Ernesto F. Galvão - IF-UFF

This is a list of introductory popular science articles and more technical review papers on research topics which interest me.

• I recommend my popular science book ”O que é computação quântica?” (2007) for an overview of the subject, aimed at the general public.
• Scientific American article by Scott Aaronson on "The limits of quantum computers" (2008).
• These pages from the Perimeter Institute website give a nice, brief overview of the subject, with many links pointing to other online resources.
• An accessible technical introduction to quantum computation is given in the first chapters of the book "Quantum computing: a gentle introduction" by Eleanor Rieffel and Wolfgang Polack (2011).
• The effective standard textbook on quantum computing is Nielsen and Chuang's "Quantum computation and quantum information" (2000). Despite being authoritative, it is somewhat outdated, and (as any other material choice) has limited material on a number of subjects (for example, on entanglement).
• This is a readable account of somewhat recent progress on quantum algorithms (Bacon & van Dam, 2010).

• Review by O'Brien, Furusawa and Fuckovic - ”Future quantum technologies” (2009).
• Review article by Aspuru-Guzik and Walther - Photonic Quantum Simulators (2012).
• Lanyon et al., "Towards quantum chemistry on a quantum computer" (2010).
• On two of the first BosonSampling experiments, including ours. Review by Tim Ralph, ”Quantum computation: boson sampling on a chip”.
• This article (in Portuguese) in Revista Pesquisa FAPESP (2013) describes the boson sampling experiment I've been involved in. So does this article in New Scientist.

• These lecture notes by Josza provide a great introduction to MBQC.
• Section 2.1 of this paper by McKague is also a good intro.
• This review paper by Jozsa is also very good.
• This Ciência Hoje magazine article (in Portuguese) is a popular account of some work I did with my then-graduate student Raphael Dias, relating time travel and MBQC (2012).

• A recent review article - ”Simulation: quantum leaps” by Geoff Brumfield, writing in Nature.

• Again, these pages in Perimeter Institute's website give a good overview of this research area.
• This article on Aeon Magazine by Adrian Kent has no mathematics, but manages to convey some of the recent topics of interest for the quantum foundations community.
• How measurements on entangled states can be used to obtain certifiable random numbers. Scott Aaronson's two articles on this: the first introduces the notion of Kolmogorov complexity as a way to characterize randomness; the second describes the Free Will theorem and randomness expansion using non-locality tests.
• A paper in Nature Physics (2014) about photonic experiments on the foundations of QM.
• A news feature in Nature magazine (2015) on new experiments related to the PBR theorem, the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation, and related issues in the foundations of QM.

• ”Bell's theorem still reverberates”, an appraisal by Wiseman in Nature, on the occasion of the 50 year anniversary of Bell's paper.
• The simplest Bell inequality is CHSH's inequality, described in section 2.3 of my PhD thesis, for example. How to turn the quantum violation of this inequality into a useful thing is discussed for example in section 4.3.3 of these Preskill's notes on quantum computation.
• A different type of quantum non-locality argument are the so-called “non-locality without inequalities”, as the Mermin-GHZ proof and Hardy's proof (or read about it in see section 2.3 of my thesis).

• Laura Sanders writes in Science News about some recent developments in the study of quantum entanglement (2010).

Here are some introductory texts on quantum contextuality.

1- The original proofs. The Kochen-Specker proof of quantum contextuality was the first one, and has been greatly simplified since, with many other “flavours” having been added to this day. Mermin’s magic square proof is quite clear, it uses 4-dimensional systems (for an introductory presentation of these things, see sections 2.1 and 2.2 of my PhD thesis).

2- A ten-minute explanation by Dave Bacon (2008). It has links to the original paper by Mermin (1993), which is discussed in this paper, for example.

3- For an introductory feel about what contextuality is, see sections I and II of Spekkens et al.’s paper on the contextual model/story known as Specker’s Overprotective Seer.

3- Unifying contextuality and non-locality. In the last few years there has been work that unifies the concepts of contextuality and non-locality, the latter being a special version of the former. The two original papers proposing slightly different versions of this unification are due to Abramsky and Brandenburger; and Cabello, Severini and Winter. They are very mathematical and not the easiest of reads; AB use notions of category theory, which is mathematically sophisticated but hard for novices. Below I’ll indicate some more recent texts which review these notions in a more self-contained and understandable way.

4- Chapter 2 of the Masters’ degree dissertation of Mateus Araújo (elaborating on the original results by Cabello, Severini and Winters).

5- Sections I and II of this paper by Fritz and Chaves (ignore the stuff on entropic inequalities; it reviews part of the work of Abramsky and Branderburger).

6- The original paper by Abramsky and Branderburger might be worth reading, but it requires/introduces many different mathematical notions.

• Research on ways to build a scientific reputation. Article in Nature (2015).
• Improve your productivity in graduate school. Article in Science (2013).
• Michael Nielsen's essay ”Principles of effective research”.
• 10 tips to succeed in your PhD (in Nature.com blog).
• Sean Carroll's advice on how to be a good PhD student (from his blog). Includes links to other researcher's advice on the matter.
• PhD Comics.