Quantum Information

We show that the entropy resulting from the counting of microstates of non extremal black holes using field theory duals of string theories can be interpreted as arising from entanglement. The conditions for making such an interpretation consistent are discussed. First, we interpret the entropy (and thermodynamics) of spacetimes with non degenerate, bifurcating Killing horizons as arising from entanglement. We use a path integral method to define the Hartle-Hawking vacuum state in such spacetimes and discuss explicitly its entangled nature and its relation to the geometry. If string theory on such spacetimes has a field theory dual, then, in the low-energy, weak coupling limit, the field theory state that is dual to the Hartle-Hawking state is a thermofield double state. This allows the comparison of the entanglement entropy with the entropy of the field theory dual, and thus, with the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of the black hole. As an example, we discuss in detail the case of the five dimensional anti-de Sitter, black hole spacetime.

In this talk I'll discuss recent joint work with Raymond Laflamme, David Poulin and Maia Lesosky in which a unified approach to quantum error correction is presented, called "operator quantum error correction". This scheme relies on a generalized notion of noiseless subsystems and includes the known techniques for the error correction of quantum operations --i.e., the standard model, the method of decoherence-free subspaces, and the noiseless subsystem method--as special cases. Correctable codes in this approach take the form of operator algebras and operator semigroups. The condition from the standard model is shown to be necessary for all of the known methods of error correction, and we'll see this as part of a discussion on conditions that characterize correctability for the general case.

Superconducting circuits based on Josephson junctions are promising candidates for the implementation of solid-state qubits. In most of the recent experiments on these circuits, the qubits are controlled by a classical field containing a large number of photons. The possibility of coherently coupling these systems to a single photon has been recently suggested, opening the possibility to study analogs of quantum optics in condensed matter systems. I will review one of these proposals based on a superconducting charge qubit fabricated inside a high quality transmission line resonator and will describe its recent experimental realization. When the qubit is brought into resonance with the resonator, vacuum Rabi splitting is observed indicating that the regime of strong coupling has been reached. When the qubit is detuned from the cavity, I will explain how quantum non-demolition measurement can be realized. I will discuss how the measurement process can be quantitatively understood in this regime allowing us to explore the effect of measurement back-action on the qubit and to extract, for the first time in superconducting qubits, large visibility in Rabi oscillations.