Intern Experience- Abhisek Sahu (Summer 2019)

Hi there folks! Abhisek from third year EP B.tech program here. This summer I took a UG research position at the Institute for Quantum computing at Waterloo, Canada. In this article, I plan to pen down my summer internship experience! Most of it would be factual, some of it might be subjective and overall, I hope this gives you some idea about what is it like, doing research, especially in Quantum Physics.

The article is organised in the following manner: In section 1, I briefly describe my work here, the skills I learnt etc. In section 2, I focus on the overall research experience in Waterloo. In section 3, I write about the other fun (non-academic) stuff. Section 4 contains information about the process of securing the position, logistics etc. In section 5, I conclude with my major take-aways from this experience.

What have I been up to?

My project was about designing optical implementation of a quantum cryptographic protocol and was done in Prof. Norbert Lütkenhaus’ group in IQC. Secure 2-party communications form an important class of problems in cryptography. Typical scenarios are often like, a series of communication between the 2  parties- Alice and Bob, where they are trying to extract some common information from pieces of information they have, without compromising their respective privacy. For example, Alice has some value x and Bob has a y, and they are interested in evaluating some f(x,y) in a way that they don’t discover value of the other party’s variable! Cryptographic protocols often are composed of smaller protocols called ‘primitives’. Bit commitment is one such primitive, which when done with unconditional security can be used to create any secure 2-party communication such as above.

Sadly however, it cannot be done with unconditional security in either a classical or a quantum context. Here is where the group’s work comes into the picture. Turns out, there is a way to avoid this no-go theorem by introducing a third temporarily-trusted party. This adds more complications in terms of security, but at the end of the day, this additional functionality can be used to achieve the same outcome as expected from bit-commitment, with unconditional security which is purely based on the way Quantum Mechanics works! No computational limitations, No finite memory, just the laws of physics to protect your protocol.

So now what? We have an abstract protocol, but is it straightforward to do it practically? Since here we are dealing with communication, using light is probably the best idea as we all know, they are pretty darn good at travelling! If we are just able to produce perfect single photons, we can use their polarisation to encode the quantum states |0> and |1> and we shall have an implementation. Things are not particularly rosy here either as single photons are a) hard to produce and b) very easy to lose in long-distance communication, compromising the security of your communication. So that was my problem- finding a way to implement the protocol using the most simple things- lasers and linear optical devices. The problem may sound experimental, but at the heart of it, is a theoretical problem. When a protocol is designed keeping qubits in mind, the creator has essentially committed to a specific kind of Hilbert space which is 2 dimensional. Quantum states of light, on the other hand, occupy a much larger, continuous Hilbert space and this may have consequences on the nature of the protocol. Thus one needs to carefully understand the abstract protocol, identify the essential quantum properties that make it work. Then one needs to think of how one can recreate the same properties using a different type of states. 

As might be obvious, I made use of quantum cryptography and quantum optics for the project. I also needed to learn my way around various entropic measures of information that are regularly used in security definitions. The Quantum Information course turned out to be very useful. I had some experience in Quantum Optics from my previous projects, and so I could do without a formal Quantum Optics course. So far, I haven’t used any kind of numerics in my work, and I do not foresee using some in future. 

So how was it like working there?

The project did keep me busy, to say the least. The workload is balanced, leaving time for other activities.  I am expected to work for 40 hours a week. The environment however is pretty conducive for work and with all the facilities in the building, I did not mind working 10-12 hours each day including some weekends. I was given my own office space, complete with desktop, lamp, white board, unlimited printing and stationery etc. One of the things that I loved the most, is the abundance of white boards and discussion space which turned out to be pretty useful for thinking-aloud, learning from and collaborating with people! Something like this:

There are open kitchenettes with free hot and cold beverages to keep you productive. Every day at 4 PM, I would look forward to ‘cookie’ time where a lot of people would gather in the kitchenette to grab a cookie and talk and make friendships! Other than these perks, the research atmosphere in IQC is astounding, as people from all over the world, regularly visit for collaborating with IQC researchers. There are talks and colloquiums every week, which are extremely useful, especially for UGs, to learn about the various research opportunities and problems out there. They also act as good platforms to form connections.  Apart from IQC, Waterloo also has the Perimeter institute or, which is a great place for theoretical physicists. Like IQC they also attract a lot of researchers from around the globe and host their own amazing set of lectures too. There is a great collaboration between IQC and PI and most theory profs are affiliated to both. Waterloo, all in all is a wonderful place for a physicist to be in.  Alongside my main research project, I also was selected for ‘USEQIP’, a two week summer school whose main aim is to introduce people into various subfields in Quantum Information.  

The program was quite enriching for me, as I got a more hands-on experience about experimental Quantum Information, and it was a useful exposure to have as a theorist. For example here is something we made in the clean room:

Among other such cool things, I got to do an experiment that demonstrated violations of Bell’s inequality and we implemented Deutsch Jozsa algorithm on an actual NMR quantum computer!

That’s all cool..but tell me about what you REALLY did!

Alright; Waterloo is not as happening when it comes to touristy things to do, as much as it is happening for Physics. It is a small, quiet town with a population of just over a 100,000 most of which comprises of university students and people associated with the universities - UW and WLU. Uptown Waterloo and Kitchener-it’s twin city offer some entertainment nevertheless. It is in these areas that you will find more artsy buildings, pubs and restaurants. It is common for people to gather around the city centre on weekends for some sort of celebration, or watching a public streaming of some match etc.

Summer is a time for festivals here and you will find a bunch of such things happening in the local park, such as Multi-cultural fests, food fests, music fests etc. These were my go-to places in the weekend. As a music lover, I attended quite a few classical chamber music concerts ( which were all sponsored by my music loving professor :P)

However, Eastern Canada has a lot to offer for tourists. Toronto is about 100km away from Waterloo and it takes about an hour and a half to get to DT Toronto by road. This is a happening city without doubt, full of tourist attractions like the CN Tower,Ripley’s aquarium, Ontario lake front etc. and it’s often dubbed as Canada’s New York. Montreal is another must-visit-place as it is extremely beautiful in Summer. The is 600kms from Waterloo in the French speaking province of Quebec, and has a distinct European culture. Like a typical European city, it has it’s churches, street music scene, festivals and summer carnivals, artsy museums and is a delight for foodies. The hype about their bagels and ‘Poutine’ is justified. The nightlife here is lit as well. For people like me who love cultural activities, Montreal is an amazing place.

The Notre Dame Basilica in Montreal

There is a lot to do for nature lovers too. There are several national parks in Ontario such as the Algonquin national park. One can also go for water sports in many of Canada’s lakes such as Huron or Erie or Ontario. There are quite a few trails for trekking in and around Waterloo to explore. Last but not the least, the Niagara falls. It's majestic, it's beautiful and it’s worth a visit.

To answer your question, what I really did was mostly research. :P

Interesting! How did you make it there though?

USEQIP, the summer school I described above is a well structured program by IQC with its own funding sources. Students selected for the summer school, may or maynot be given a project for the whole summer(called URA), and this decision is made in the end of January based on your preferences. The application for USEQIP is filled in online and it requires a SOP and letters of recommendation like most programs. For URA students, the funding comes from the professor who you got accepted under. Subsidised housing is provided by them, for the entire duration, although the rent is deducted from the stipend. 

This year, they also decided to take in students through MITACS to popularise this program and this is how I got the project. Therefore, my funding came from Mitacs, whereas I was also given the same subsidised benefits as other URA students. Note that, as they floated their USEQIP program only in the Mitacs portal, I did not get an option to give my preference for professors, which on the face of it sounds terrible. However, the selectors did a good job of figuring out whose group I would fit into, seeing my profile and my SOP that I uploaded on the Mitacs portal.   

The program is somewhat competitive, about 30 students are selected from around 550 applicants.

Mitacs globalink research Internship, is a scholarship program that matches you to projects in Canada. The program itself is pretty competitive. On the other hand, it is well paying and also offers a graduate scholarship to people who wish to come back to Canada for graduate research. You are required to fill up to 7 project preferences out of their humongous list of 1000+ projects in all provinces of Canada. You will also be required to give  a statement  of purpose, a write-up about your research experience, your skills and achievements, CV and 2-3 letters of recommendations. The application procedure is pretty straight forward. There might be minor glitches here and there, but their support staff is prompt in resolving them.

After selection, they also help in the visa process by providing the required documents for work permit etc. Almost all your  expenses are covered, and even after spending on travelling and buying gifts, you may end up saving some money. Overall, it wasn’t a lot of hassle for me as most things were taken care of by IQC and Mitacs.

Any last words?

Looking back, This summer has been extremely rewarding and I am happy that I chose this option over others. There are a lot of reasons why I ended up choosing this project over others. Firstly the project itself, was interesting and one of a kind. Often we tend to think of theory as a way of creating new ways to describe some things we have been seeing, or making predictions. But here, I got an opportunity to use my theoretical understanding to design or create and it is something that I never got  to do before. It allowed me to exercise some extra creativity and I thought this would be something I would enjoy  doing. I guess i was right about that part. 

Secondly, the project came along with one of the most sought after summer schools. The experiments I  tried and the labs I got  access to, were world-class if nothing more. To see with my own eyes, the things I have been reading in books, was surreal. Moreover, as a theorist, it is often desirable to have an idea to have some exposure in experiments, and this was the perfect chance for the same. 

Thirdly, this opened up a lot of future possibilities for me. I got a much better  understanding of all the opportunities out there, I got a chance to be at the leading institute for Quantum Computing and I got to create contacts with some of the leaders of various fields. Mitacs scholarship made it easier for me to come back to Canada for higher studies if I wanted.

The work I did was interesting, and I am quite happy with what I could do here. I got what I expected from the project and in a way I did fulfill most of my requirements from an internship.

Finally, I met an amazing bunch of people, with a high enthusiasm in Science in general. It was the company that I had that made my experience really memorable. I enjoyed all the discussions I had with them, the places we visited and all the partying! I am sure I will meet many of them in the future in various roles as collaborators or competitors etc.

I totally skipped over how it was ‘during’ the application procedure and I am sure you will listen to something like that in the internship fundae sessions. But if I were to give a few words of advice, I would say :

Enjoy what you do and work hard. That’s paramount and that’s what will take you further.

Make friends and contacts. It’s good to know people like you!

Hang in there and believe in yourself. It only gets better and eventually everything falls into place.