Rudy Marcus had more enthusiasm for science than almost anyone else I've known. He was 91 years old when I met him. @caltech.edu quantumfrontiers.com/2026/09/27/m...

Matthias Christandl @christandl.bsky.social: "What to speak about in the age of AI?" One might as well ask instead, "What to speak about in the age of younger, stronger colleagues?" Partial answer: your perspective...and results you developed with stronger colleagues.

I keep trying to say "Brown noise" and end up saying "Brownian noise." #onetrackmind

Ran into a colleague at the Fitzwilliam Museum on Sunday afternoon.

The (old) Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge, the site of many an experiment studied in undergrad modern-physics courses. In one such course, I was thrilled to redo the experiment from which J. J. Thomson inferred the electron's charge-to-mass ratio.

Student JJ Thio imitates Paul Dirac not only by discussing quantum theory over dinner at St. John's, Cambridge, but also in his choice of mathematical tool. Unlike in Dirac's time, though, magic is on the menu today. quantumfrontiers.com/2026/09/20/q...

Lots of quasiprobabilities, Fisher information, and algorithms: quantum foundations do underlie and enable technologies. Thanks to Girton College, Cambridge and the organizers for hosting a thought-provoking conference!

An artist came to last week's quantum conference @girtoncollege.bsky.social at Cambridge, and she created a piece from my talk! Does this work look like arxiv.org/abs/2601.20952 to you?

The last time Juan Maldacena presented a colloquium at my home institution, John Preskill @preskill.bsky.social introduced him...including by dancing the Maldacena---ahem, the Macarena---a craze that swept the world during the 1990s. How I wish I had a video.

I now agree with @quantumaephraim.bsky.social that the most productive physicist in the photo, as measured in terms of discoveries about the natural world, is the individual lying on the floor. @girtoncollege.bsky.social

Delighted to be spending the week in one of the most steampunk areas of Cambridge: Girton College @girtoncollege.bsky.social, founded in 1869 for women thinkers ahead of their time.

Lots of Gibbs sampling, tensor networks, thermalization, and barriers thereunto. Thanks to the Isaac Newton Institute for a lively "Dynamics of entanglement" conference!

Me: How many guides of punting tours are female? Guide of punting tour: Not many. We just don't receive many applications. Me: Funny, that's what I hear from physics departments.

To tell the truth, I haven't read Civilization and Its Discontents. But that doesn't mean I can't give a talk about thermodynamics and its non-Abelian discontents. Thanks to the Isaac Newton Institute for the excellent workshop last week! www.newton.ac.uk/seminar/51580/

[MMBW01] Thermalization and its non-Abelian discontents - Isaac Newton Institute

The quantum community has known for years that typical isolated quantum many-body systems thermalize internally. Symmetries constrain this thermalization,...

newton.ac.uk

Disappointingly, it sells glasses frames.

Not even at the Perimeter Institute @perimeterinstitute.bsky.social have I seen a chalkboard in the bathroom. (@Isaac Newton Institute)

How can quantum particle statistics help—or hinder—Maxwell’s demon, and what are the latest experimental updates about this prediction? I enjoyed talking with science writer Lakshmi Chandrasekharan about quantum thermodynamics, creative writing and more. scieye.wordpress.com/2026/08/20/a...

At lunch in nearby Churchill College, placards indicated that some tables were “reserved for Isaac Newton.” A tall order to fill.

Tremendously excited to have arrived at King's College, Cambridge for a visiting fellowship. Indeed, there's much to be done. @kingscollege.bsky.social

What if quantum computers could control themselves? Quantum Science and Technology has now published our proposals for implementing quantum-autonomous gates on three platforms. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

When Ning Bao and I dreamed up quantum voting, back in our halcyon postdoc/student days at Caltech, we didn't dream that this would happen. @ningbao1.bsky.social thequantuminsider.com/2026/08/26/q...

Quantum Voting System Shows Resilience to Noise on IBM Hardware

Researchers tested a quantum majority-rule voting system on IBM quantum hardware and found that election outcomes can remain stable.

thequantuminsider.com

Here are the comments I write most often when critiquing paper drafts, research statements, proposals, etc. Please use them (and feed them to your LLMs)! I look forward to enjoying reading your writing. quantumfrontiers.com/2026/08/26/n...

Nicole’s guide to writing and editing

Freshman year of college, I took a writing seminar from German-literature professor Ellis Shookman. Professor Shookman loved Mozart’s music, he told us early in the term. He listened to Mozart on t…

quantumfrontiers.com

In continuing with the recent theme of #quantum #thermodynamics for my blog, I had a fun conversation with @nicoleyh11.bsky.social about her research, her book “Quantum Steampunk” & her varied outreach efforts to communicate science to a broader audience - scieye.wordpress.com/2026/08/20/a...

A conversation with Nicole Yunger Halpern: insights into quantum thermodynamics

I recently chatted with Nicole about her foray into quantum thermodynamics and quantum information. We discussed the future of the fields, her recent study results and their implications associated…

scieye.wordpress.com

Ran into an evident escapee from a steampunk novel a few blocks from the National Book Festival #NatBookFest

Since I was a PhD student, I've wondered whether Kirkwood–Dirac quasiprobabilities could help with pinpointing the magic that underlies quantum-computational speedups. After all, Wigner quasiprobabilities are useful, if limited. We finally have an answer. journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...

Happy summer from the Quantum-Steampunk Laboratory (and visitor Rohit Ray)!

On cellular automata, complexity, non-Abelian thermodynamics, and the growing up of an honorary SURF student into a postdoc. quantumfrontiers.com/2026/08/09/i...

Interacting collaborators reveal noninteracting fermions

By day, I work as an experimentalist on laser-cooling molecules1, but I’ve never fully surrendered my theoretical-physics license. I started as an undergraduate in Lincoln Carr’s group …

quantumfrontiers.com

I’ll be talking with authoress and local living legend Carolivia Herron on the radio show Epic City this Tuesday at 4 PM ET. Tune in for conversation about steampunk, writing, and quantum science. spinitron.com/WOWD/show/18...

Congratulations to Yuxin Wang on 3 productive years as a Hartree Postdoctoral Fellow at QuICS! Thanks for sharing with us your expertise on open quantum systems and AMO physics, as well as your good cheer and generous spirit.

A casual guide to quantum simulators. I was tickled to learn that the authors drew inspiration from Quantum Steampunk in starting each chapter with a snippet of fiction. 😊 (I was also tickled to understand much of the text without using a dictionary. ¡Gracias a mis maestros de español!)