Quantum Physics

It has long been recognized that there are two distinct laws that go by the name of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The original says that there can be no process resulting in a net decrease in the total entropy of all bodies involved. A consequence of the kinetic theory of heat is that this law will not be strictly true; statistical fluctuations will result in small spontaneous transfers of heat from a cooler to a warmer body. The currently accepted version of the Second Law is probabilistic: tiny spontaneous transfers of heat from a cooler to a warmer body will be occurring all the time, while a larger transfer is not impossible, merely improbable. There can be no process whose expected result is a net decrease in total entropy. According to Maxwell, the Second Law has only statistical validity, and this statement is easily read as an endorsement of the probabilistic version. I argue that a close reading of Maxwell, with attention to his use of "statistical," shows that the version of the second law endorsed by Maxwell is strictly weaker than our probabilistic version. According to Maxwell, even the probable truth of the second law is limited to situations in which we deal with matter only in bulk and are unable to observe or manipulate individual molecules. Maxwell's version does not rule out a device that could, predictably and reliably, transfer heat from a cooler to a warmer body without a compensating increase in entropy. I will discuss the evidence we have for these two laws, Maxwell's and ours.

A lattice gauge theory is described by a redundantly large vector space that is subject to local constraints, and it can be regarded as the low energy limit of a lattice model with a local symmetry. I will describe a coarse-graining scheme capable of exactly preserving local symmetries. The approach results in a variational ansatz for the ground state(s) and low energy excitations of a lattice gauge theory. This ansatz has built-in local symmetries, which are exploited to significantly reduce simulation costs. I will describe benchmark results in the context of Kitaev’s toric code with a magnetic field or, equivalently, Z2 lattice gauge theory, for lattices with up to 16 x 16 sites (16^2 x 2 = 512 spins) on a torus.

Closed quantum systems evolve unitarily and therefore cannot converge in a strong sense to an equilibrium state starting out from a generic pure state. Nevertheless for large system size one observes temporal typicality. Namely, for the overwhelming majority of the time instants, the statistics of observables is practically indistinguishable from an effective equilibrium one. In this talk we will discuss he Loschmidt echo (LE) to study this sort of unitary equilibration after a quench. In particular we ll address the issue of typicality with respect the initial state preparation and the influence of quantum criticality of the long-time probability distribution of LE.

In this talk (based on arXiv:1001.0354) we give a quantum statistical interpretation for the Kauffmann bracket polynomial state sum <K> for the Jones polynomial. We use this quantum mechanical interpretation to give a new quantum algorithm for computing the Jones polynomial. This algorithm is useful for its conceptual simplicity, and it applies to all values of the polynomial variable that lie on the unit circle in the complex plane. Letting C(K) denote the Hilbert space for this model, there is a natural unitary transformation U from C(K) to itself such that <K> = <F|U|F> where |F> is a sum over basis states for C(K). The quantum algorithm arises directly from this formula via the Hadamard Test. We then show that the framework for our quantum model for the bracket polynomial is a natural setting for Khovanov homology. The Hilbert space C(K) of our model has basis in one-to-one correspondence with the enhanced states of the bracket state summmation and is isomorphic with the chain complex for Khovanov homology with coefficients in the complex numbers. We show that for the Khovanov boundary operator d defined on C(K) we have the relationship dU + Ud = 0. Consequently, the unitary operator U acts on the Khovanov homology, and we therefore obtain a direct relationship between Khovanov homology and this quantum algorithm for the Jones polynomial. The formula for the Jones polynomial as a graded Euler characteristic is now expressed in terms of the eigenvalues of U and the Euler characteristics of the eigenspaces of U in the homology. The quantum algorithm given here is inefficient, and so it remains an open problem to determine better quantum algorithms that involve both the Jones polynomial and the Khovanov homology.

Fibonacci anyons are the simplest system of anyons capable of implementing universal topological quantum computation, an area which is of intense theoretical and experimental interest. Recent studies have shown that for nearest-neighbour interactions, the properties of the ground state of a 1-D chain of Fibonacci anyons may be modeled using a spin chain, and are related to specific conformal field theories. I will talk about the role played by boundary conditions in this mapping, and demonstrate that for these simple anyonic systems the correct spin chain models in fact correspond to conformal field theories with a defect. The presence of this defect drastically changes the excitations observable in the system.

We first discuss quantum measure and integration theory. We then consider various anhomomorphic logics. Finally, we present some connections between the two theories. One connection is transferring a quantum measure to a measure on an anhomomorphic logic. Another is the creation of a reality filter that is stronger than Sorkin's preclusivity. This is accomplished by generating a preclusive coevent from a quantum measure. No prior knowledge of quantum measure theory or anhomomorphic logics will be assumed.

Non-relativistic quantum mechanics is derived as an example of entropic inference. The basic assumption is that the position of a particle is subject to an irreducible uncertainty of unspecified origin. The corresponding probability distributions constitute a curved statistical manifold. The probability for infinitesimally small changes is obtained from the method of maximum entropy and the concept of time is introduced as a book-keeping device to keep track of how they accumulate. This requires introducing appropriate notions of instant and of duration. A welcome feature is that this entropic notion of time incorporates a natural distinction between past and future. The Schroedinger equation is recovered when the statistical manifold participates in the dynamics in such a way that there is a conserved energy: its curved geometry guides the motion of the particles while they, in their turn, react back and determine its evolving geometry. The phase of the wave function—not just its magnitude—is explained as a feature of purely statistical origin. Finally, the model is extended to include external electromagnetic fields and gauge transformations.

The arrow of time dilemma: the laws of physics are invariant for time inversion, whereas the familiar phenomena we see everyday are not (i.e. entropy increases). I show that, within a quantum mechanical framework, all phenomena which leave a trail of information behind (and hence can be studied by physics) are those where entropy necessarily increases or remains constant. All phenomena where the entropy decreases must not leave any information of their having happened. This situation is completely indistinguishable from their not having happened at all. In the light of this observation, the second law of thermodynamics is reduced to a mere tautology: physics cannot study those processes where entropy has decreased, even if they were commonplace. I will discuss the possible limitations that stem from recent typicality results in employing this as a complete self-consistent solution to the arrow of time dilemma.

Many putative explanations in physics rely on idealized models of physical systems. These explanations are inconsistent with standard philosophical accounts of explanation. A common view holds that idealizations can underwrite explanation nonetheless, but only when they are what have variously been called Galilean, approximative, traditional or controllable. Controllability is the least vague of these categories, and this paper focuses on the relation between controllability and explanation. Specifically, it argues that the common view is an untenable half-measure. It gives the example of a simple pendulum with quadratic damping, an uncontrollable idealization that makes use of singular limits and for which the behaviour at the limit is qualitatively new—but a system whose behaviour is fully explained in terms of the idealization. It shows that uncontrollable idealizations can have explanatory capacities (and in a way distinct from Batterman’s “asymptotic explanation”).

Shared entanglement between sender and receiver can enable more errors to be corrected than with a standard quantum error-correcting code. This extra error correction can be used either to boost the rate of the code--commonly seen in quantum codes constructed from classical linear codes--or to increase the error-correcting power of the code (as represented by, for example, the code distance). We will see how adding extra entanglement to a given quantum code can increase its distance, and discuss the optimization problem in maximizing the effectiveness of a given amount of added entanglement. We will also briefly examine some applications of entanglement-assistance to particular types of codes, such as LDPC codes and convolutional codes.

One might have hoped that philosophers had sorted out what ‘truth’ is supposed to be by now. After all, Aristotle offered what seems to be a clear and simple characterization in his Metaphysics. So perhaps it is surprising (and then again perhaps it isn’t), that contemporary philosophers have not settled on a consensus regarding the nature of truth to this day. In fact, the most obvious theory of truth, that truth consists in correspondence to the facts, seems to be steadily waning in popularity in technical circles, replaced instead by a perhaps puzzlingly austere minimalist theory that restricts its characterization of truth to the familiar equivalence schema:

is true if and only if p. The differences between such deflationary theories and the ‘traditional’ correspondence theory of truth, and perhaps even more strikingly between these theories and epistemic theories of truth, call to mind counterpart features in different attitudes about the proper interpretation of quantum mechanics. By reviewing the most striking features of different theories of truth, as well as some of their most difficult objections, we can start to see where different interpretations seem to be reliant on (or at least quite congenial to) particular theories of truth and also where these theories begin to reveal themselves as variously helping and hindering the smooth functioning of different interpretations.

Our starting point is a particular `canvas' aimed to `draw' theories of physics, which has symmetric monoidal categories as its mathematical backbone. With very little structural effort (i.e. in very abstract terms) and in a very short time this categorical quantum mechanics research program has reproduced a surprisingly large fragment of quantum theory. Philosophically speaking, this framework shifts the conceptual focus from `material carriers' such as particles, fields, or other `material stuff', to `logical flows of information', by mainly encoding how things stand in relation to each other. These relations could, for example, be induced by operations. Composition of these relations is the carrier of all structure. Thus far the causal structure has been treated somewhat informally within this approach. In joint work with my student Raymond Lal, by restricting the capabilities to compose, we were able to formally encode causal connections. We call the resulting mathematical structure a CauCat, since it combines the symmetric monoidal stricture with Sorkin's CauSets within a single mathematical concept. The relations which now respect causal structure are referred to as processes, which make up the actual `happenings'. As a proof of concept, we show that if in a quantum teleportation protocol one omits classical communication, no information is transfered. We also characterize Galilean theories. Classicality is an attribute of certain processes, and measurements are special kinds of processes, defined in terms of their capabilities to correlate other processes to these classical attributes. So rather than quantization, what we do is classicization within our universe of processes. We show how classicality and the causal structure are tightly intertwined. All of this is still very much work in progress!