Description:

"Error Budgeting for a Quantum Error Correction System"

Danyang Chen, PhD Student, Koch Group

In this talk, I'll explore Quantum Error Correction (QEC), a vital technique in quantum information processing to enhance qubit coherence time. Despite its potential, QEC isn't foolproof as the correction process itself can be erroneous and fail. I'll focus on the 'cat code' protocol, examining its failure modes and calculating its failure rate. This analysis is crucial for optimizing system parameters, potentially doubling qubit lifetime. I'll conclude by evaluating the effectiveness of these strategies and providing an outlook on future directions of this work.

"Scintillating Bubble Chambers for Dark Matter Detection"

Zhiheng Sheng, PhD Student, Dahl Group

In the field of dark matter direct detection, mitigating false positive background events is a crucial step in any experiment, because of the scarcity of expected real dark matter events. Among detectors for ~GeV dark matter, bubble chambers have the advantage of not being affected by gamma rays, the largest background in such searches. The Scintillating Bubble Chamber (SBC) experiment further reduces the gamma background by using liquid Argon as its superheated target fluid, instead of Freons used by previous experiments like COUPP and PICO, and thus enables operation in a condition sensitive to lower mass dark matter particles down to ~1 GeV. In this talk, I discuss the current status of the 10 kg LAr calibration chamber currently being commissioned by the SBC collaboration at Fermilab, and the calibration plan to study its response to nuclear and electron recoils at different thermodynamic conditions.