Song Contest

"Tangle Bits"
(to the tune of "Jingle Bells")

John S. Bell, John S. Bell
proved there is no way
locally and classic'ly
to make QM OK.
(repeat)

Einstein would have cried
to see what Bell had done.
Then Peter Shor supplied
good news for everyone:
Qubits are bizarre,
but they can be a hoot.
Let's accept them as they are
and use them to compute!

Tangle bits! Tangle bits!
Tangle all the way!
We don't need locality
to make QM OK.
(repeat)

Reality's a "Bohr";
It keeps us so constrained.
Without it we can score
a factoring machine.
To noise we must not fall,
or else we'll decohere.
So keep the errors small,
and then we'll persevere.

Tangle bits! Tangle bits!
Tangle all the way!
We don't need locality
to make QM OK.
(repeat)

With cleverness and skill,
we code our quantum bits.
According to Pres-kill,
fault tolerance we'll hit.
The threshold is quite strict.
So don't yet buy your stock,
in quantum Intel chips,
or quantum Macintosh!

Tangle bits! Tangle bits!
Tangle all the way.
We don't need locality
to make QM OK.
(repeat)

Bill Wooters, Ivan Deutsch, and Mark Srednicki

Download song

I have a tiny Qubit
(sung to I have a little dreidel)

I have a tiny qubit.
I made it from a spin.
And when my qubit's ready,
I'll get a lot of them.

Oh, qubits, qubits, qubits!
I think they're really cute.
And when they're all quite perfect,
My qubits will compute.

(Repeat)

Carlton Caves

Download song

QUANTUM COMPUTING
(with apologies to FROSTY that boring classical snowman)

Quantum Computing,
Is a fairy tale they say
Smoking a pipe filled with hype
Was how it came to life one day.

There must have been some magic,
In the buzzwords that they found.
For when a spin became a qubit,
Big bucks came raining down.

Quantum computing,
Bob was just too hot one day,
So,’Alice’, he said, ‘let's entangle in bed,
Before I collapse away.’

‘But I am in a pure state’,
Said Alice in dismay.
‘Just hold on, dear, I'll teleport you here,
We'll get mixed up right away.’

Quantum Computing,
But these plans, they go astray.
For they're all at sea, since they left Shor,
Till experiments save the day.

Arun Paramekenti, Amalya Madhav, Smitha Vishveshwara, Akakii
Melikidze, Kay Wiese and Matthew Fisher

Download song

To the tune of "Angels We Have Heard on High"

Off by a factor of 2 Pi
Broken pencil lead again
Lost another minus sign
One more time I will begin.

1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 zer-oh
Need a calculator
1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 zer-oh
To save my fragile ee-ee-go.

Try to factor real large primes
Bash my head against the wall
Peter Shor arrives on time
Promises to save us all.

1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 zer-oh
Need a quantum computer
1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 zer-oh
Intel's not enough for me.

Hilbert space is pretty big
But not large enough for me
If I could compute with strings
Not a thing would be NP.

1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 zer-oh
A string theory PC?
1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 zer-oh
Anything to stay trendy.

Ken Brown and Brian Wecht

Download song

Ten Weeks of High Tc
(to the tune of Twelve Days of Christmas)

On the first week of the program
Friend Philip said to me
All simply RVB
(All sim-pl-ee R-r V B)

On the second week of the program
Friend Douglas said to me
Pair in a d-wave
All simply RVB

On the third week of the program
Friend David said to me
It's magnons
Pair in a d-wave
All simply RVB

On the fourth week of the program
Friend Chandra said to me
Four current rings (fo-or current rings)
It's magnons
Pair in a d-wave
All simply RVB>

On the fifth week of the program
Friend Shou-Zhang said to me
S - O - 5
Four current rings
It's magnons
Pair in a d-wave
All simply RVB

On the sixth week of the program
Friend Stephen said to me
Stripes fluctuating
S - O - 5
Four current rings
It's magnons
Pair in a d-wave
All simply RVB>

On the seventh week of the program
Bob Laughlin said to me
T sym-try breaking
Stripes fluctuating
S - O - 5
Four current rings
It's magnons
Pair in a d-wave
All simply RVB

On the eighth week of the program
Friend Patrick said to me
Slave spinons pairing
T sym-try breaking
Stripes fluctuating
S - O - 5
Four current rings
It's magnons
Pair in a d-wave
All simply RVB

On the ninth week of the program
Friend Senthil said to me
Visons are gapping
Slave spinons pairing
T sym-try breaking
Stripes fluctuating
S - O - 5
Four current rings
It's magnons
Pair in a d-wave
All simply RVB

On the tenth week of the program
Kam Moler said to me
Visons escaping
Visons are gapping
Slave spinons pairing
T sym-try breaking
Stripes fluctuating
S - O - 5
Four current rings
It's magnons
Pair in a d-wave
All simply RVB

At the end of the program
Friend Philip said to me
Big Tent is stretching
Visons escaping
Visons are gapping
Slave spinons pairing
T sym-try breaking
Stripes fluctuating
S - O - 5
Four current rings
It's magnons
Pair in a d-wave
All simply RVB
 

--Ilya Gruzberg
Smitha Vishveshwara
Ilya Vekheter
Aditi Mitra
Senthil
Matthew Fisher

God rest ye merry physicists
With space and time combined,
Preserving fields of particles
By cosmic rays maligned,
To save us all from gravity when grants are running low...
 
CHORUS
For tidings of superstrings of joy, strings of joy,
For tidings of superstrings of joy.
Non-fermi liquids fill our glass,
Polymerically sublime,
Non-equilibrium our branes
Will gauge the merry rhyme,
To save us all from gravity when grants are running low...
 
CHORUS
For tidings of superstrings of joy, strings of joy,
For tidings of superstrings of joy.
To all experimentalists
We wish you photon speed,
Detecting Higgs and superstrings
So theorists can procede,
To save us all from gravity when grants are running low...
 
CHORUS
For tidings of superstrings of joy, strings of joy,
For tidings of superstrings of joy.
 
  --S. Vaughan

Oh, Baryons
(Oh Christmas Tree)

Steve Gubser

1.
Oh baryons, we're glad you're here.
Where would we be without you?
But why are you so numerous?
There's something strange about you.
A billionth of the thermal bath
Would make you in the aftermath.
Oh baryons, oh baryons,
Where would we be without you?

2.
Did you appear from sphalerons?
Or maybe from X-bosons?
Oh baryons, you're dear to me,
But why you're here I can't see.
I've calculated day and night,
But cannot get the answer right.
Oh baryons, oh baryons,
Where would we be without you?

3.
Are you a tiny residue
Of processes leptonic?
Without you here my health would fail
I'd need more than a tonic.
We trust in Sakharov and 't Hooft
But maybe after them we goofed!
And baryons, might I inquire
Will you in time expire?

Download song

OH NEURAL CELL
(to the tune of 'Oh Tannenbaum')

Leonard Sander

Oh neural cell, oh neural cell,
How lovely are thy branches.
Oh neural cell, oh neural cell,
How lovely are thy branches.
We know you fire
In the brain,
But why you do
We can’t explain.
Oh neural cell, oh neural cell,
How lovely are thy branches.

Oh calcium, oh calcium,
Your reticulum’s endo-plastic.
Oh calcium, oh calcium,
Your reticulum’s endo-plastic.

We model every
Wave you make
What’s going on
For heaven’s sake?
Oh calcium, oh calcium,
Your reticulum’s endo-plastic.
Contagious germ, contagious germ,
We like to track your progress.
Contagious germ, contagious germ,
We like to track your progress.

An epidemic’s
Not so bad
If we can follow
Where it spread.
Contagious germ, contagious germ,
We like to track your progress.

Oh NIH, Oh NIH,
Your grants are so much bigger.
Oh NIH, Oh NIH,
Your grants are so much bigger.
For that is why
We do this stuff
Cause NSF
Won’t pay enough.
Oh NIH, Oh NIH,
Your grants are so much bigger.

Download song

Letʼs Call the Whole Thing off (Evan)

Voice A: I say "string theory"
Voice B: And I say "astrophysics"
Voice A: I study string theory
B: And I study physics
A: String theory
B: Physics
A: Physical string theory
B: Physical astro-phisicy-physics
A+B together: Let's call the whole thing off
--
A: I say 11 dimensional dual space
B: And I say "star"
A: Is say "tangent space to the fiber bundle of the M-brane"
B : and I say "Star"
A: Lie algebra of the representation group of the orbifold
B: O-star
A: Holomophic mapping over the Calabi-Yau manifold
B: B-star
A+B: Let's call the whole thing off
--
A: I say "anthropic"
B: And I'm catatonic
A: Compactification
B: And wild speculation
A: Elegance
B: Irrelevance
A: Renormalize
B: And fantasize
A+B: Let's call the whole thing off
----
B: I say "Vega magnitudes"
A: ... don't give me that attitude
B: 70 km per sec per Mpc
A: why don't you just take 1 for c?
B: AGN, ULX, QPO, LMC, ERO, GRB, E+A,
AGB, BAL, WNM, IGM, M31, LMXB, HD188753
A+B: Let's call the whole thing off
---
A: I say "Einstein"
B: and I say "Einstein"
A: I say "Black Hole"
B: and I say "Black Hole"
B: Dimensions?
A: Three plus one
B: Yeah?
A: Anti-de Sitter
A+B: Let's call the whole thing off!!!!

Download song