Scientific Series

In models of inflation driven by an axion-like pseudoscalar field, the inflaton, a, may couple to the standard model hypercharge gauge field via a Chern-Simons-type interaction, L ⊃ a F F̃. This coupling results in the explosive production of hypermagnetic fields during inflation, which has two interesting consequences: (1) The primordial hypermagnetic field is maximally helical. It is therefore capable of sourcing the generation of nonzero baryon number around the electroweak phase transition (via the chiral anomaly in the standard model). (2) The gauge field production during inflation feeds back into the stochastic background of gravitational waves (GWs). In this talk, I am going to discuss the correlation between these two phenomena. To this end, I will (a) present an updated study of baryogenesis via hypermagnetic fields after pseudoscalar inflation and (b) describe the corresponding implications for GWs. As it turns out, successful baryogenesis is feasible---provided the axion coupling to the gauge fields is suppressed by a decay constant \Lambda ~ 3 x 10^17 GeV. Moreover, in the case of successful baryogenesis, one expects a characteristic peak in the GW spectrum at frequencies in the MHz range

Transversality is one of the most desirable features of fault-tolerant circuits because it automatically limits the propagation of errors. However, it was shown by Eastin & Knill that no universal set of quantum gates on any quantum code is transversal. In this talk, we strengthen this result for stabilizer codes to say that transversal gates must in fact be contained in the Clifford hierarchy. Moreover, we present new circuits on Bacon-Shor codes that saturate our bounds. In particular, we show how a k-qubit controlled-Z gate can be implemented by a transversal circuit on m-by-m^k Bacon-Shor codes and provide some estimates of its performance in terms of pseudo-thresholds and resource overhead.

The unrenormalised energy momentum tensor is both huge and fluctuating from point to point. Taking this seriously we (Qingdi Wang, Zhen Zhu, and myself) argue that the slow exponential expansion of the universe (on time scales of 10^10 years) comes from a very weak parametric resonance induced by the fluctuating energy mementum tensor on the rapidly fluctuating scale factor (on time scales much shorter than the Planck scale). We see only the slow exponential growth because we avarage over the scale factor squared.

In 1977, Blandford and Znajek  discovered a process by which a spinning 

black hole can transfer rotational energy to a force-free plasma, offering a possible mechanism for energy and jet emissions from quasars and other astrophysical sources.  This Blandford-Znajek (BZ) mechanism is a Penrose process, which exploits the presence of an ergosphere supporting negative energy states, and it involves currents of electrical charge sourcing the toroidal  magnetic field component of the emitted Poynting flux.  

In this talk, I will discuss a version of the BZ process requiring only vacuum electromagnetic fields outside the black hole.  The setting is somewhat artificial, since it assumes the black hole is cylindrical rather than spheroidal, or that the black hole lives in 2 spatial dimensions, but it is nevertheless of theoretical interest.  The radiation power and horizon regularity relations are identical to those of the BZ mechanism with plasma, and the solution can be given in simple, closed form for a wide class of metrics, so it helps to illuminate the nature of the original mechanism.  For asymptotically Anti-de Sitter black holes it presumably has an interesting dual CFT description, but we haven't quite yet figured out  what that is.

We present an analytic, perturbative solution that describes dynamical black holes in slow-roll inflation with a general potential. It is shown that the spacetime evolves quasi-statically through a sequence of quasi-Schwarzchild-deSitter metrics with time dependent cosmological constant and mass parameters, such that the cosmological constant is instanteously equal to the value of the scalar potential.  The areas of the black hole and cosmological horizons each increase in time as the effective cosmological constant decreases, and the the factional area increase is proportional to the fractional change of the cosmological constant, times a geometrical factor. For black holes ranging in size from much smaller than to comparable to the cosmological horizon, the pre-factor varies from very small to order one. The change in the horizon areas happens in such a way that the first law of thermodynamics is obeyed between successive time steps.

Gravitational wave astronomy provides an unprecedented opportunity to test the nature of black holes and search for exotic, compact alternatives. Recent studies have shown that exotic compact objects (ECOs) can ring down in a manner similar to black holes, but can also produce a sequence of distinct pulses resembling the initial ringdown. These “echoes” would provide definite evidence for the existence of ECOs. In this work we study the generation of these echoes in a generic, parameterized model for the ECO, using Green’s functions. We show how to reprocess radiation in the near-horizon region of a Schwarzschild black hole into the radiation from the corresponding source in an ECO spacetime. Our methods allow us to understand the connection between distinct echoes and ringing at the resonant frequencies of the compact object. We find that the quasinormal mode ringing in the black hole spacetime plays a central role in determining the shape of the first few echoes. We use this observation to develop a simple template for echo waveforms. This template performs well over a variety of ECO parameters, and with improvements may prove useful in the analysis of gravitational waves.
Related Arxiv #: https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.06155

The talk is based on my recent work with Ryan Aziz. We find a dual version of a previous double-bosonisation theorem whereby each finite-dimensional braided-Hopf algebra in the category of corepresentations of a coquasitriangular Hopf algebra gives a new larger coquasitriangular Hopf algebra, for example taking c_q[SL_2] to c_q[SL_3] for these quantum groups reduced at certain odd roots of unity. As an application we find new generators for c_q[SL2] with the remarkable property that their monomials are essentially a dual basis to the standard PBW basis of the reduced quantum enveloping algebra u_q(sl2). This allows one to calculate  Fourier transform and other results for such quantum groups. Our method also works for even roots of unity where we obtain new finite-dimensional quantum groups, including an 8-dimensional one at q=-1. Our method
can be used to construct  many other new finite-dimensional  quasitriangular Hopf algebras and their duals that could be fed into applications in quantum gravity and quantum computing.

One of the basic puzzles of black hole thermodynamics is the simplicity and universality of the  Bekenstein-Hawking entropy. The idea that this entropy might be governed by a symmetry at the horizon is an old one, but until now efforts have focused on conformal symmetries, either at infinity or on a "stretched horizon."  I argue that a better approach uses a BMS-like symmetry of the horizon itself.  This avoids the limitations of previous attempts (including my own), and explains the entropy in terms of a generalization of the Cardy formula for the density of states.

In this talk I am going to describe Spekkens’ toy model, a non-contextual hidden variable model with an epistemic restriction, a constraint on what an observer can know about reality. The aim of the model, developed for continuous and discrete prime degrees of freedom, is to advocate the epistemic view of quantum theory, where quantum states are states of incomplete knowledge about a deeper underlying reality. In spite of its classical flavour, many aspects that were thought to belong only to quantum mechanics can be reproduced in the model. 

I am going to describe our results regarding the formulation of rules for the update of states after measurement. I will do it for systems of discrete prime dimensions and I will then give the idea on how to proceed in the non-prime dimensional case. 

I will also depict the relationship between Spekkens’ model, stabiliser quantum mechanics and Gross' theory of discrete Wigner functions (they are equivalent theories in odd dimensions) in terms of measurement update rules.

I will conclude by briefly discussing a project we have been recently working on that consists of characterising sub theories of Spekkens’ model that are operationally equivalent to sub theories of QM (in particular in the case of qubits) and use them to represent the non-contextual classically simulable part of state-injection schemes of computation with contextuality as a resource.

A recent breakthrough in the condensed matter community is the identification and characterization of a rich set of ordered states, known as symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases. These phases are not only fascinating from the perspective of fundamental physics but have also found powerful applications in quantum computation. Very little is known about the thermal stability of SPT ordered systems, or whether their associated computational properties may survive at non-zero temperature. In this talk I will give a brief introduction to SPT phases of matter, and address the question of whether these phases can survive at non-zero temperature. In particular, I will focus on understanding the thermal stability and fault-tolerant properties of models studied in the theory of quantum computation.