Scientific Series

We consider classical, pure Yang-Mills theory in a box. We show how a set of static electric fields that solve the theory in an adiabatic limit correspond to geodesic motion on the space of vacua, equipped with a particular Riemannian metric that we identify. The vacua are generated by spontaneously broken global gauge symmetries, leading to an infinite number of conserved momenta of the geodesic motion. We show that these correspond to the soft multipole charges of Yang-Mills theory.

We present an in-depth study of the domain walls available in the color code. We begin by presenting new boundaries which gives rise to a new family of color codes. Interestingly, the smallest example of such a code consists of just 4 qubits and weight three parity check measurements, making it an accessible playground for today's experimentalists interested in small scale experiments on topological codes. Secondly, we catalogue the twist defects that are accessible with the color code model. We give lattice representations of these twists and investigate how they interact with one another, and how they interact with the anyons of the system. Our categorisation allows us to explore new approaches for the fault-tolerant storage and manipulation of quantum information in color codes. This research combines and extends recent work with the surface code [1,2] to the color code models, whose continuous domain walls have been studied in generality in [3]. [1] Delfosse, Nicolas, Pavithran Iyer, and David Poulin. "Generalized surface codes and packing of logical qubits." arXiv preprint arXiv:1606.07116 (2016). [2] Brown, Benjamin J., et al. "Poking holes and cutting corners to achieve Clifford gates with the surface code." Physical Review X 7.2 (2017): 021029. [3] Yoshida, Beni. "Topological color code and symmetry-protected topological phases." Physical Review B 91.24 (2015): 245131.

There is a long tradition of formulating Quantum Theory in an operational manner.  In one version of this a circuit is formed by wiring together operations. Each operation has knob settings and outcomes (lights flashing, detectors clicking, ..).  The question raised and answered in this colloquium is whether we can do the same for General Relativity.  There are hurdles that have to be overcome to do this - in particular, we need to define a diffeomorphism invariant notion of operations, identify what the knob settings and outcomes are, and what the wiring corresponds to.   In this colloquium I will provide an outline of how to formulate General Relativity like this providing a possibilistic calculus (we can calculate whether operationally described situations are possible or not).  This provides the beginnings of an operational approach to the problem of Quantum Gravity.  This talk is based on arxiv:1608.06940.  

I will talk about a recent proof, joint with M. Gröchenig and D. Wyss, of a conjecture of Hausel and Thaddeus which predicts the equality of suitably defined Hodge numbers of moduli spaces of Higgs bundles with SL(n)- and PGL(n)-structure. The proof, inspired by an argument of Batyrev, proceeds by comparing the number of points of these moduli spaces over finite fields via p-adic integration.

Standard models of cosmology use inflation as a mechanism to resolve the isotropy and homogeneity problem of the universe as well as the flatness problem. However, due to various well known problems with the inflationary paradigm, there has been an ongoing search for alternatives. Perhaps the most famous among these is the cyclic universe scenario or scenarios which incorporate bounces. As these scenarios have a contracting phase in the evolution of the universe, it is reasonable to ask whether the problems of homogeneity and isotropy can still be resolved in these scenarios. In my talk, I will focus on the problem of the resolution of isotropy. In the contracting phase of the evolution, the mechanism of ekpyrosis is used in most cosmological scenarios which incorporate a contracting phase to mitigate the problem of anisotropies blowing up on approaching the bounce. I will start by studying anisotropic universes and I shall examine the effect of the addition of ultra-stiff anisotropic pressures on the ekpyrotic phase. I will then consider evolving such anisotropic universes through several cycles with increasing expansion maxima at each successive bounce. This eventually leads to flatness in the isotropic case. My aim will be to see if the resolution of the flatness problem also leads to a simultaneous resolution of the isotropy problem. In the last section of my talk, I will briefly consider the effect of non comoving velocities on the shape of this anisotropic bouncing universe.

We first summarize background on the quantum capacity of a quantum channel, and explain why we know very little about this fundamental quantity, even for the qubit depolarizing channel (the quantum analogue of the binary symmetric channel) despite 20 years of effort by the community.

Then, we focus on low-noise quantum channels, and present recent results on the quantum capacity to leading order in the noise parameter.  This in particular solves the quantum capacity problem (to leading order) for the qubit depolarizing channel, and provides a structure theorem for the capacity achieving codes.  For low-noise channels, degenerate codes provide negligible superadditivity effect.

Analoguous results on the private capacity will be presented.  Our results imply that for low-noise channels, there is negligible difference between coherence and privacy, and a key rate approaching the capacity can already be obtained using classical error correction and privacy amplification.

Joint work with Felix Leditzky and Graeme Smith

The observed deviations from the laws of gravity of Newton and Einstein in galaxies and clusters can logically speaking be either due to the presence of unseen dark matter particles or due to a change in the way gravity works in these situations. Until recently there was little reason to doubt that general relativity correctly describes gravity in all circumstances. In the past few years insights from black hole physics and string theory have lead to a new theoretical framework in which the gravitational laws are derived from the quantum entanglement of the microscopic information that is underlying space-time. An essential ingredient in the derivation is of the Einstein equations is that the vacuum entanglement obeys an area law, a condition that is known to hold in Anti-de Sitter space due to the work of Ryu and Takayanagi. We will argue that in de Sitter space due to the positive dark energy, that the microscopic entanglement entropy also contains also a volume law contribution in addition to the area law. This volume law contribution is related to the thermal properties of de Sitter space and leads to a total entropy that precisely matches the Bekenstein-Hawking formula for the cosmological horizon. We study the effect of this extra contribution on the emergent laws of gravity, and argue that it leads to a modification compared to Einstein gravity. We provide evidence for the fact that this modification explains the observed phenomena in galaxies and clusters currently attributed to dark matter.

Two seemingly different quantum field theories may secretly describe the same underlying physics — a phenomenon known as “duality". I will review some recent developments in field theory dualities in (2+1) dimensions and some of their applications in condensed matter physics, in particular in quantum Hall effect and quantum phase transitions.

Geometric invariant theory (GIT) is an essential tool for constructing moduli spaces in algebraic geometry. Its advantage, that the construction is very concrete and direct, is also in some sense a draw-back, because semistability in the sense of GIT is often more complicated to describe than related intrinsic notions of semistability in moduli problems. Recently a theory has emerged which treats the results and structures of geometric invariant theory in a broader context. The theory of Theta-stability applies directly to moduli problems without the need to approximate a moduli problem as an orbit space for a reductive group on a quasi-projective scheme. I will discuss some new progress in this program: joint with Jarod Alper and Jochen Heinloth, we give a simple necessary and sufficient criterion for an algebraic stack to have a good moduli space. This leads to the construction of good moduli spaces in many new examples, such as the moduli of Bridgeland semistable objects in derived categories. Time permitting, I will also discuss applications to enumerative geometry and wall crossing formulas.

Device-independent self-testing allows user to identify the measured quantum states and the measurements made in a device using the observed statistics. Such verification scheme only requires assuming the validity of quantum theory and no-signalling. As such, no assumptions are required about the inner-workings of the device. Hence, self-testing allows laymen to test the serviceability of a quantum device without needing its blueprint. This talk will be primarily focused on the self-testing of bipartite entangled pure states [Nat. Comms. 8, 15485 (2017)]. Also, I will be touching on the recent study of the geometry of the quantum set [In preparation].

We review recent developments concerning the dynamics of QCD in 2+1 dimensions. We will discuss the phases of the theory depending on the matter representations and the Chern-Simons level. We present several new dualities and conjectures about the behaviour of these theories in their strongly coupled phases.

One of the most concrete implications of the discovery of the Higgs boson is that, in the absence of physics beyond the standard model, the long term fate of our universe can now be established through precision calculations. Are we in a metastable minimum of the Higgs potential or the true minimum? If we are in a metastable vacuum, what is its lifetime? To answer these questions, we need to understand tunneling in quantum field theory.

This talk will give an overview of the interesting history of tunneling rate calculations and all of its complications in calculating functional determinants of fluctuations around the bounce solutions. Several problems has persisted for the last four decades, and we present new solutions to these problems that enabled us to calculate exact closed-form expressions of the functional determinant. Applied to the Standard model, we then get the first-ever complete calculation of the lifetime of our universe.