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Will Morong

@wmorong.bsky.social
233 followers 331 following 53 posts

I'm trying to build a quantum computer in sunny Los Angeles, CA, USA. I like discussing other people's research papers and ideas. As always, any insights should be credited to the authors themselves, and any misconceptions to me alone.

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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
It's an interesting idea. As thermalization is fundamentally a process of spreading entanglement, I would think that this theory would imply some limit to the degree to which subsystems can thermalize and thus violations of thermodynamic laws.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
If the actions taken here were accurately reported-- automated removal of a published article without any input from an editor or (obviously) the authors-- it is unacceptable for the present as well. Really just an abdication of their role as a journal to preserve and disseminate knowledge.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
To me, the standard is just that one should always verify that a citation is valid for the claim in which it is being used. In some cases, when it is basically a signpost, that might not mean much more than showing that it exists. In no case does it permit not even checking if it is hallucinated.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
@kpc.bsky.social got my copy, can't wait to read it!
hardback copy of the book "entangled states", by karmela padavic-callaghan
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
Brian addresses a question that has been bothering me for many years now: we know that the standard formalism of quantum physics is misleading, in the sense that it contains many states that could never be realistically accessed. Does this hold back our intuition or our pedagogy for what QM means?
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
Recently stumbled on a lovely old essay by Prof. Brian Swingle: "The Illusion of Hilbert Space": (seems to only be available online by the link in this forum post, don't let that scare you away) forums.fqxi.org/d/1559-the-i...
forums.fqxi.org
The Illusion of Hilbert Space by Brian Swingle - QSpace Forums
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
My pleasure-- and where it comes to this subject I am an amateur too, so we are on the same page!
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
h/t Quanta and this great interview: www.quantamagazine.org/where-some-s...
quantamagazine.org
Where Some See Strings, She Sees a Space-Time Made of Fractals | Quanta Magazine
Pushed down to a certain scale, the laws of physics seem to fall apart. Astrid Eichhorn, a leader in an area of study called asymptotic safety, thinks we just need to push a little further.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
I had never heard of this paper that seemed to accurately predict the Higgs boson mass based on asymptotic safety. This naively looks like a very impressive success for that program, am I missing some reason it's not talked about more? arxiv.org/abs/0912.0208
arxiv.org
Asymptotic safety of gravity and the Higgs boson mass
There are indications that gravity is asymptotically safe. The Standard Model (SM) plus gravity could be valid up to arbitrarily high energies. Supposing that this is indeed the case and assuming that...
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Roger Schonfeld @rschon.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
arXiv is being spun out from Cornell University and is looking for an inaugural CEO. jobs.chronicle.com/job/37961678...
jobs.chronicle.com
Chief Executive Officer - New York City, New York (US) job with arXiv | 37961678
arXiv seeks its first CEO to champion open, free scientific discovery and guide the platform’s next chapter as an independent nonprofit.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
New post: wmorong.github.io/wills-blog/b... I’m sure we will hear from others who are much more qualified to directly speak about Tony Leggett’s contributions and legacy. Here is a view from the relative sidelines, of how much I learned from him about the fields in which I've worked and studied...
wmorong.github.io
Appreciating Tony Leggett (1938-2026)
Sir Anthony James Leggett. Photo by L. Brian Stauffer
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Work like this makes me hope that there is some deeper unifying theme www.nature.com/articles/nat...
nature.com
Contextuality supplies the ‘magic’ for quantum computation - Nature
Quantum computing promises advantages over classical computing for certain problems; now ‘quantum contextuality’ — a generalization of the concept of quantum non-locality — is shown to be a critical r...
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
I've been thinking about this too-- it's an interesting subject bsky.app/profile/wmor...
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
Assuming you refer to (PRX Quantum 5, 010337), they use the term "partially fault-tolerant" rather than "early fault-tolerance", which does seem more appropriate for this case.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
Interesting point. My mental model says one should only call a scheme FT (early or otherwise) if it is capable of correcting arbitrary errors (from some reasonable model such as random depolarizing) at a sufficiently low rate. The second bucket of applications I would call something like pre-FT QEC.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 17/01/2026
When the social media algorithm has finally been perfected, this is the only kind of post that I will ever see.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 21/12/2025
Awful for academics but great news for Borges fans
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
Not a physicist, but perhaps? bsky.app/profile/carl...
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
Karmela's ability to weave threads from physics, culture, and society together into original insights always astounds me. Looking forward to this.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
I'm a big fan of the GHZ record as a view into the development of quantum computers, and Mario Krenn's page tracking the evolution of this record: mariokrenn.wordpress.com/2021/01/29/r... For a fun exercise, count the number of Nobel laureates who are represented..
mariokrenn.wordpress.com
Largest genuine Entanglement: Qubits in GHZ state
Please send additional references to mario.krenn@mpl.mpg.de.(last update: 08.05.2024; thanks to Thomas Monz for regularily sharing updates) Atoms: 2000.06 – 3 qubits:Rauschenbeutel, A., Nogue…
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 13/10/2025
New on arxiv: a group from IBM claim a new record for the largest GHZ state, of 120 qubits* arxiv.org/abs/2510.09520 * terms and conditions (postselection) apply
arxiv.org
Big cats: entanglement in 120 qubits and beyond
Entanglement is the quintessential quantum phenomenon and a key enabler of quantum algorithms. The ability to faithfully entangle many distinct particles is often used as a benchmark for the quality o...
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 06/10/2025
Thank for you your feedback! I will try to improve this in the future, but meanwhile if there are any specific terms in this article that it would help to have more explained please ask away.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
And thanks to you for reminding me that I had a half-finished little blog post on the subject
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 05/10/2025
🧪 New blog post: What makes quantum physics special (or "strange" or "weird")? I take a whirlwind tour through 80 years of attempts to pinpoint the answer, from early thought experiments to recent developments inspired by thinking about quantum computers. wmorong.github.io/wills-blog/b...
wmorong.github.io
What makes quantum physics special?
A brief tour through eighty years of answers (photo credit: one of the most popular images used to abstractly convey quantum physics. original author unknown)
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 04/10/2025
well, at least he knows?
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
So, the number of gates required in going from 15 to 21 increases by hundreds... but asymptotically, we eventually expect this to scale roughly like O((log N)^2), is that correct? Do you have any sense of the approximate size where this asymptotic scaling starts to be a more reasonable estimate?
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
Imposter syndrome! Just push through it.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 17/08/2025
Really appreciate that all the talks were immediately and freely available, with a nice platform that makes it easy to navigate and see the slides. Hope other conference organizers take note!
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John Forbes @redshiftless.bsky.social · 04/08/2025
PSA to scientists: Google calculator appears to no longer do basic unit conversion correctly! n.b. the correct answer here is 223.4 Myr, a factor of about 60 larger than Google's answer. 🔭 🧪
A screenshot of a google search result for "2*pi*(8 kpc)/(220 km/s)" which is roughly the time it takes the Sun to go around the Galaxy. In the screenshot, google's calculator has popped up and parsed the expression correctly, but then returns the result 3 899 243.9 years, and answer which is off by 2 orders of magnitude.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
If I "believe in" an emergent difference between quantum and classical systems, in the spirit of quantum Darwinism, should I put yes or no? Honestly not sure.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
Then there are claims that other quantities like contextuality are really the secret sauce: www.nature.com/articles/nat... Not clear to me that we get a complete answer from these developments, though, either technically or conceptually.
nature.com
Contextuality supplies the ‘magic’ for quantum computation - Nature
Quantum computing promises advantages over classical computing for certain problems; now ‘quantum contextuality’ — a generalization of the concept of quantum non-locality — is shown to be a critical r...
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 07/07/2025
Well, one noteworthy claim is that you can do universal QC with little entanglement at any given time: journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...
journals.aps.org
Universal Quantum Computation with Little Entanglement
We show that universal quantum computation can be achieved in the standard pure-state circuit model while the entanglement entropy of every bipartition is small in each step of the computation. The en...
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 04/07/2025
Why do quantum computers work? Although it's missing some modern developments, I think this twenty-year old (!) article from Steane is still provocative. His answer: entanglement allows them to avoid representing unnecessary intermediate results in some calculations. arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph...
arxiv.org
A quantum computer only needs one universe
The nature of quantum computation is discussed. It is argued that, in terms of the amount of information manipulated in a given time, quantum and classical computation are equally efficient. Quantum s...
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Chad Orzel @orzelc.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
Some thoughts on the influence of the late Dan Kleppner and Norman Ramsey on the culture of AMO physics: open.substack.com/pub/chadorze...
open.substack.com
Founder Effects in Physics
The legacy of Dan Kleppner and Norman Ramsey
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
As a physics journalist, it is fairly wild to see the names of the PIs with terminated grants: Misha Lukin, Philip Kim, Lisa Randall, Subir Sachdev, John Doyle... bsky.app/profile/benn...
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
Paper: journals.aps.org/prl/abstract... See also the nice writeup from Physics mag: physics.aps.org/articles/v18...
journals.aps.org
Measuring Pair Correlations in Bose and Fermi Gases via Atom-Resolved Microscopy
An innovative way to image atoms in cold gases could provide deeper insights into the atoms' quantum correlations.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 09/05/2025
Can't stop thinking about these lovely pictures of atoms doing their thing from the Zwierlein group. Left: bosons condensing into a Bose-Einstein condensate. Center: fermions avoiding each other. Right: molecules paired up.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
Makes sense- thanks for the context!
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
Neat! Something that's never been clear to me about this line of classical time crystal work: to what extent do you see it as a genuinely new thing versus more of a (valuable) reinterpretation or reassessment of older work on, e.g., nonlinear driven classical systems?
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 18/04/2025
One of the finest explainers of quantum physics for the public is, for now, a victim of political suppression. @mattstrassler.bsky.social profmattstrassler.com/2025/04/17/b...
profmattstrassler.com
Blog on Indefinite Pause
As the US government pursues massive attacks upon my host institution, it is impossible to continue with my normal activities. The blog will be on pause.
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Mark M. Wilde @markwilde.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
To be clear, one of my major grants is among the 75 stop work orders sent to Cornell yesterday. This means that, as of yesterday, we are not allowed to spend on this grant. The grant funds the work of several graduate students, all of whom are extremely dedicated & doing outstanding research
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Douglas Natelson @nanoscaleviews.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
🧪⚛️. This is self-defeating and objectively bad for the country and beyond. www.npr.org/2025/03/26/n...
npr.org
Trump cuts threaten a measurement lab critical for advanced chips and medical devices
The Atomic Spectroscopy Group provides standardized measurements used across wide swaths of science and industry. The Trump administration plans to cut it.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
Anderson localization is an especially fertile subject for these jumps. My first paper was a minor contribution to the subject, aimed at experiments with Bose-Einstein condensates. Its most recent citation applies the ideas to suggest a better EM shield using polymers with embedded nanoparticles.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
This is a super cool story: a problem from quantum physics led to pure math research that led to better bulbs.
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
The "Popular with friends" feed is also a good middle ground.
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Rachael Sirianni, PhD @docsirianni.bsky.social · 15/03/2025
This is horrible to post, but I may as well post it. We are essentially shutting down research operations in my group, which is focused on treatments for pediatric brain cancer. I’m a well funded investigator, and there’s no choice. Science can’t function without the stability of NIH
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
(For physicists this will be nothing new, but feel free to keep it on hand for the next time a relative asks you about these types of announcement)
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
I've seen it happen more times that I can count: a physics press release announces the discovery of a "new phase of matter", and the public interprets this as being a bigger deal than it really is. So, I made a short blog post to explain what this actually means: wmorong.github.io/wills-blog/b...
wmorong.github.io
What is a phase of matter?
And why do you keep hearing that we’ve discovered a new one?
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
Chetan Nayak, in a comment on Scott Aaronson's blog, clarifies that this is the case and gives some details that I don't think were previously shared (that they see Z flips on a 10 ms timescale and X flips on a 5 us timescale). His March meeting talk should be interesting. scottaaronson.blog?p=8669
scottaaronson.blog
FAQ on Microsoft’s topological qubit thing
Q1. Did you see Microsoft’s announcement?A. Yes, thanks, you can stop emailing to ask! Microsoft’s Chetan Nayak was even kind enough to give me a personal briefing a few weeks ago. Yest…
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Will Morong @wmorong.bsky.social · 09/02/2025
I doubt that anyone following me needs to be convinced of the importance of basic research, but the details here are fun and fascinating.
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