Search Talks

This talk is about how to think about probabilistic reasoning and its use in physics.  It has become commonplace, in the literature on the foundations of probability, to note that the word “probability” has been used in at least two distinct senses: an objective, physical sense (often called “objective chance”), thought to be characteristic of physical situations, independent of considerations of knowledge and ignorance, and an epistemic sense, having to do with gradations of belief of agents with limited information about the world.  I will argue that in order to do justice to the use of probabilistic concepts in physics, we should go beyond this familiar dichotomy, and make use of a third concept, which I call “epistemic chance,” which combines epistemic and physical considerations.

Classical machine learning (ML) provides a potentially powerful approach to solving challenging quantum many-body problems in physics and chemistry. However, the advantages of ML over more traditional methods have not been firmly established. In this work, we prove that classical ML algorithms can efficiently predict ground state properties of gapped Hamiltonians in finite spatial dimensions, after learning from data obtained by measuring other Hamiltonians in the same quantum phase of matter. In contrast, under widely accepted complexity theory assumptions, classical algorithms that do not learn from data cannot achieve the same guarantee. We also prove that classical ML algorithms can efficiently classify a wide range of quantum phases of matter. Our arguments are based on the concept of a classical shadow, a succinct classical description of a many-body quantum state that can be constructed in feasible quantum experiments and be used to predict many properties of the state. Extensive numerical experiments corroborate our theoretical results in a variety of scenarios, including Rydberg atom systems, 2D random Heisenberg models, symmetry-protected topological phases, and topologically ordered phases.

There are many different interpretations of quantum mechanics. Among them, QBism and Rovelli's Relational Quantum Mechanics (RQM) are special because they both propose that reality itself is produced relative to "observers". For QBism, observers are defined as rational decision-making "agents", while in RQM any physical system can be an observer. But both interpretations agree that reality is shaped by what happens when observers encounter the world external to themselves. In this talk I will try to understand what these interpretations imply for the ongoing problem of defining an ontological model of quantum mechanics.

We investigate topological order on fractal geometries embedded in n dimensions. In particular, we diagnose the existence of the topological order through the lens of quantum information and geometry, i.e., via its equivalence to a quantum error-correcting code with a macroscopic code distance or the presence of macroscopic systoles in systolic geometry. We first prove a no-go theorem that Z_N topological order cannot survive on any fractal embedded in 2D. For fractal lattice models embedded in 3D or higher spatial dimensions, Z_N topological order survives if the boundaries of the interior holes condense only loop or membrane excitations. Moreover, for a class of models containing only loop or membrane excitations, and are hence self-correcting on an n-dimensional manifold, we prove that topological order survives on a large class of fractal geometries independent of the type of hole boundaries. We further construct fault-tolerant logical gates using their connection to global and higher-form topological symmetries. In particular, we have discovered a logical CCZ gate corresponding to a global symmetry in a class of fractal codes embedded in 3D with Hausdorff dimension asymptotically approaching D_H=2+ϵ for arbitrarily small ϵ, which hence only requires a space-overhead Ω(d^(2+ϵ)) with d being the code distance. This in turn leads to the surprising discovery of certain exotic gapped boundaries that only condense the combination of loop excitations and gapped domain walls. We further obtain logical C^pZ gates with p≤n−1 on fractal codes embedded in nD. In particular, for the logical C^{n−1}Z in the nth level of Clifford hierarchy, we can reduce the space overhead to Ω(d^(n−1+ϵ)). Mathematically, our findings correspond to macroscopic relative systoles in fractals.

Zoom Link: https://pitp.zoom.us/j/96893356441?pwd=cnlxTVIwd0U5TW9uZDMweXRSa3oydz09

Designing encoding and decoding circuits to reliably send messages over many uses of a noisy channel is a central problem in communication theory. When studying the optimal transmission rates achievable with asymptotically vanishing error it is usually assumed that these circuits can be implemented using noise-free gates. While this assumption is satisfied for classical machines in many scenarios, it is not expected to be satisfied in the near term future for quantum machines where decoherence leads to faults in the quantum gates. As a result, fundamental questions regarding the practical relevance of quantum channel coding remain open. By combining techniques from fault-tolerant quantum computation with techniques from quantum communication, we initiate the study of these questions. As our main result, we prove threshold theorems for quantum communication, i.e. we show that coding near the (standard noiseless) classical or quantum capacity is possible when the gate error is below a threshold.

A toy model due to Spekkens is constructed by applying an epistemic restriction to a classical theory but reproduces a host of phenomena that appear in quantum theory. The model advances the position that the quantum state may be interpreted as a reflection of an agent’s knowledge. However, the model fails to capture all quantum phenomena because it is non-contextual. Here we show how a theory similar to the one Spekkens proposes requires only a single augmentation to give quantum theory for certain systems. Specifically, one must combine all possible epistemically restricted classical accounts of a quantum experiment. The rule for combination is simple: sum the nonrandom parts of all classical predictions to arrive at the nonrandom part of the quantum prediction.