trust me, it’s for research…

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# My past work

• Google Scholar
• everything is on arXiv
• a wordcloud of my research

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# Current research areas

• CSPs: connections to spin glasses; Parisi variational principle
• quantum algorithms: QAOA; local algorithms; classical competitors
• quantum complexity: QMA vs QCMA

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# Open problems

I’d love to see these solved! (updated Feb 2022)

1. This one: if you solve it, let me know and we’ll finish a paper together!
2. My paper has a recurrence relation to calculate the performance of the QAOA at any depth p. What happens when the depth goes to infinity? (Conjecture: it should approach the Parisi value…) If you are excited about this, let me or Eddie Farhi know.
3. This paper shows a NLTS-based obstruction to low-depth quantum algorithms, including the QAOA, for Max-Cut. My later paper extends this from Max-Cut to Max-3-XOR. Can this be extended to Max-k-XOR for any k? This would be a great project to get started with theory. It might not be strong enough for a paper on its own; still, it could lead to something…
4. My paper can calculate the performance of the QAOA at any depth p. Can you do the same for a local classical algorithm? If you’re interested in this, let me or Matt Hastings know.
5. We don’t know much about finite Steiner systems. We know NO Steiner systems where t=6 or higher. Can you find one? See this reference.

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# Tools for doing research

Presentations: I use Google slides. They are very simple to make, and you know exactly what it looks like. I use the default templates. I use this scratchpad to write LaTeX equations and take screenshots. For recording videos, I record the screen with OBS and use a (cheap, small) microphone that plugs into my computer.

Writing papers: I use Overleaf. But in the brainstorming phase, Overleaf feels way too formal, so I use HackMD. It’s still shareable and you can write Markdown and LaTeX. I switch over when the project has enough steam.

Reading literature: I occasionally check SciRate. Another graduate student at UChicago set up bots that message on Slack with all the newest CS theory papers and also all papers with “quantum” in the title. I skim through the titles of those most days. I also have Google Scholar updates which send TONS of email, so I set up scholar-alert-digest to convert it into a single page (and it archives my emails). Email me if you want help setting this up.

Posters: So far, I’ve made Google slides, export them as PDF, convert to PNG online, and use ImageMagick to convert them to a grid: montage -density 2400 -tile 3x0 -geometry +0+0 -bordercolor "#000000" -border 10 *.png ../poster.png

See also my projects related to research.

Other tools you love? Let me know!