By
Sarah Plosker, Hermie Monterde, Aaron Rossi, Sooyeong Kim, Avner Sadikov, Edison Lozano, and Chloe Green
March 2025
Print Version
What you need to know
Dr. Sarah Plosker conducts research in the field of quantum information theory in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Brandon University. Her Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI)-funded Mobile Quantum Computing Research Lab allows Dr. Plosker and her group to have a state-of-the-art mathematical research facility at their fingertips, providing them with the tools they require to conduct their research.
Why this research is important
Dr. Plosker’s research is at the intersection of mathematics and physics. Her work builds up the mathematical theory behind physical tasks, such as transferring a quantum state from one location to another within a quantum spin network. This is an important requirement for quantum computing, where quantum states need to be transferred accurately between registers and/or processors in different locations of a quantum computer.
How this research is conducted
Dr. Plosker supervises a team of undergraduate students, graduate students, and post-doctoral fellows at several universities across Canada. High-powered laptops and tablets, as well as mathematical computing software, are a necessary part of her collaborative research program. Virtual meetings, both one-on-one and in large groups, are commonplace, with some in-person visits when possible.
Dr. Plosker typically works on numerous projects simultaneously, at various stages of development, in the general area of quantum information theory. While each project is distinct, the projects often overlap with respect to methodology; Dr. Plosker combines tools and techniques from several key areas of mathematics, such as linear algebra and graph theory, to solve mathematical research problems.
How this research can be used
The main dissemination practices in mathematics and physics are peer-reviewed journal articles, with preprints available at https://arxiv.org/, an online repository of scientific articles, and presentations at conferences with other researchers and leaders in the field. This allows the research to be showcased to potential users; each researcher or research team using others’ work to continue to push the frontier of mathematics and physics.
Acknowledgements
The Mobile Quantum Computing Lab is funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) grant number 35711.
Research Connection has been made possible by the Research Support Fund through the Office of Research Services.
About the Researchers
Keywords
- mathematical physics
- quantum information theory
- quantum state transfer
- spectral graph theory
Publications Based on the Research
Johnston, N, & Plosker, S. (2025). Laplacian {−1, 0, 1}- and {−1, 1}-diagonalizable graphs. Linear Algebra and its Applications, 704, 309–339. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.laa.2024.10.016
Kim, S., Monterde, H., Chan, A., Ahmadi, B., Kirkland, S., & Plosker, S. (2024). A generalization of quantum pair state transfer, Quantum Information Processing, 23, 369. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11128-024-04574-9
Johnston, N., Moein, S., & Plosker, S. (2024). The factor width rank of a matrix [Manuscript submitted for publication]. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2405.11556
McLaren, D., Monterde, H., & Plosker, S. (2023). Weakly Hadamard diagonalizable graphs and Quantum State Transfer [Manuscript submitted for publication]. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2307.01859
Editor: Christiane Ramsey
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