
Fun Stuff
Other fun stuff to do at this year’s meeting includes:
- QuantumFest: This starts with the Quantum Jubilee event on Saturday, but there are events all week some of which you have to be registered for the meeting for. Definitely reserve a spot for the LabEscape escpae room. I have done one of their rooms before and it is fun.
- Physics Rock-n-Roll Singalong: A very nerdy APS meeting tradition. Worth attending once in your life. Probably only once though.