Re: quantum information and foundation

[Bob Coecke <Bob.Coecke@comlab.ox.ac.uk>]

Dear Andre and others,

Andre Joyal wrote:

> I disagree to the extend that "quantum foundation" and "quantum
> information" are very speculative subjects. The "Foundational Question
> Institute",
>
> http://www.fqxi.org/
>
> which is known to support speculative research projects exclusively,
> is funding a project on Quantum Foundation by Bob Coecke:
>
> http://www.fqxi.org/grants/large/awardees/view/__details/2008/coecke

I addressed "quantum information" and "speculation" in a separate posting.

Since the above may slightly misrepresent the activity within our group
allow me to providea short description of what we do.

While my FQXi grant (which meanwhile ended) indeed addresses the more
speculative end of physics research, it is only a very small fraction of
the research portfolio within our group here at Oxford University
Computing Laboratory led my Abramsky and myself, which meanwhile has close
to 30 members:
http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/activities/quantum/
(good knowledge in category theory is part of the entrance fee and most of
the research is on categorical quantum mechanics and related things,
which stretches as far as computational linguistics)  The three major
contributing agencies are the Future and Emerging Technologies
scheme of the European Union, the Information Technology panel of the
British Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and
the US Office of Naval Research (ONR).  For each of these the application
process has very strong requirements on the potential for transition to
society of the funded research.

As mentioned in my other posting, software development based on
categorical structures is one of them:
http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/people/Aleks.Kissinger/projects.html
http://dream.inf.ed.ac.uk/projects/quantomatic/
There is obviously nothing speculative here since this is a tool which
(semi-)automates reasoning about quantum systems by exploiting a discrete
(ie no complex field etc) representation of a fragment of quantum theory.
This software relies on results in pure category theory such as Steve
Lack's work on PROPs, on which my student Andrei Akhvlediani (formerly
Walter Tholen's MSc student) is currently elaborating.  Jamie Vicary who
has a strong interest in higher-dimensional category theory (eg
http://arxiv.org/abs/0805.0432) is hired on a software development-related
ONR grant.

The FQXi grant was important for our group since it acknowledges that
while we are based in a computer science department we have an important
activity at the more speculative end of fundamental physics.  My personal
philosophy on all of this is to try to span the whole spectrum, from
no-nonsense straight computer science research, which provides stability,
to the speculative end of the physics spectrum, where there is a desperate
need for something radical to happen, which brings us to the following:

Andre Joyal wrote:

> Physics is in bad shape today according to Lee Smolin:
>
>
http://www.amazon.ca/Trouble-Physics-String-Theory-Science/dp/061891868X/
>
> His main critic is that string theory has lost contact
> with experience. It has become an academically driven discipline.
> Maybe we should stop calling it physics.

The main problem is that string theory has suffocated many other
approaches to foundational physics.  Lee Smolin recently mentioned to me
that he sees great promise in the work which some people in the quantum
foundations community are doing.  For example, he participated in this
"Reconstructing Quantum Theory" workshop at the Perimeter Institute for
Theoretical Physics:
http://pirsa.org/C09016
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics is an institute which aims to
compensate for the lack of funding in foundational areas of physics, and
is highly regarded in the physics community.  Initial funding came from
the Blackberry-RIM boss, and Lee Smolin was the first academic to be hired
by them.  Besides a talk by myself, there are also talks by the two
faculty members in quantum foundations of the Perimeter Institute, Lucien
Hardy and Rob Spekkens, who actually both have meanwhile been infected by
some category theory:
http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/publications/publication3026-abstract.html
(draft! many typos etc, ...)
http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.4740
(see the related work section)
Lucien Hardy, Andreas Doering and myself also organized a conference on
category theory and physics at the Perimeter Institute entitled
Categories, Quanta, Concept:
http://pirsa.org/C09008

Best wishes, Bob.



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