Class Notes

GEN ST 297

Professor Li, Chemistry

Quantum computing - what does chemistry have to do with it?
Adjunct position in material science, but bread and butter is CS tools to study chemical phenomena.
Develop algorithms to simulate chmemical properties - dance of electrons to represent quantum entanglement.

Electron Structure Theory - from atom to molecule.
Electrons can take on many different shapes - the nucleus can take on different shapes as well.
A quantum particle - no longer dots in space.
We cannot develop quantum information from the notion of two dots in space.
In the quantum world, these have wave functions that extend far away from the center.
Two spheres have wave functions in which the tails can ‘talk’ or ‘communicate’ to one another.
Quantum entanglement - commmunication, dots are no longer dots but clouds.
You can mathematically prove this from the wave function.
However, it is very difficult to observe entanglement unless we create much larger waves.
Foundations of quantum computing and entanglement.
If we have two electrons that can talk to one another in a molecule, they can form a more extended network - short-distance entanglement, molecular orbitals.

Fields can facilitate electron communication within a molecule.
In the quantum world, electrons even very far from one another can communicate via electromagnetic fields.
Quantum mechanics is a series of hypotheses.
You always have nonzero probabilities that two electrons can communicate with one another.
Qubit nuclear entanglement.

Perform Fourier transformation on entanglement.
Everything in the end is mathematics - while quantum mechanics is not derived from mathematics, we can use mathematics to understand quantum mehcnaics.

Fortran, C++, Python, etc.
Can use code to simulate quantum mechanical behavior.
Use computing facilities to understand entanglement of many bodies.
We can understand material properties; if we know an electronic system can behave in a certain way, we can design new molecules and materials.

Fighting for the presence of an Indian Studies Department in many places, including on the University of Washington.
Many people don’t know who American Indian peoples are.
Indian was a word brought by Europeans, designated “Indians”.
There is a real history to designations - it is a political history that goes into it.
500 federally recognized Native nations in the United States.
In the United States, Native states have the same powers as the state of Washington; the state must negotiate with Native peoples.
Federal recognition and tribes in Washington
AI department turned 50 last year!
Interdisciplinary study.
Residential Schools - removing culture in a brutal fashion.

“There is no history that has not been fought into truth.”