Talks

Several mechanisms can lead to production of particles during inflation. I discuss how this phenomenon can induce a contribution to the primordial spectrum of gravitational waves with unusual properties: the tensors produced this way can violate parity; can have a large three-point function; can have a relatively large tensor-to-scalar ratio even if inflation occurs at low energies; finally, their spectrum can display a feature that can be directly detected by second-generation gravitational interferometers such as advanced LIGO.

The MERA offers a powerful variational approach to quantum field theory. While the continuous MERA may allow us to directly address field theories in the continuum, the MERA on the lattice has already demonstrated its ability to characterize conformal field theories. In this talk I will explain how to extract the conformal data (central charge, primary fields, and their scaling dimensions and OPE) of a CFT from a quantum spin chain at a quantum critical point. I will consider both homogeneous systems (translation invariant) and systems with an impurity (where translation invariance is explicitly broken). Key to the success of the MERA is the exploitation of both scale and translation invariance. I will show how translation invariance can still be exploited even in the presence of an impurity, even if the system is no longer translation invariant. This follows from an intriguing "causality principle" in the RG flow. I will also discuss the relation of these results with Wilson's famous resolution of the Kondo impurity problem.

One might be confused by the proliferation of tensor network states, such as MPS, PEPS, tree tensor networks [TTN], MERA, etc. What is the main difference between them? In this talk I will argue that the geometry of a tensor network determines several properties of the state that is being represented, such as the asymptotic scaling of correlations and of entanglement entropy. I will also describe the relation between the MERA and the Renormalization Group, and will review Brian Swingle

We generalize the result of Bravyi et al. on the stability of the spectral gap for frustration-free, commuting Hamiltonians, by removing the assumption of commutativity and weakening the assumptions needed for stability.

In 1987, Feynman devoted one of his last lectures to highlighting three serious objections against the usefulness of the variational principle in the theory of relativistic quantum fields. In that same year, in a different branch of physics, Affleck, Kennedy, Lieb and Tasaki devised a quantum state that resulted in the development of a handful of different variational ansätze for lattice models over the last two decennia. These quantum states are known as tensor network states and invalidate at least two of Feynman's arguments. They could thus be used in a variational study of relativistic quantum field theories on a lattice. However, two classes of tensor network states, namely the matrix product state and the multi-scale entanglement renormalization ansatz, have recently been ported to the continuous setting, so that we now have direct access to variational wave functions for quantum field theories and are no longer restricted to a lattice regularization.

In this talk, I will present a first principle construction of a holographic dual for gauged matrix models that include gauge theories. The dual theory is shown to be a closed string field theory coupled with an emergent two-form gauge field defined in one higher dimensional space. The bulk space with an extra dimension emerges as a well defined classical background only when the two-form gauge field is in the deconfinement phase. Based on this, it is shown that critical phases that admit holographic descriptions form a novel universality class with a non-trivial quantum order.

The study of fermionic and frustrated systems in two dimensions is one of the biggest challenges in condensed matter physics. Among the most promising tools to simulate these systems are 2D tensor networks, including projected entangled-pair states (PEPS) and the 2D multi-scale entanglement renormalization ansatz (MERA), which have been generalized to fermionic systems recently. In the first part of this talk I will present a simple formalism how to include fermionic statistics into 2D tensor networks. The second part covers recent simulation results showing that infinite PEPS (iPEPS) can compete with the best known variational methods. In particular, for the t-J model and the SU(4) Heisenberg model iPEPS yields better variational energies than obtained in previous variational- and fixed-node Monte Carlo studies. Future perspectives and open problems are discussed.

This introductory talk aims to answer a few basic questions (What is a tensor network? Under which circumstance is a tensor network useful?) and describe the tensor network states that will be discussed during the workshop (matrix product state [MPS], projected entangled pair states [PEPS], and the multi-scale entanglement renormalization ansatz [MERA]). I will then briefly describe the recent developments that motivated this workshop on

Recently, we developed a user friendly scheme based on the quantum kinetic equation for studying thermal transport phenomena in the presence of interactions and disorder . This scheme is suitable for both a systematic perturbative calculation as well as a general analysis. We believe that this method presents an adequate alternative to the Kubo formula, which for thermal transport is rather cumbersome. We have applied this approach in the study of the Nernst signal in superconducting films above the critical temperature. We showed that the strong Nernst signal observed in amorphous superconducting films, far above Tc, is caused by the fluctuations of the superconducting order parameter. We demonstrated a striking agreement between our theoretical calculations and the experimental data at various temperatures and magnetic fields. My talk will include a general description of the quantum kinetic approach, but mainly I will concentrate on the Nernst effect in superconducting films. I will use this example to discuss some subtle issues in the theoretical study of thermal phenomena that we encountered while calculating the Nernst coefficient. In particular, I will explain how the Nernst theorem (the third law of thermodynamics) imposes a strict constraint on the magnitude of the Nernst effect.