Talks

The renormalization group (RG) is one of the conceptual pillars of statistical mechanics and quantum field theory, and a key theoretical element in the modern formulation of critical phenomena and phase transitions. RG transformations are also the basis of numerical approaches to the study of low energy properties and emergent phenomena in quantum many-body systems. In this colloquium I will introduce the notion of \\\"entanglement renormalization\\\" and use it to define a coarse-graining transformation for quantum systems on a lattice [G.Vidal, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 220405 (2007)]. The resulting real-space RG approach is able to numerically address 1D and 2D lattice systems with thousands of quantum spins using only very modest computational resources. From the theoretical point of view, entanglement renormalization sheds new light into the structure of correlations in the ground state of extended quantum systems. I will discuss how it leads to a novel, efficient representation for the ground state of a system at a quantum critical point or with topological order.

The basic problem of much of condensed matter and high energy physics, as well as quantum chemistry, is to find the ground state properties of some Hamiltonian. Many algorithms have been invented to deal with this problem, each with different strengths and limitations. Ideas such as entanglement entropy from quantum information theory and quantum computing enable us to understand the difficulty of various problems. I will discuss recent results on area laws and use these to prove that we can use matrix product states to efficiently represent ground states for one-dimensional systems with a spectral gap, while certain other one-dimensional problems, without the gap assumption, almost certainly have no efficient way for us to even represent the ground state on a classical computer. I will also discuss recent results on higher-dimensional matrix product states, in an attempt to extend the remarkable success of matrix product algorithms beyond one dimension.

We consider a consistent construction of the supersymmetric action for a codimension-two brane in six-dimensional Salam-Sezgin supergravity. When the brane carries a tension, we supersymmetrize the brane tension action by introducing a localized Fayet-Iliopoulos term on the brane and modifying the bulk SUSY transformations. As a result, we find that among the axisymmetric vacua of the system, the unwarped background with football-shaped extra dimensions respects N=1 supersymmetry. We extend the analysis to include the brane multiplets with the couplings to the bulk fields.

In this talk, we will investigate the distinguishability of quantum operations from both discrete and continuous point of view. In the discrete case, the main topic is how we can identify quantum measurement apparatuses by considering the patterns of measurement outcomes. In the continuous case, we will focus on the efficiency of parameter estimation of quantum operations. We will discuss several methods that can achieve Heisenberg Limit and prove in some other cases the impossibility of breaking the Standard Quantum Limit. The general treatment of estimation of quantum operations also allows an investigation of the effect of noise on estimation efficiency.

As physicists, we have become accustomed to the idea that a theory\\\'s content is always most transparent when written in coordinate-free language. But sometimes the choice of a good coordinate system is very useful for settling deep conceptual issues. Think of how Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates settled the longstanding question of whether the event horizon of a Schwarzschild black hole corresponds to a real spacetime singularity or not. Similarly we believe for an information-oriented or Bayesian approach to quantum foundations: That one good coordinate system may (eventually!) be worth more than a hundred blue-in-the-face arguments. This talk will motivate and chronicle the search for one such candidate coordinate system---the so-called Symmetric Informationally Complete Measurement---which has caught the attention of a handful of us here at PI and a handful of our visitors.