Physics

The power of quantum information lies in its capacity to be non-local, encoded in correlations among entangled particles.  Yet our ability to produce, understand, and exploit such correlations is hampered by the fact that the interactions between particles are ordinarily local.  I will report on experiments in which we use light to engineer non-local interactions among cold atoms, with photons acting as messengers conveying information between them.  We program the spin-spin couplings in an array of atomic ensembles by tailoring the frequency spectrum of an optical control field.  We harness this programmability to access interaction graphs conducive to frustration and to explore quantum spin dynamics in exotic geometries and topologies.  More broadly, advances in optical control of interactions open new opportunities in areas ranging from quantum technologies to fundamental physics.  I will touch on implications for quantum-enhanced sensing, combinatorial optimization, and simulating quantum gravity.

In his May 5 Perimeter Public Lecture webcast, Harvard professor L. Mahadevan will take viewers on a journey into the mathematical, physical, and biological workings of morphogenesis to demonstrate how scientists are beginning to unlock many of the secrets that have vexed scientists since Darwin.

I will present a single idea about representation which allows several recent advances in neural networks  to be combined into an imaginary system called GLOM.  GLOM answers the question: How can a neural network with a fixed architecture parse an image into a part-whole hierarchy which has a different structure for each image? The idea is simply to use islands of identical vectors to represent the nodes in the parse tree. The talk will discuss the many ramifications of this idea.  If GLOM can be made to work, it should significantly improve the interpretability of the representations produced by neural nets when applied to vision or language.  

The remarkable properties of electrons moving through crystalline lattices continue to surprise us. Recently, electrons in artificial moiré lattices have emerged as an extraordinary new platform. The simplest such moiré material consists of a pair of graphene sheets twisted relative to one another. At a  "magic" angle of about 1 degree, a variety of phenomena, including strong-coupling superconductivity, is observed. In this talk, I will review this rapidly moving field and describe our theoretical ideas that invoke the geometry of quantum states and topological textures like skyrmions. Finally, I will explain how these insights indicate a promising new family of moiré materials, twisted trilayer graphene, which is currently under active experimental study.