Conference

In this talk we will discuss the notion of thermality for quantum field theories in curved spacetimes, and how it relates to the Unruh effect and Hawking radiation. Then we will argue that particle detectors are physical systems which can act as thermometers, thermalizing to the temperature of the field. We will show that any non-relativistic quantum system undergoing appropriate trajectories can probe the field’s temperature, regardless of how they are coupled to the field.

Quantum error correction is necessary for scalable quantum computation. Topological quantum error correcting codes have exceptional properties that make them ideal for future experiments. Massive gains can be achieved if the code is optimized for the noise, which we demonstrate for some 3D codes under biased noise.

Process matrices are objects that comprehensively describe multipartite quantum processes and their correlations. These matrices simultaneously play the roles of quantum states and quantum channels, and, to ensure a well-defined probability distribution, they are constrained to be positive. A key advantage of the process matrix formalism is that it can be used to describe processes with an indefinite causal order, which obey local quantum mechanics but cannot take place within a global causal structure. In this talk, i will give a complete introduction to the process matrix formalism and share preliminary results about the geometric positivity constraints of a special class of parameterised process matrices.

A fundamental area in statistical analysis is the study of which causal structures connecting the events of interest can explain the correlations that are observed between them. This is done through the falsification of invalid causal models. Our causal structure might posit the existence of hidden (unobserved) causes between the observed events. For example, if we see a positive correlation between the numbers of shark attacks and ice cream sales, we do not expect to explain it by a direct causal influence between these two things; instead, there should be a hidden common cause (for example, the Summer) that explains the correlation. Physicists also have a vested interest in falsifying causal hypotheses involving hidden variables. Bell's Theorem, for example, highlights the failure of many such classical causal hypotheses to explain the correlations predicted by quantum theory. In the scenario which Bell considered, if instead of treating the unobserved causes of classical random variables we treat them as potentially entangled quantum systems, we can explain a strictly larger set of correlations. Out project explores a simple but difficult question: In what other causal structures this also happens? In other words, for a given causal hypothesis, would the set of correlations it can explain expand if we relax our assumptions regarding posited unobservable systems to allow for shared entanglement? By a series of tricks developed during the PSI Winter School, we found that allowing for quantum causes makes an operational difference in a large number of causal hypotheses involving four observed variables. This work is of general interest as it generalizes Bell's Theorem: it exposes (qualitatively novel?!) advantages afforded by quantum theory over classical models. Bell's Theorem has proven crucially insightful in efforts to provide a causal accounting of quantum theory, and has inspired a plethora of quantum information theoretic protocols; similar dividends may be implicitly suggested by this work.