Wanbing Zhao
I am a fourth-year PhD student in the Applied Physics Program at Rice University, advised by Prof. Vir B. Bulchandani. My research focuses on quantum information theory and its interplay with many-body physics. I am passionate about understanding the mathematical structures underpinning quantum systems and advancing the foundations of quantum computation.
I‘m currently interested in answering questions like:
- What’s the ‘true’ quantumness that provides quantum speedups?
- What’s the natural physical model for implementing error-resilient tasks with provable quantum advantage?
Research
Nonlocal games
Rice University
- Scalable tests of quantum contextuality from stabilizer-testing nonlocal games [arXiv:2512.16654]
- We study a class of binary-valued n-player (n ≥ 3) nonlocal games that generalize Mermin’s star to arbitrary stabilizer codes. We establish a universal upper bound of 7/8 on the classical values of such games whenever they admit quantum advantage, coming from the Reed–Muller code RM(3,n). We show that the local stabilizer algebra can give rise to simple scalable families of nonlocal games with unbounded quantum–classical bias ratios as n grows.
- The stabilizer-testing nonlocal games provide a benchmark for quantum processors with three benefits: physical meaning—contextuality; quantum-classical separation directly related to fidelity per qubit; for both current and future quantum devices.
Quantum error mitigation
Xiao Yuan Group, Peking University
- Measurement error mitigation with generative machine learning models
- We propose a novel measurement error mitigation algorithm to suppress the measurement error by applying a generative machine learning model.
Selected Activities
- Subviewer： QIP2025, TQC2024
- Invited Talk: Academia Sinica, Taiwan, [Jan 2024]. Measurement Error Mitigation with Generative Machine Learning Models.
Paper Notes
Quantum Error Correction and Fault Tolerance
Variational Quantum Algorithms (VQA)
- Obstacles to Variational Quantum Optimization from Symmetry Protection & Limitations of variational quantum algorithms: a quantum optimal transport approach
- Machine learning of high dimensional data on a noisy quantum processor
Lectures on Quantum Dynamics
- Quantum Dynamics on $Z_d$
About Me
- I was born in Jilin, China.
- In my spare time, I enjoy hip-hop dancing and aspire to become more professional in it.
- My twin sister is a PhD student focusing on machine learning and computer systems at UIUC.