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Mark Hillery

Mark Hillery

Professor
Research Areas
Quantum Optics, Nonlinear Optics, Quantum Information, Condensed Matter Physics

Dr. Mark Hillery is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

See Contact Details

Profile

My work since the mid 1990's has been primarily in the field of quantum information. Before then I was working in quantum optics. My initial work in quantum information, done in collaboration with Vladimir Buzek, was on quantum machines. These are devices that process quantum states in particular ways. We looked at the cloning and flipping of qubits, and proposed machines that would accomplish these tasks approximately (neither can be done perfectly for all input states).

I also did work in quantum cryptography. With Vladimir and Andre Berthiaume I proposed the first quantum secret sharing scheme, and later I wrote one of the first papers on quantum cryptography with continuous variables. The senior members of our group at Hunter are Janos Bergou and Edgar Feldman. With them I have worked on problems in quantum state discrimination, in particular on programmable state discriminators and on sequential state discrimination in which multiple observers sequentially measure the same system. With Suhail Zubairy, I developed conditions to detect entanglement in both bipartite and multipartite systems, and later extended this work with the help of Julien Niset and Ho Trung Dung. With Erika Andersson I have worked on quantum algorithms for the property testing of Boolean functions. Recently, I have been working with students in the areas of quantum walks and in the application of group theory to the generation of Bell inequalities. In addition, with Emilio Bagan, Janos Bergou, and Seth Cottrell, I have been applying ideas from the recently formulated resource theory of coherence to the study of wave-particle duality relations.

Educational Background

  • BS in Physics - MIT
  • PhD in Physics - University of California, Berkeley

Research Interests

  • Quantum Optics
  • Nonlinear Optics
  • Quantum Information
  • Condensed Matter Physics

Courses

Courses Taught:

  • PHYS 110: General Physics: Introductory Course in Mechanics, Heat, and Sound
  • PHYS 120: General Physics: Introductory Course in Electricity and Magnetism, Light, and Atomic Physics

Recent Talks

  1. Quantum walks, Institute for Quantum Computing, April 2013.
  2. Quantum optics past and present: What puts the quantum in quantum optics? MIT Lincoln Labs, April 2014 and Heriot-Watt University, June 2014.
  3. Shifting and flipping your way to Bell inequalities, DAMOP 2014, Madison, WI.
  4. Property testing of Boolean functions, a quantum approach, Mathematical Foundations of Programming Semantics, Ithaca, NY, June 2014.
  5. Quantum nonlinear optics, lectures at the QUTE-Europe Summer School, Smolenice Castle, Slovakia, August 2014.
  6. Groups, non-local games, and Bell inequalities at DAMOP 2015, Columbus, OH, June 2015.
  7. Groups, graphs, and Bell inequalities, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK June, 2016.
  8. Coherence-path-information duality relation for N paths, DAMPOP 2016, Providence, RI, June 2016.
  9. Quantum walk search problems, invited talk at Workshop on Quantum Simulation and Quantum Walks, Prague, Czech Republic, November, 2016 and IEEE Workshop on Quantum Networks, San Juan, Puerto Rico, July, 2017.
  10. Retrodiction of measurement results at DAMOP 2017, Sacramento, CA.

Books and Publications

Introduction to the Theory of Quantum Information ProcessingIntroduction to the Theory of Quantum Information Processing by Janos Bergou and Mark Hillery, Springer 2013.


The Quantum Theory of Nonlinear OpticsThe Quantum Theory of Nonlinear Optics by Peter Drummond and Mark Hillery, Cambridge University Press, 2014.

  1. Searches on star graphs and equivalent oracle problems by J. Lee, Hai-Woong Lee and Mark Hillery, Phys. Rev. A 83, 022318 (2011).
  2. Toward protocols for quantum-ensured privacy and secure voting by Marianna Bonanome, Vladimir Buzek, and Mario Ziman, Phys. Rev. A 84, 022332 (2011).
  3. Quantum tests for the linearity and permutation invariance of Boolean functions by Mark Hillery and Erika Andersson, Phys. Rev. A 84, 062329 (2011).
  4. Quantum walks as a probe of structural anomalies in graphs by Mark Hillery, Hongjun Zheng, Edgar Feldman, Daniel Reitzner, and Vladimir Buzek, Phys. Rev. A 85, 062325 (2012).
  5. Quantum algorithms for testing and learning Boolean functions by Dominik Floss, Erika Anderson, and Mark Hillery, Mathematical Structures in Computer Science 23, 386 (2013).
  6. Maximum quantum violations of a class of Bell inequalities by V. Ugur Guney and Mark Hillery, Phys. Rev. A 87, 052126 (2013).
  7. Extracting information from a qubit by multiple observers: Toward a theory of sequential state discrimination by Janos Bergou, Edgar Feldman, and Mark Hillery, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 100501 (2013).
  8. Finding structural anomalies in star graphs using quantum walks by Seth Cottrell and Mark Hillery, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 030501 (2014).
  9. Bell inequalities from group actions of single-generator groups by V. Ugur Guney and Mark Hillery, Phys. Rev. A 90, 062121 (2014).
  10. Bell inequalities from group actions:  Three parties and non-Abelian groups by V. Ugur Guney and Mark Hillery, Phys. Rev. A 91, 052110 (2015).
  11. Coherence as a resource in decision problems: The Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm and a variation by Mark Hillery, Phys. Rev. A 93, 012111 (2016).
  12. Relations between coherence and path information by Emilio Bagan, Janos Bergou, Seth Cottrell, and Mark Hillery, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 160406 (2016).
  13. Retrodiction of a sequence of measurement results in qubit interferometers by Mark Hillery and Daniel Koch, Phys. Rev. A 94, 032118 (2016).

 

Miscellaneous

 cat on Mark Hillery's shoulder
cat with Mark Hillery  

Because of my collaboration with Vladimir Buzek, I travel to Bratislava at least once a year. Last year I saw an exhibit in the Slovak National Gallery of the work of Slovak artists that had been acquired by the museum since 1989. I particularly liked the work of Igor Minarik and Daniel Fischer. The pictures show the studio of Igor Minarik in Bratislava, and Igor Mniarik himself. They were taken by Vladimir during my visit in November, 2003. It should be pointed out that I do not really play the guitar.

Contact Details

Mark Hillery

Physics & Astronomy
68th Street North 1215
(212) 772-5253
mhillery@hunter.cuny.edu

HUNTER

Hunter College
695 Park Ave NY, NY 10065
(212) 772-4000

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