Talks

This is a talk in two parts. The first part is on evolution of a system under a Hamiltonian. First, a general method for implementing evolution under a Hamiltonian using entanglement and classical communication is presented. This method improves on previous methods by requiring less entanglement and communication, as well as allowing more general Hamiltonians to be implemented. Next, a method for simulating evolution under a sparse Hamiltonian using a quantum computer is presented. When H acts on n qubits, and has at most a constant number of nonzero entries in each row/column, we may select any positive integer k such that the simulation requires O((log*n)t^(1+1/2k)) accesses to matrix entries of H. The second part of the talk is on adaptive measurements of optical phase. Standard measurement schemes, using each resource independently, lead to a phase uncertainty that scales as 1/sqrt(N). It has long been conjectured that it should be possible to achieve a precision limited only by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, dramatically improving the scaling to 1/N. I present a Heisenberg-limited phase estimation procedure which has been demonstrated experimentally. We use multiple applications of the phase shift on unentangled single-photon states, and generalize Kitaev\\\'s phase estimation algorithm using adaptive measurement theory to achieve a standard deviation scaling at the Heisenberg limit.

We define a measure of the quantumness of correlations, based on the operative task of local broadcasting of a bipartite state. Such a task is feasible for a state if and only if it corresponds to a joint classical probability distribution, or, in other terms, it is strictly classically correlated. A gap, defined in terms of quantum mutual information, can quantify the degree of failure in fulfilling such a task, therefore providing a measure of how non-classical a given state is. We are led to consider the asymptotic average mutual information of a state, defined as the minimal per-copy mutual information between parties, when they share an infinite amount of broadcast copies of the state. We analyze the properties of such quantity, and find that it satifies many of the properties required for an entanglement measure. We show that it lies between the quantum- and the classical-conditioned versions of squashed entanglement. The non-vanishing of asymptotic average mutual information for entangled states may be interpreted as a signature of monogamy of entanglement.

We use a Bayesian approach to optimally solve problems in noisy binary search. We deal with two variants: 1. Each comparison can be erroneous with some probability 1 - p. 2. At each stage k comparisons can be performed in parallel and a noisy answer is returned. We present a (classic) algorithm which optimally solves both variants together, up to an additive term of O(log log (n)), and prove matching information theoretic lower bounds. We use the algorithm with the results of Farhi et al. (FGGS99)presenting a quantum search algorithm in an ordered list of expected complexity less than log(n)/3, and some improved quantum lower bounds on noisy search, and search with an error probability. Joint work with Michael Ben-Or.

After almost a century of observations, the ultra-high energy sky has finally displayed an anisotropic distribution. A significant correlation between the arrival directions of ultra-high cosmic rays measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory and the distribution of nearby active galactic nuclei signals the dawn of particle astronomy. These historic results have important implications to both astrophysics and particle physics.

Roughly speaking, the more Alice is entangled with Bob, the harder it is for her to send her state to Charlie. In particular, it will be shown that the squashed entanglement, a well known entanglement measure, gives the fastest rate at which a quantum state can be sent between two parties who share arbitrary side information. Likewise, the entanglement of formation and entanglement cost is shown to be the fastest rate at which a quantum state can be sent when the parties have access to side-information which is maximally correlated. A further restriction on the type of side-information implies that the rate of state transmission is given by the quantum mutual information. This suggests a new paradigm for understanding entanglement and other correlations in terms of quantum Shannon theroy. Different types of side-information correspond to different types of correlations with the squashed entanglement and the mutual information being two extremes. Furthermore, there is a dual paradigm: if one distributes the side-information as aliciously as possible so as to make the sending of the state as difficult as possible, one finds maximum rates which give interpretations to known quantities as well as new ones.

In any attempt to construct a Quantum Theory of Gravity, one has to deal with the fact that Time in Quantum Mechanics appears to be very different from Time in General Relativity. This is the famous (or actually notorious!) \"Problem of Time\", and gives rise to both conceptual and technical problems. The decoherent histories approach to quantum theory, is an alternative formulation of quantum theory specially designed to deal with closed (no-external observer or environment) systems. This approach has been considered particularly promising, in dealing with the problem of time, since it puts space and time in equal footing (unlike standard QM) . This talk develops a particular implementation of the above expectations, i.e. we construct a general set of \"Class Operators\" corresponding to questions that appear to be \"Timeless\" (independent of the parameter time), but correspond to physically interesting questions. This is similar to finding a general enough set of timeless observables, in the evolving constants approach to the problem of time.