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This is my old departmental web page, as I moved to Oxford in 2019. |
Aleks Kissinger
Assistant Professor (UD), Quantum Group. aleks@cs.ru.nl | contact info
My research is in quantum information, automated reasoning, category theory, graphical calculi, and graph rewriting. A major focus of my work is the use of graphical languages to better understand (physical, mathematical, logical, ...) processes.
Before I was in Nijmegen, I was a postdoc in the Quantum Group in the Oxford Computer Science Department and a Junior Research Fellow of Wolfson College. I completed my PhD in Oxford in 2012. My thesis was entitled Pictures of Processes: Automated Graph Rewriting for Monoidal Categories and Applications to Quantum Computing.
Research & Updates
- Find my talks and papers here.
- Our causality paper is the topic of a recent blog post on the n-category cafe. It forms the basis of one of the four research threads at the upcoming Adjoint School of Applied Category Theory in Leiden.
- I wrote an ERCIM news article about some of the exciting new developments in graphical calculus for quantum computation, notably the new completeness results for Clifford+T and universal quantum computation.
- Some new papers are now on arXiv, applying a whole bunch of new (and not-so-new) graphical techniques to measurement-based quantum computation, QKD, and causality:
- AK & John van de Wetering. Universal MBQC with Mølmer-Sørensen interactions and two measurement bases
- AK, Sean Tull, & Bas Westerbaan. Picture-perfect Quantum Key Distribution
- Bob Coecke, Matty Hoban & AK. Equivalence of relativistic causal structure and process terminality
- I co-organised a workshop with Pawel Sobocinski on string diagrams called STRING on Sept 8-9, satellite to FSCD in Oxford.
- I taught a week-long summer school course on Picturing Quantum Processes at ESSLLI.
- We organised the 14th International Conference in Quantum Physics and Logic (QPL) at Radboud this year, co-located with a satellite workshop on quantum structures run by IQSA. With 109 registered attendees, 5 invited talks, 4 tutorials, and a total of 67 contributed talks across QPL and IQSA, it was a huge success!
- I have a new paper on the arXiv with Sander Uijlen: where we give a unified categorical framework for definite and indefinite causal structures, based on the notion of a precausal category. We show how quantum combs, switches, process matrices, and classical instances of indefinite causal structure arise naturally within this framework.
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We finished a textbook!
Picturing Quantum Processes: A First Course in Quantum Theory and Diagrammatic Reasoning. Bob Coecke and Aleks Kissinger, Cambridge University Press
...which teaches quantum theory from the ground up, taking diagrams as the most fundamental tool. Available in March 2017! Pre-order now from CUP or Amazon. In draft form, it has been the basis of a masters-level Quantum Computing course running in Oxford for 3 years. If you are interested in running a similar course, get in touch with me.
To get some flavour of the book, you can check out Categorical Quantum Mechanics, part 1 and part 2, which give approximately the first 8 chapters in a somewhat condensed package.
- I was a keynote speaker at IQSA 2016, July 10-16 in Leicester, UK.
- I gave a tutorial on process theories and graphical languages at QPL 2016, June 6-10 in Glasgow, UK.
- My student David Quick has passed his viva! Have a look at his excellent PhD thesis:
- I am the lead developer on Quantomatic, a tool for (semi)automated reasoning with diagrammatic languages.
- I maintain TikZiT, a GUI tool for making diagrams in TikZ.
Students
- Current PhD students: Sander Uijlen, John van de Wetering
- Former PhD students: Alex Merry, David Quick, Vladimir Zamdzhiev
Teaching
I am teaching two courses this year: Matrix Calculation (bachelors, computing science), and Quantum Processes and Computation (masters, MFOCS).
Updated 30 Jan, 2019.