Format results
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Bosonic particle-correlated states
Zhang Jiang University of New Mexico
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Does the Quantum Particle know its own Energy?
Rafael Sorkin Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
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Noncontextuality without determinism and admissible (in)compatibility relations: revisiting Specker's parable.
Ravi Kunjwal Funds for Scientific Research - FNRS
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The computational power of matchgates and the XY interaction on arbitrary graphs
Daniel Brod Universidade Federal Fluminense
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The Bose-Hubbard model is QMA-complete
David Gosset Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC)
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Rebuilding Mathematics on a Quantum Logical Foundation
Richard deJonghe University of Illinois at Chicago
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Quantum Mechanics as Classical Physics
Charles Sebens University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
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Applications of Information Theory in Direct Sum and Direct Product Problems
A fundamental question in complexity theory is how much resource is needed to solve k independent instances of a problem compared to the resource required to solve one instance. Suppose solving one instance of a problem with probability of correctness p, we require c units of some resource in a given model of computation. A direct sum theorem states that in order to compute k independent instances of a problem, it requires k times units of the resource needed to compute one instance. A strong direct product theorem states that, with o(k • c) units of the resource, one can only compute all the k instances correctly with probability exponentially small in k. In this talk, I am going to present some of recent progress on direct sum and direct product theorems in the model of communication complexity and two-prover one-round games with information-theoretic approach. The talk is based on parts of my doctoral work. -
Bosonic particle-correlated states
Zhang Jiang University of New Mexico
Quantum many-body problems are notorious hard. This is partly because the Hilbert space becomes exponentially big with the particle number N. While exact solutions are often considered intractable, numerous approaches have been proposed using approximations. A common trait of these approaches is to use an ansatz such that the number of parameters either does not depend on N or is proportional to N, e.g., the matrix-product state for spin lattices, the BCS wave function for superconductivity, the Laughlin wave function for fractional quantum Hall effects, and the Gross-Pitaecskii theory for BECs. Among them the product ansatz for BECs has precisely predicted many useful properties of Bose gases at ultra-low temperature. As particle-particle correlation becomes important, however, it begins to fail. To capture the quantum correlations, we propose a new
set of states, which constitute a natural generalization of the product-state ansatz. Our state of N=d& times;n identical particles is derived by symmetrizing the n-fold product of a d-particle quantum state. For fixed d, the parameter space of our state does not grow with N. Numerically, we show that our ansatz gives the right description for the ground state and time evolution of the two-site Bose-Hubbard model. -
Hardness of correcting errors on a stabilizer code
Problems in computer science are often classified based on the scaling of the runtimes for algorithms that can solve the problem. Easy problems are efficiently solvable but often in physics we encounter problems that take too long to be solved on a classical computer. Here we look at one such problem in the context of quantum error correction. We will further show that no efficient algorithm for this problem is likely to exist. We will address the computational hardness of a decoding problem, pertaining to quantum stabilizer codes considering independent X and Z errors on each qubit. Much like classical linear codes, errors are detected by measuring certain check operators which yield an error syndrome, and the decoding problem consists of determining the most likely recovery given the syndrome. The corresponding classical problem is known to be NP-Complete, and a similar decoding problem for quantum codes is known to be NP-Complete too. However, this decoding strategy is not optimal in the quantum setting as it does not take into account error degeneracy, which causes distinct errors to have the same effect on the code. Here, we show that optimal decoding of stabilizer codes is computationally much harder than optimal decoding of classical linear codes, it is #P-Complete. -
Does the Quantum Particle know its own Energy?
Rafael Sorkin Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
If a wave function does not describe microscopic reality then what does? Reformulating quantum mechanics in path-integral terms leads to a notion of ``precluded event" and thence to the proposal that quantal reality differs from classical reality in the same way as a set of worldlines differs from a single worldline. One can then ask, for example, which sets of electron trajectories correspond to a Hydrogen atom in its ground state and how they differ from those of an excited state. We address the analogous questions for simple model that replaces the electron by a particle hopping (in discrete time) on a circular lattice. -
Entanglement farming: Harnessing the properties of fixed points in quantum evolution
Eduardo Martin-Martinez University of Waterloo
We show that in certain generic circumstances the state of light of an optical cavity traversed by beams of atoms is naturally driven towards a non-thermal metastable state. This state can be such that successive pairs of unentangled particles sent through the cavity will reliably emerge significantly entangled thus providing a renewable source of quantum entanglement. Significant for possible experimental realizations is the fact that this entangling fixed point state of the cavity can be reached largely independently of the initial state in which the cavity was prepared. Our results suggest that reliable entanglement farming on the basis of such a fixed point state should be possible also in various other experimental settings, namely with the to-be-entangled particles replaced by arbitrary qudits and with the cavity replaced by a suitable reservoir system. -
Noncontextuality without determinism and admissible (in)compatibility relations: revisiting Specker's parable.
Ravi Kunjwal Funds for Scientific Research - FNRS
The purpose of this talk is twofold: First, following Spekkens, to motivate noncontextuality as a natural principle one might expect to hold in nature and introduce operational noncontextuality inequalities motivated by a contextuality scenario first considered by Ernst Specker. These inequalities do not rely on the assumption of outcome-determinism which is implicit in the usual Kochen-Specker (KS) inequalities. We argue that they are the appropriate generalization of KS inequalities, serving as a test for the possibility of noncontextual explanations of experimental data. This is very much in the spirit of Bell inequalities, which provide theory-independent tests for local hidden variable explanations of experimental data without relying on the assumption of outcome-determinism. The second purpose is to point out a curious feature of quantum theory, motivated by the connections between (in)compatibility and (non)contextuality: namely, that it admits all conceivable (in)compatibility relations between observables. -
The computational power of matchgates and the XY interaction on arbitrary graphs
Daniel Brod Universidade Federal Fluminense
Matchgates are a restricted set of two-qubit gates known to be classically simulable when acting on nearest-neighbor qubits on a path, but universal for quantum computation when the gates can also act on more distant qubits. In this talk, I will address the power of matchgates when they can act on pairs of qubits according to the edges of arbitrary graphs. Specifically, we show that matchgates are universal on any connected graph other than a path or a cycle, and that they are classically simulable on a cycle. We also prove that the same dichotomy holds for the XY interaction, a proper subset of matchgates that arises naturally in some implementations of quantum computing. This is based on a joint work with Ernesto Galvão and another with Andrew Childs. -
The Bose-Hubbard model is QMA-complete
David Gosset Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC)
The Bose-Hubbard model is a system of interacting bosons that live on the vertices of a graph. The particles can move between adjacent vertices and experience a repulsive on-site interaction. The Hamiltonian is determined by a choice of graph that specifies the geometry in which the particles move and interact. We prove that approximating the ground energy of the Bose-Hubbard model on a graph at fixed particle number is QMA-complete. In our QMA-hardness proof, we encode the history of an n-qubit computation in the subspace with at most one particle per site (i.e., hard-core bosons). This feature, along with the well-known mapping between hard-core bosons and spin systems, lets us prove a related result for a class of 2-local Hamiltonians defined by graphs that generalizes the XY model. By avoiding the use of perturbation theory in our analysis, we circumvent the need to multiply terms in the Hamiltonian by large coefficients. This is joint work with Andrew Childs and Zak Webb. -
Rebuilding Mathematics on a Quantum Logical Foundation
Richard deJonghe University of Illinois at Chicago
It is not unnatural to expect that difficulties lying at the foundations of quantum mechanics can only be resolved by literally going back and rethinking the quantum theory from first principles (namely, the principles of logic). In this talk, I will present a first-order quantum logic which generalizes the propositional quatum logic originated by Birkhoff and von Neumann as well as the standard classical predicate logic used in the development of virtually all of modern mathematics. I will then use this quantum logic to begin to build the foundations of a new ``quantum mathematics'' --- in particular a quantum set theory and a quantum arithmetic --- which has the potential to provide a completely new mathematical framework in which to develop the theory of quantum
mechanics. -
Direct Detection of Classically Undetectable Dark Matter through Quantum Decoherence
Jess Riedel NTT Research
Although various pieces of indirect evidence about the nature of dark matter have been collected, its direct detection has eluded experimental searches despite extensive effort. If the mass of dark matter is below 1 MeV, it is essentially imperceptible to conventional detection methods because negligible energy is transferred to nuclei during collisions. Here I propose directly detecting dark matter through the quantum decoherence it causes rather than its classical effects such as recoil or ionization. I show that quantum spatial superpositions are sensitive to low-mass dark matter that is inaccessible to classical techniques. This provides new independent motivation for matter interferometry with large masses, especially on spaceborne platforms. The apparent dark matter wind we experience as the Sun travels through the Milky Way ensures interferometers and related devices are directional detectors, and so are able to provide unmistakable evidence that decoherence has galactic origins. -
Quantum Mechanics as Classical Physics
Charles Sebens University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
On the face of it, quantum physics is nothing like classical physics. Despite its oddity, work in the foundations of quantum theory has provided some palatable ways of understanding this strange quantum realm. Most of our best theories take that story to include the existence of a very non-classical entity: the wave function. Here I offer an alternative which combines elements of Bohmian mechanics and the many-worlds interpretation to form a theory in which there is no wave function. According to this theory, all there is at the fundamental level are particles interacting via Newtonian forces. In this sense, the theory is classical. However, it is still undeniably strange as it posits the existence of many worlds. Unlike the many worlds of the many-worlds interpretation, these worlds are fundamental, not emergent, and are interacting, not causally isolated. The theory will be presented as a fusion of the many-worlds interpretation and Bohmian mechanics, but can also be seen as a foundationally clear version of quantum hydrodynamics. A key strength of this theory is that it provides a simple and compelling story about the connection between the amplitude-squared of the wave function and probability. The theory also gives a natural explanation of the way the wave function transforms under time reversal and Galilean boosts. -
Homological Product Codes
Sergey Bravyi IBM (United States)
Quantum codes with low-weight stabilizers known as LDPC codes have been actively studied recently due to their potential applications in fault-tolerant quantum computing. However, all families of quantum LDPC codes known to this date suffer from a poor distance scaling limited by the square-root of the code length. This is in a sharp contrast with the classical case where good families of LDPC codes are known that combine constant encoding rate and linear distance. Here we propose the first family of good quantum codes with low-weight stabilizers. The new codes have a constant encoding rate, linear distance, and stabilizers acting on at most square root of n qubits, where n is the code length. For comparison, all previously known families of good quantum codes have stabilizers of linear weight. Our proof combines two techniques: randomized constructions of good quantum codes and the homological product operation from algebraic topology. We conjecture that similar methods can produce good stabilizer codes with stabilizer weight n^a for any a>0. Finally, we apply the homological product to construct new small codes with low-weight stabilizers. This is a joint work with Matthew Hastings.