Tag Archives: condensed matter

Q+ Hangout: David Poulin

Here are the details of the next Q+ hangout.

Date/time: Mon. 27th May 2013 3pm BST (UTC+1)

Speaker: David Poulin (University of Sherbrooke)

Title: Tradeoffs Between Thermal and Quantum Fluctuations in 2D Quantum Memories

Abstract: Under a certain set of conditions collectively known as “local topological order”, the low energy spectrum of a system is robust to local perturbations. This has the consequence that quantum information encoded in the degenerate ground state of such a system is stable at zero temperature. On the other hand, the existence of a macroscopic energy barrier between ground states imply that information encoded in the low energy manifold is robust against thermal fluctuations. Here, we demonstrate that for local commuting projector codes, local topological order prohibits the existence of an energy barrier, which shows a tradeoff between robustness to quantum and thermal fluctuations.

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Q+ Hangout: Fernando G.S.L. Brandão

Here are the details of the next Q+ hangout.

Date/time: Tue. 26th Feb. 2pmGMT/UTC

Speaker: Fernando G.S.L. Brandão (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais)

Title: Exponential decay of correlations implies area law

Abstract:

Quantum states of many particles are fundamental to our understanding of many-body physics. Yet they are extremely daunting objects, requiring in the worst case an exponential number of parameters in the number of subsystems to be even approximately described. How then can multi-particle states be useful for giving predictions to physical observables? The intuitive explanation is that physically relevant quantum states, defined as the ones appearing in nature, are usually much simpler than generic quantum states. In this talk I will discuss a recent result that gives further justification to this intuition.

The result shows that exponential decay of correlations, a physically motivated restriction on the set of multi-particle quantum states, implies an area law for the entanglement entropy of systems defined on a line, and thus also an efficient classical description for such systems. The result can be seen as a rigorous justification to the intuition that states with exponential decay of correlations, usually associated with non-critical phases of matter, are simple to describe.

I will outline the main ideas in the proof, that relies on several previous tools from quantum information theory, such as the state merging protocol, and that can also be seen as providing a limitation to the phenomenon of data hiding in quantum states.

Based on arXiv:1206.2947, joint work with Michal Horodecki.

To watch the talk live go to http://gplus.to/qplus at the appointed hour.

To keep up to date on the latest news about Q+ hangouts, you can follow us on:

or visit our website.