Department of Mathematical Sciences
QIT Thinking Seminar
Wednesday, November 12th, 2025
4:00PM-4:50PM
Stratton Hall 207
Speaker: Sunny Kang, WPI
Title: Using quantum computers to simulate single-photon Mach-Zehnder interferometers with and without polarizers
Abstract: Mach-Zehnder interferometers are commonly introduced in quantum mechanics instruction because they can be represented as two-state systems. With the availability of quantum computers in the cloud, we show how one can also simulate these experiments as perfect single-photon experiments, via quantum computer circuits. This simulation provides a great opportunity to bring quantum computation and single quantum experiments into the physics classroom and to teach quantum computing via physics simulation rather than computer-science-based algorithms.