Talks

One of the central problems in the study of quantum resource theories is to provide a given resource with an operational meaning, characterizing physical tasks relevant to information processing in which the resource can give an explicit advantage over all resourceless states. We show that this can always be accomplished for all convex resource theories. We establish in particular that any resource state enables an advantage in a channel discrimination task, allowing for a strictly greater success probability than any state without the given resource. Furthermore, we find that the generalized robustness measure serves as an exact quantifier for the maximal advantage enabled by the given resource state in a class of subchannel discrimination problems, providing a universal operational interpretation to this fundamental resource quantifier. 

Next, we significantly extend the above consideration beyond "quantum" resource theories of "states"; we establish an operational characterization of general convex resource theories --- describing the resource content of not only states, but also measurements and channels, both within quantum mechanics and in general probabilistic theories (GPTs) --- in the context of state and channel discrimination. We find that discrimination tasks provide a unified operational description for quantification and manipulation of resources by showing that the family of robustness measures can be understood as the maximum advantage provided by any physical resource in several different discrimination tasks, as well as establishing that such discrimination problems can fully characterize the allowed transformations within the given resource theory. Our results establish a fundamental connection between the operational tasks of discrimination and core concepts of resource theories --- the geometric quantification of resources and resource manipulation --- valid for all physical theories beyond quantum mechanics with no additional assumptions about the structure of the GPT required.

References: 

[1] Ryuji Takagi, Bartosz Regula, Kaifeng Bu, Zi-Wen Liu, and Gerardo Adesso, "Operational Advantage of Quantum Resources in Subchannel Discrimination", Phys. Rev. Lett. 122.140402 (2019)

[2] Ryuji Takagi and Bartosz Regula, "General resource theories in quantum mechanics and beyond: operational characterization via discrimination tasks", arXiv: 1901.08127

Melonic tensor model is a new type of solvable model, where the melonic Feynman diagrams dominate in the large N limit. The melonic dominance, as well as the solvability of the model, relies on a special type of interaction vertex, which generically would not be preserved under renormalization group flow. I will discuss a class of 2d N=(2,2) melonic tensor models, where the non-renormalization of the superpotential protects the melonic dominance. Another important feature of our models is that they admit a novel type of deformations which gives a large IR conformal manifold. At generic point of the conformal manifold, all the flavor symmetries (including the O(N)^{q-1} symmetry) are broken and all the flat directions in the potential are lifted. I will also discuss how the operator spectrum and the chaos exponent depend on the deformation parameters.

In 1997, Kontsevich gave a universal solution to the "deformation quantization" problem in mathematical physics: starting from any Poisson manifold (the classical phase space), it produces a  noncommutative algebra of quantum observables by deforming the ordinary multiplication of functions.  His formula is a Feynma  expansion, involving an infinite sum over graphs, weighted by volume integrals on the moduli space of marked holomorphic disks. The precise values of these integrals are currently unknown.  I will describe recent joint work with Banks and Panzer, in which we develop a theory of integration on these moduli spaces via suitable sheaves of polylogarithms, and use it to prove that Kontsevich's integrals evaluate to integer-linear combinations of special transcendental constants called multiple zeta values, yielding the first algorithm for their calculation.

Kitaev materials — spin-orbit assisted Mott insulators, in which local, spin-orbit entangled j=1/2 moments form that are subject to strong bond-directional interactions — have attracted broad interest for their potential to realize spin liquids. Experimentally, a number of 4d and 5d systems have been widely studied including the honeycomb materials Na2IrO3, α-Li2IrO3, and RuCl3 as candidate spin liquid compounds — however, all of these materials magnetically order at sufficiently low temperatures. In this talk, I will discuss the physics of Kitaev materials that plays out when applying magnetic fields. Experiments on RuCl3 indicate the formation of a chiral spin liquid that gives rise to an observed quantized thermal Hall effect. Conceptually, this asks for a deeper understanding of the physics of the Kitaev model in tilted magnetic fields. I will report on our recent numerical studies that give strong evidence for a Higgs transition from the well known Z2 topological spin liquid to a gapless U(1) spin liquid with a spinon Fermi surface and put this into perspective of experimental studies.

Tensor Models provide one of the calculationally simplest approaches to defining a partition function for random discrete geometries. The continuum limit of these discrete models then provides a background-independent construction of a partition function of continuum geometry, which are candadates for quantum gravity. The blue-print for this approach is provided by the matrix model approach to two-dimensional quantum gravity. The past ten years have seen a lot of progress using (un)colored tensor models to describe state sums if discrete geometries in more than two dimensions. However, so far one has not yet been able to find a continuum limit of these models that corresponds geometries with more than two continuum dimensions. This problem can be studied systematically using exact renormalization group techniques. In this talk I will report on joint work with Astrid Eichhorn, Antonio Perreira, Joseph Ben Geloun, Daniele Oriti, Johannes Lumma, Alicia Castro and Victor Mu\~noz in this direction. In a separate part of the talk I will explain that the renormalization group is not only a tool to help investigating the continuum limit, but that it in fact also provides a stand-alone approach to quantum gravity. In particular, I will show how scaling relations follow from cylidrical consistency relations.

To make progress on serious problems in biology and medicine takes a combination of skills, tools, and approaches, often requiring collaboration across seemingly disparate fields. The trick to making breakthroughs often lies in learning to communicate across disciplines to identify existing technologies – and, crucially, the new tools that need to be invented.
 

Anne M. Andrews is a neuroscientist whose work eavesdrops on chemical signaling in the brain. Paul S. Weiss is a nanoscientist who studies materials at the smallest scales. Their scientific collaboration began by advancing nanotechnology to pursue grand challenges in neuroscience, bridging their two fields. This expansion of each of their efforts led to ongoing advances in biology and medicine.
 

In a special joint public lecture, Andrews and Weiss will describe their motivation and explain how they’re training new generations of students and fellow researchers to look beyond traditional academic boundaries to target significant problems and to develop the necessary communication skills to address them.

We study the eigenstate properties of a nonintegrable spin chain that was recently realized experimentally in a Rydberg-atom quantum simulator. In the experiment, long-lived coherent many-body oscillations were observed only when the system was initialized in a particular product state. This pronounced coherence has been attributed to the presence of special "scarred" eigenstates with nearly equally-spaced energies and putative nonergodic properties despite their finite energy density. In this paper we uncover a surprising connection between these scarred eigenstates and low-lying quasiparticle excitations of the spin chain. In particular, we show that these eigenstates can be accurately captured by a set of variational states containing a macroscopic number of magnons with momentum π. This leads to an interpretation of the scarred eigenstates as finite-energy-density condensates of weakly interacting π-magnons. One natural consequence of this interpretation is that the scarred eigenstates possess long-range order in both space and time, providing a rare example of the spontaneous breaking of continuous time-translation symmetry. We verify numerically the presence of this space-time crystalline order and explain how it is consistent with established no-go theorems precluding its existence in ground states and at thermal equilibrium.