Physics

Presented as part of the SciComm Collider 2 workshop.
All PI Residents are invited. 

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A colloquium featuring 2 perspectives on science communication.

Tatiana Erukhimova - Making Physics Fun and Approachable
Matthew Strassler - The Challenge of Communicating Physics Accessibly, Clearly and Accurately

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Presented as part of the SciComm Collider 2 workshop.
All PI Residents are invited. 

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While scientists and journalists have many overlapping interests and skills, they often differ in their goals, resources, and expertise. This talk covers strategies, tips, and approaches researchers can use to make their interactions with writers and journalists rewarding and enjoyable. It will also cover ideas about pitching and writing for popular science and mainstream media publications. This session will be as interactive as possible, so feel free to bring your questions, concerns, and ideas.

Speaker Bio:
Patchen Barss is a Toronto-based science journalist and author. He has designed and run many workshops and training sessions for scientists and other researchers engaging in media relations and public engagement.

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This colloquium is presented in collaboration with the Foundations of Quantum Computational Advantage conference. 

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Abstract TBA

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Ground states as well as Gibbs states of many-body quantum Hamiltonians have been studied extensively since the inception of quantum mechanics. In contrast, the landscape of many-body quantum states that are not in thermal equilibrium is relatively less explored. In this talk I will discuss some of the recent progress in understanding decohered or dissipative quantum many-body states. One of the key ideas I will employ is that of "separability", i.e., whether a mixed state can be expressed as an ensemble of short-range entangled pure states. I will discuss several quantum phase transitions in topological phases of matter subjected to Markovian environmental noise from a separability viewpoint, and argue that such a framework also subsumes our understanding of pure quantum states as well as Gibbs states. Time permitting, I will also provide a brief overview of quantum spin-systems subjected to non-Markovian noise originating from an electronic bath, and discuss a new critical phase of matter where quantum coherence coexists with dissipation.

References: 2307.13889, 2309.11879, 2310.07286

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The dynamics of closed quantum systems undergoing unitary processes has been well studied, leading to notions of measures for the expressive power of parameterized quantum circuits, relative to the unique, maximally expressive, average behaviour of ensembles of unitaries. Such unitary expressivity measures have further been linked to concentration phenomena known as barren plateaus. However, existing quantum hardware are not isolated from their noisy environment, and such non-unitary dynamics must therefore be described by more general trace-preserving operations. To account for hardware noise, we propose several, non-unique measures of expressivity for quantum channels and study their properties, highlighting how average non-unitary channels differ from average unitary channels. In the limit of large composite system and environments, average noisy quantum channels are shown to be maximally globally depolarizing. Furthermore, we rigorously prove that highly-expressive parameterized quantum channels will suffer from barren plateaus, thus generalizing explanations of noise-induced phenomena. We complement our analytical findings with numerical experiments that showcase that, in certain situations, noise can increase the expressivity of parametrized quantum circuits.

In this talk I show how simple ideas motivated from the Swampland program, lead to concrete predictions for our universe.  These include predictions for particle physics and cosmology.  I also discuss some experimental predictions for these ideas.

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