Unitary as a noun

Since working in the field of quantum computing, I've had to get used to seeing the word unitary used as a noun to mean a unitary object such as an operator or matrix.   

 Such a usage has yet to make it into any English dictionary that I've checked - not OED, Chambers, Cambridge, Merriam-Webster.  Of those, only OED do list one kind of nounal usage, with the definite article, meaning "that which is unitary" with a first example quotation give as:

Man loves the Universal, the Unchangeable, the Unitary - W. E. Channing, Perfect Life (1888)

(someone writing a thesis on quantum computing, please feel free to take that quote!)

 The bible of quantum computing, Nielsen and Chuang's textbook Quantum Computation and Quantum Information sticks to standard English usage, with unitary always an adjective, but there is at least one place where I could see an unwary reader thinking it was a noun.  On p71 (10th anniversary edition) they say

This result suggests the following elegant outer product representation of any unitary U.

Here, the symbol U is the noun and unitary is an adjective, and if they wanted a nounal usage of unitary I'm sure they'd've put a comma in there. 

To show an example of the contemporary nounal usage, I was going to pick the first paper in today's arXiv quant-ph section and show how it is done, but they very diligiently use unitary only as an adjective.  In fact, I had to scan through quite a few papers from today's quant-ph to find unitary as a noun, but here is an example (from arXiv:2507.07646):

Note that the state [...] is generated by a unitary acting on the initial state 

The latent lexicographer in me would be interested to know the first example of such a usage, but I fear it would be very hard to find. 

Horsegirl

Since I seem to be using this blog to document general cultural activity that I engage in, let me record my trip last night to the Scala near King's Cross in London to see Horsegirl play. 

At the start of the year I had not heard of Horsegirl, but I came across an advert on social media for their new album and thought they sounded like they'd be up my street.  Listening to the album confirmed that, yes, they were really a great example of the kind of genre I like - something between the Velvet Underground, Electrlane, Stereolab, and Honey Tongue, with a sound that is nevertheless distinctively their own.  

Having had their album quickly establish myself as my favourite album of the year so far, I checked out to see if they just happened to be playing London soon.  They are from Chicago, but with a record out I thought they might tour and - yes!  I saw that they had a gig coming up.  Unfortunately it was sold out and I accepted my fate not to see them on this tour.  A bit later I thought I'd just look up in case some tickets had been returned or more released or something.  They hadn't, but they had decided to add an extra date so that they'd play Scala twice.  

So there I was last night, enjoying my new favourite band:

 

Day Three at NSP–2025

It's the third and final day at the NSP-2025 conference in Sivas, Türkiye.  The scientific programme has continued with some experimental work on basic nuclear physics from international participants and theoretical and applied work from others.  We've had presentations from ELI-NP in Romania again, this time covering gamma-ray strength functions.  This is an area where I have done a bit of work in the past, and I have lined myself up with a trip there later in the year to give a seminar and to discuss more about potential collaboration.  On the applied side, there have been a diverse range of talks from medical applications, to the study of radioactivity in tea.  Here's a picture of a group of us at the lunch place on the last day:  L–R Dmitry Testov (ELI-NP), Ebrar Akyüz (Middle East Technical U), Aslı Kuşoğlu (ELI-NP), Alberto Camaiani (U Florence), P-A Söderström (ELI-NP), me (Surrey), Serkan Akkoyun (Sivas U)

 

Day two at NSP–2025

It is day 2 of 3 at this conference I am attending in Sivas, Türkiye.  As if the opening concert were not enough yesterday, today we finished one of the scientific sessions with some Turkish folk dancing 

The conference has otherwise carried on with a combination of Turkish and international speakers.  Unlike the kind of conferences I usually go to, the emphasis here is on theoretical and applied nuclear physics, with relatively little on experimental blue skies nuclear physics.  This is, I think, because theory and applied work can be done without access to the most expensive facilities.  The main discussion of experimental work comes from the contingent who are here from ELI-NP, the facility just outside Bucharest in Romania.  

I'm enjoying meeting a bunch of new people, in a way that has taken me a long time to grow into over my professional life, and it might help that people see me as the senior expert and want to talk to me in that capacity.  In the last coffee break of the day I was even waylaid by each of a group of students in turn who wanted pictures taken with me, as if I were some kind of celebrity 🤷‍♂️

At NSP2025 in Türkiye

I am at the XVII International Conference on Nuclear Structure Properties at Sivas Cumhurıyet University in Sivas, Türkiye,  It's mainly a national conference, but with a few invited international speakers (including me).  I had pride of place as the first speaker, but only the first speaker in the scientific sessions.  Before that was the conference opening session, which as well as the usual words from a high-up official at the University, included a couple of promotional videos and (best bit) a 30 minute concert by a unversity string orchestra.  I was in the unenviable position of having to follow them with a talk on quantum computing.  

NuPECC meeting in Strasbourg

I've spent today in a meeting in Strasbourg as part of the NuPECC (Nuclear Physics European Collaboration Committee) on which I sit as a nominated delegate of the UK.  This is my second such meeting, having been rather recently named on the committee, and the structure was now familiar, with a series of reports on various things to do with nuclear physics research and the general research environemnt in each member country and in a trans-national sense.  As well as those activities per se, it is a chance to network personally and on behalf of the UK community. 

The meeting itself took place in the building of the ESF - the European Science Foundation, which is a typically nice oldish (though not that old by Strasbourg standards) institutional building that was on the site of a monestary which did not survive the revolution.  Here we are in the garden during the first coffee break.  I'm in the back row on the far left.

 

RIP Brian Wilson 1942 - 2025

I just read the news that Brian Wilson has died.  He was, with due deference to the other members, the leading creative force in the Beach Boys.  Aside from their general importance in popular music, the Beach Boys were the first band I really loved.  I got a two volume "Very Best of the Beach Boys" compilation when I was something like 8 or 9 and moved quickly on from liking the surfing hits of volume 1 to the more complex and varied songs on volume 2.  They have remained a favourite band of mine over the last 40+ years, with different parts of their work being important to me at different times of my life.  Dennis Wilson's death in 1983, when I was 9, was the first death that affected me, the first time that someone important in my life died.

In the summer between finishing by BA and starting my DPhil, I went on holiday to Los Angeles.  The fact that the Beach Boys were from there was just a coincidence - my (now dead) aunt lived there and it gave me and a University friend a base to see the sights.  I associate the trip with one of the records I picked up there - a Brian Wilson solo album "I just wasn't made for these times" which tied in with a biopic about him.  Brian had suffered a range of well known mental health, drug and alcohol issues, and I identified with him through such shared troubles that I was already startng to be aware of at that time, and was starting to engage with psychiatric services myself.  A few songs on that album I bought in LA really stood out to me, and I will post one here.  Called "Still I dream of it", this version from the album is a home-recorded solo demo by Brian, and you can really hear his fragility in it.  The studio-recorded version of the song wasn't released when it was orinigally recorded, and though I've heard it now, I still prefer the demo version.  Jimmy Nail has covered it, which brought him up highly in my esteem, and there is a strange AI version you can find in which Frank Sinatra's voice sings it.  Apparently it was written with him in mind. 

RIP Brian, and thanks