Bio

I am from “God’s Own Country”—Kerala, India, majoring in physics at UM-DAE CBS in Mumbai. I plan on getting my PhD and then continuing as a full-time researcher. My favorite topics include quantum mechanics, statistical physics, computation, relativity. Besides science, I am a nerd when it comes to technology. I am also a huge soccer fan and love to dance.

Project: Simulation and Optimization of Spin Glass Systems in Mathematica and Comparing Its Efficiency with D-Wave’s Quantum Computer

D-Wave Systems Inc. is a company that claims to have created a quantum computer using spin glass systems that is specifically aimed at solving optimization problems.

Spin glasses constitute a class of spin systems in which, at low temperatures, magnetic spins of constituent particles are frozen in random directions in the lattice. These systems contain properties like frustration interactions and quenched disorders owing to which, finding the minimum energy spin configuration of these systems becomes kind of a generalized combinatorial optimization problem. Studying spin glasses has led to the development of many types of algorithms for solving such optimization problems, but whether these systems has led to quantum computation is still up for debate.

The three stages of this project include:

• Simulation of spin glass system in Mathematica
• Solving the spin glass optimization problem using the Monte Carlo method
• Comparing the results with the quantum computer using the D-Wave API

If the D-Wave API has a significantly higher efficiency compared to the Mathematica program, it would indicate that it has quantum computing potential.