MON 08 MAY 2017: What I Did On My Summer "Vacation" #WIDOMSumVac

Four days and counting before I depart for Shanghai, China, on SAT 13 MAY via BTR-DFW-PVG (the airport codes for my trip: Baton Rouge – Dallas – Shanghai).

I will be for two weeks primarily visiting the group of Prof. Tim Byrnes at New York University ... Shanghai! I now have a pseudo-neo-formal post at the place, and we'll continue our several-years-long collaboration on theoretical quantum technologies, the most recent of which resulted in a paper on relativistically invariant entanglement distribution in space.

Each day I arrive at my office at around 10–11AM and do email until lunch time and then after chugging a double espresso after the neighboring Starbucks we all meet in a conference room for “core time” until around 7PM with the postdocs, other visitors, and student. Core time is nicknamed “chaos time” when I am there and we hammer out ideas on the white board and the computer projector in week one, and then write them all up in week two.

Upon my arrival I always yell, a la mathematician Paul Erdős, “My brain in open!”

Then the fun begins.

This year I’ll be accompanied by two of my LSU PhD students, Chenglong You — I only have Ayes for You! — and Sushovit Adhikari, who will stay on after me for another six weeks in Shanghai to further the collaborations.

In addition to NYU I’ll be visiting the laboratory of Profs. J. W. Pan and C.Y. Lu at the Shanghai branch of the University of Science and Technology, China, where great things are afoot — not to mention the famous Chinese quantum satellite, which was launched last August. Lorentz invariant quantum entanglement distribution, for this satellite, we had in mind.

When in China do not forget my honorary Chinese name,

建道灵

Jian Dow-Ling

Which means, “Spiritual Alliance” or “Dowling’s Construction Company”, depending on context.