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Simon Burton

@fridaysimon

Quantum computing -- Lead R&D scientist at Quantinuum.

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19.11.2024
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Latest posts by Simon Burton @fridaysimon

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Nice! The other thing people talk about with these Artin braid groups is actions on free groups, which i'm now understanding as a mapping class group acting on pi_1 of a punctured surface (and the punctures trace out the braids) .. and this pi_1 is a free group (or close to..?)

09.03.2026 19:39 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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gives the symmetric swap diagram

09.03.2026 14:51 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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You get these from swapping "row major" to "column major" counting array entries, for example this one

09.03.2026 14:45 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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And just for fun going to p=5... looks like we get some kind of order (p-1) Sierpinsky triangle.

07.03.2026 18:52 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Here is the p=3 version, counting prime factors equal to 3

07.03.2026 18:47 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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What does the SierpiΕ„ski triangle have to do with Pascal's triangle? Here's a pictorial answer; i'm just learning about this from Bowman's "Diagrammatic Algebra" book

07.03.2026 18:24 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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wow, the braided symmetric string diagram does have the Coxeter braid relation ABAB=BABA ! what is this magic

07.03.2026 15:55 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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A string diagram for an element of the hyperoctahedral group has a symmetry property, from Bowmans book "Diagrammatic Algebra". This immediately suggests a braided version ... hmm..

28.02.2026 21:25 πŸ‘ 7 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 3 πŸ“Œ 0

nice! how do i undo?

17.02.2026 17:02 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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I think you are interfacing to a hyperbolic surface code

04.02.2026 15:03 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Wherein philosophy is dragged, kicking and screaming, into the twentieth century.

16.01.2026 03:59 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

The word "nothing" is doing a lot of work here and I'm not sure it is up to the task.

21.12.2025 13:21 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

I see, good point, thankyou.

11.12.2025 12:35 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

People do make superpositions of some very large systems, (i think even a tardigrade?) so what are you saying ? Are you the ket-police now?

11.12.2025 12:29 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

I think I am just about ready to make my own search engine.

09.12.2025 19:49 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Ruth Kastner has some things to say about field theories..

18.11.2025 12:15 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

It must be so frustrating to have billions of dollars and still be a miserable a**hole.

20.10.2025 13:49 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

The principle of "two big ideas": one contains the other, or else they are not big ideas.

27.09.2025 10:57 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

If people are going to continue to put the introduction to their paper in the abstract, then i'm going to put my paper's abstract in the title.

22.09.2025 16:16 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Any sufficiently complicated physics paper contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of an idea from algebraic geometry.

05.09.2025 09:46 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0
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Today's OEIS fishing expedition. The only question is how much RAM am i going to need to find the next number... Love these OEIS cliff-hangers! ARGGH

11.08.2025 13:06 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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It's *a* graphic framework. I've been using 3d string diagrams for this stuff... Here is a laxator for a monoidal functor, which is the blue string. The monoidal product is the sheet layers... etc etc

03.08.2025 16:41 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

it's mostly excel spreadsheets..

13.07.2025 15:10 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Still trying to figure that out, will get back to you.

08.07.2025 09:10 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

If by "the completely standard way" you mean, as taught in undergraduate quantum mechanics, then yes. I can't remember the last time i saw the Born rule actually used in the wild. It tends to be only in discussions like this about the foundations of quantum.

05.07.2025 12:37 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Behold! A one-qubit quantum computer:

05.07.2025 11:34 πŸ‘ 9 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

i don't know if it's really a "need", but here is one way to get probabilities: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_rule

04.07.2025 17:21 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

I think it's just as valid saying you get zero-worlds when you don't add anything to the SchrΓΆdinger equation. I happen to prefer this interpretation (the zero-worlds one) on my more transcendent days.

04.07.2025 17:19 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

from: canyon23.net/math/tc.pdf

23.06.2025 15:03 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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no don't kill it. Yes we need it.

23.06.2025 15:02 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0