| This study explores the entangled nature of collaboration and communication in a quantum physics community of practice. Based on three years of ethnographic fieldwork among quantum information physicists at Los Alamos National Laboratory and professors and students affiliated with the Southwest Quantum Information and Technology (SQuInT) Research Network, the study seeks to join current conversations in the anthropology of work, community studies, and the social studies of science concerning the role of collaboration and scientific discourse in quantum physics and the ways in which certain forms of community are constituted and sustained in scientific work. The study examines functional and cultural aspects of quantum physics work, including its workspaces, work, tools, language, and forms of discourse. In so doing, the study considers some of the effects that commitment, gender, and power differentials have on the work, on the production and use of social space, and on the creation of community. The study's principal finding is that through dynamic collaborations and frequent communication, the SQuInT quantum information physicists have created and continue to sustain a remarkably robust and intuitively coherent social structure that validates Wenger's model of a community of practice in the stewardship phase. |
