Poetry

Quantum

There is a tradition of writing poetry in the quantum computing community. I believe it started with this poem by Jennifer and Peter Shor, though it’s possible that it predates this. (Please let me know if you have any information on this.)

The following is my contribution to the genre:

Claimed a skeptic named Gil1
“Quantum computers can never be built!”
So we showed him a Sycamore2
But that just caused him to bicker more
“That device is too noisy still!”

Despite assurances evidential
Some disbelieved quantum’s potential
If to doubt you’re inclined
Please do keep in mind
Neven’s law3 is doubly exponential

There once were some Googlers quantum
Who made some qubits to flaunt them
But their paper got leaked
And rival IBM peaked
And wrote a blog post to taunt them4

Skeptics say and doubters preach
Quantum computing is out of reach
But I know some nice folks
Who’ll convince you it’s no hoax
If you ever visit Venice Beach5

Why don’t you try quantum annealing?
The promised speedups are quite appealing
But you’ve got to suppress those terrors
The Hamiltonian control errors
Or your speedups will hit a ceiling

I’m paying a huge electrical bill
to keep atoms at near zero chill
In a giant fridge with no door6
And what is it all for?
I just want to impress John Preskill

Microsoft bet on fermions Majorana
Cuz it sounds cool and they wanna
But their critics sigh:
“Their hopes are too high
They might as well smoke—”
(Wait, I’m stumped, what rhymes with “Majorana” and can be smoked?)

A Valentine’s Day poem about qubits

Roses are red
Violets are blue
The dimension of my Hilbert space
Is but a measly two 💔

Bonus quantum poetry

A haiku…

adiabatic
quantum computing’s simple:
always mind the gap

And a koan…

What’s the sound of one qubit entangling?

Star Trek nursery rhymes

I wrote the following for my children. The words in [brackets] are to be substituted for their names when these are sung. The first of these takes place on Deep Space Nine. The second is accompanied by a series of hand gestures which I won’t describe here, but which are similar to the ones for the original nursery rhyme on which it is based.

Rockabye [baby] in the airlock
If the hatch blows the station will rock
If the hull’s breached the pressure will fall
Then out will go [baby] spacesuit and all

Itsy Bitsy [spider] went up the transporter beam
The Romulans decloaked and attacked the away team
Out came the Enterprise and chased them all away
Then Itsy Bitsy [spider] went on shore leave to play

Everything on this page (c) D. L. Yonge-Mallo

  1. Gil Kalai, a noted skeptic of quantum computing. ↩

  2. Google’s Sycamore transmon superconducting quantum processor. ↩

  3. Hartmut Neven, head of Google’s Quantum AI lab. Neven’s law is the observation that quantum computers are gaining computational power at a doubly exponential rate. This law is also known as the Dowling-Neven law, after Jonathan Dowling. ↩

  4. Based on this true story. ↩

  5. Close to the location of Google’s Los Angeles office. ↩

  6. A dilution refrigerator. Most photos of “quantum computers” found online are actually photos of these fridges. The actual processor is kept very cold inside. ↩