Scientific Series

A recent breakthrough in the condensed matter community is the identification and characterization of a rich set of ordered states, known as symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases. These phases are not only fascinating from the perspective of fundamental physics but have also found powerful applications in quantum computation. Very little is known about the thermal stability of SPT ordered systems, or whether their associated computational properties may survive at non-zero temperature. In this talk I will give a brief introduction to SPT phases of matter, and address the question of whether these phases can survive at non-zero temperature. In particular, I will focus on understanding the thermal stability and fault-tolerant properties of models studied in the theory of quantum computation.

Frustrated magnets provide a fertile ground for discovering exotic states of matter, such as those with topologically non-trivial properties. Motivated by several near-ideal material realizations, we focus on aspects of the two-dimensional kagome antiferromagnet. I present two of our works in this area both involving the spin-1/2 XXZ antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model. First, guided by a previous field theoretical study, we explore the XY limit ($J_z=0$) for the case of 2/3 magnetization (i.e. 1/6 filling of hard-core bosons) and perform exact numerical computations to search for a "chiral spin liquid phase". We provide evidence for this phase by analyzing the energetics, determining minimally entangled states and the associated modular matrices, and evaluating the many-body Chern number [1]. The second part of the talk follows from an unexpected outcome of the first work, which realized the existence of an exactly solvable point for the ratio of Ising to transverse coupling $J_z/J=-1/2$. This point in the phase diagram has "three coloring" states as its exact ground states, exists for all magnetizations (fillings) and is found to be the source or "mother" of the observed phases of the kagome antiferromagnet. Using this viewpoint, I revisit certain aspects of the highly contentious Heisenberg case (in zero field) and suggest that it is possibly part of a line of critical points.

[1] K. Kumar, H. J. Changlani, B. K. Clark, E. Fradkin, Phys. Rev. B 94, 134410 (2016)
[2] H. J. Changlani, D. Kochkov, K. Kumar, B. K. Clark, E. Fradkin, under review.

Many model quantum spin systems have been proposed to realize critical points or phases described by 2+1 dimensional conformal gauge theories. On a torus of size L and modular parameter τ, the energy levels of such gauge theories equal (1/L) times universal functions of τ. We compute the universal spectrum of QED3, a U(1) gauge theory with Nf two-component massless Dirac fermions, in the large-Nf limit. We also allow for a Chern-Simons term at level k, and show how the topological k-fold ground state degeneracy in the absence of fermions transforms into the universal spectrum in the presence of fermions; these computations are performed at fixed Nf/k in the large-Nf limit.

I will discuss the possibilities to mimic black hole physics in fluid flows. The starting point is an analogy discovered by Unruh between the propagation of sound in a flowing fluid and waves around a black hole. In these analog setups, it is possible to test various black hole effects, and challenge their robustness. In a recent water wave experiment, we have shown how to exploit this analogy to observe superradiant scattering, that is, the amplification of waves by extraction of angular momentum from a rotating flow.

The modeling of pulsar radio and gamma-ray emission suggests that in order to interpret the observations one needs to understand the field geometry and the plasma state in the emission region. In recent years, significant progress has been achieved in understanding the magnetospheric structure in the limit of abundant plasma supply. However, the very presence of dense plasma everywhere in the magnetosphere is not obvious. Even the region where the observed emission is produced is subject to debate. To address this from first principles, we constructed global kinetic simulations of pulsar magnetospheres using relativistic Particle-in-Cell codes, which capture the physics of plasma production and particle acceleration. In this talk I will describe how plasma is produced in magnetospheres of pulsars and show that effects of general relativity are crucial for the activity of pulsars with low inclination angles. I will present modeling of high-energy lightcurves, calculated self-consistently from particle motion in the pulsar magnetosphere. I will also show evidence that observed radio emission is powered by non-stationary discharge at the polar cap. Finally, I will argue that giant radio pulses in the Crab are produced by coherent plasma currents, which appear at the interfaces of merging plasmoids in the current sheet beyond the light cylinder.

We use the cluster structure on the Grassmannian and the combinatorics of plabic graphs to exhibit a new aspect of mirror symmetry for Grassmannians in terms of polytopes. From a given plabic graph G we have two coordinate systems: we have a network chart for the A-model Grassmannian, and a cluster chart for the B-model (Landau-Ginzburg model) Grassmannian. On the A-model side, we use the network chart from G and an ample divisor D to define an associated Newton-Okounkov polytope NO_G(D). We give explicit formulas for the lattice points in NO_G(D) in terms of the combinatorics of Young diagrams.   We then reinterpret NO_G(D) in terms of the superpotential and the cluster chart for the B- model Grassmannian. *This is joint work with Konstanze Rietsch. 

Models of gravitational waveforms play a critical role in detecting and characterizing the gravitational waves (GWs) from compact binary coalescences.  Waveforms from numerical relativity (NR), while highly accurate, are too computationally expensive to produce to be directly used in parameter estimation. We propose a Gaussian process regression (GPR) method to generate accurate reduced-order-model waveforms based only on existing accurate (e.g. NR) simulations. Using a training set of simulated waveforms, our GPR approach produces interpolated waveforms along with uncertainties across the parameter space. Beyond interpolation of waveforms, we also present the ``Minimization of the Maximum Estimated Error Placement'' (MMEEP) method, which utilizes the errors provided by our GPR model to optimize the placement of future simulations. 

We investigate the usefulness of ground states of quantum spin chains with symmetry-protected topological order (SPTO) for measurement-based quantum computation. We show that, in spatial dimension one, if an SPTO phase supports quantum wire, then, subject to an additional symmetry condition that is satisfied in all cases so far investigated, it can also be used for quantum computation. Joint work with Dongsheng Wang, Abhishodh Prakash, Tzu-Chieh Wei and David Stephen; See arXiv:1609.07549v1

Existing proposals for topological quantum computation have encountered
difficulties in recent years in the form of several ``obstructing'' results.
These are not actually no-go theorems but they do present some serious
obstacles. A further aggravation is the fact that the known topological
error correction codes only really work well in spatial dimensions higher
than three. In this talk I will present a method for modifying a higher
dimensional topological error correction code into one that can be embedded
into two (or three) dimensions. These projected codes retain at least some
of their higher-dimensional topological properties. The resulting subsystem
codes are not discrete analogs of TQFTs and as such they evade the usual
obstruction results. Instead they obey a discrete analog of a conformal
symmetry. Nevertheless, there are real systems which have these features,
and if time permits I'll discuss some of these. Many of them exhibit
strange low temperature behaviours that might even be helpful for
establishing finite temperature fault tolerance thresholds.

This research is still very much a work in progress... As such it has
numerous loose ends and open questions for further investigation. These
constructions could also be of interest to quantum condensed matter
theorists and may even be of interest to people who like weird-and-wonderful
spin models in general.

Kontsevich and Soibelman defined Donaldson-Thomas invariants of a 3d Calabi-Yau category with a stability condition. Any cluster variety gives rise to a family of such categories. Their DT invariants are encapsulated in single formal automorphism of the cluster variety, called the DT-transformation. An oriented surface S with punctures, and a finite number of special points on the boundary give rise to a moduli space, closely related to the moduli space of PGL(m)-local systems on S, which carries a canonical cluster Poisson variety structure. We determine the DT-transformation of this space. This is a joint work with Alexander Goncharov.

Over the past several years, our understanding of topological electronic phases of matter has advanced dramatically.   A paradigm that has emerged is that insulating electronic states with an energy gap fall into distinct topological classes.   Interfaces between different topological phases exhibit gapless conducting states that are protected topologically and are impossible to get rid of.   In this talk we will discuss the application of this idea to the quantum Hall effect, topological insulators,  topological superconductors and the quest for Majorana fermions in condensed matter.   We will then show that similar ideas arise in a completely different class of problems.    Isostatic lattices are arrays of masses and springs that are at the verge of mechanical instability.   They play an important role in our understanding of granular matter, glasses and other 'soft' systems.  Depending on their geometry, they can exhibit zero-frequency 'floppy' modes localized on their boundaries that are insensitive to local perturbations.   The mathematical relation between this classical system and quantum electronic systems reveals an unexpected connection between theories of hard and soft matter.