Current undergraduate students
Debanjan Chowdhury: The good, the bad and the strange: Unconventional metallic behaviour in the vicinity of Mott insulators
Abstract: In recent years, we have witnessed remarkable experimental breakthroughs in uncovering the intriguing properties of correlated metals in the vicinity of Mott transitions. Describing these phenomena theoretically remains an open challenge. This talk will focus on three recent examples of puzzling electronic behavior near Mott insulating phases and address the various conundrums. In the first part of the talk, I will discuss the microscopic origin of an unconventional T-linear resistivity with Planckian scattering in a quasi-two-dimensional “good” metal with long mean-free path, consisting of highly conducting metallic and Mott insulating layers, respectively. In the second part, I will address the origin of a low-temperature “bad” metallic behavior in the vicinity of a continuous bandwidth-tuned metal-insulator transition in a moiré semiconductor. I will end by presenting some new theoretical insights into the experimental observation of an anomalous particle-hole continuum and overdamped plasmon in the density response of cuprate “strange” metals.
Landau-Zener tunneling: from weak to strong environment coupling
Abstract:
Landau-Zener tunneling, which describes the transitions in a two-level system during the passage through an anti-crossing, is a model applicable to a wide range of physical phenomena. Dissipation due to coupling between the system and the environment is an important factor in determining the transition rates. Using a superconducting tunable capacitively shunted flux qubit, we observe the crossover from weak to strong coupling to the environment. The weak coupling limit corresponds to small system-environment coupling and leads to environment-induced thermalization. In the strong coupling limit, environmental polarizations dress the system and transitions occur between the dressed states. Our results confirm previous theoretical studies of dissipative Landau-Zener tunneling in the weak and strong coupling limits, and motivate further work on understanding the intermediate regime. This work is relevant for understanding the role of open system effects in quantum annealing, where Landau-Zener transitions at small gaps, occurring in large scale systems, are important to understand for improving the success probability.
This talk is based on the preprint arXiv:2207.02017.
Take a quantum study break to celebrate World Quantum Day on Friday, April 14th. The Institute for Quantum Computing will be in the SLC Multi-Purpose Room (SLC 1120) with Quantum: The Pop-Up Exhibition from 11am to 4pm, with cookies for the first 414 guests.
Brad Ramshaw
Abstract: Strange metals have linear-in-temperature (T-linear) down to low temperature. Strange metals are found in many families of correlated electron materials, leading to the conjecture that a universal bound - the "Planckian" bound - limits the scattering rate of electrons to a value set by fundamental constants. If the Planckian bound exists, it would provide a natural explanation for why a host of seemingly disparate systems, including high-temperature superconductors and twisted bilayer graphene, all have T-linear resistivity. Perhaps more dramatically, T-linear resistivity suggests that electron-electron interactions are so strong that conventional concepts such as quasiparticles and Boltzmann transport do not apply in strange metals. I will present our work on the cuprate Nd-LSCO and the 5-layer superconducting nickelate that shows that conventional quasiparticle transport is alive and well, even in the strange metal regime where the Planckian bound is saturated. This suggests that we may not need to abandon the quasiparticle picture entirely, but that we need to better understand the source of scattering in these materials.
Characterizing states and measurements: principles and approaches
Abstract: The problem of separately characterizing state preparation and measurement (SPAM) processes has not been frequently discussed in the literature. In this talk, I will first review the theoretical challenge behind SPAM characterization due to a gauge freedom, and then describe two different principles that can be applied to get around it. The first one can be understood as an effective propagation of state preparation noise from the target system to an ancillary qubit, whereas the second one utilizes measurements and post-selection to reduce the state preparation noise and can be interpreted as a form of algorithmic cooling. For the first method, I will present experimental and simulation data obtained from real quantum processors. For the second method, I will analyze its overhead through an upper bound on the expected number of runs to achieve a given error-reduction ratio.
With the quantum age on the horizon, scientists are working to develop quantum computers that will have a processing speed exponentially faster than today’s most advanced supercomputer. Building a useful quantum computer is one of the great engineering challenges of our time. In all implementations, qubits that are reliable, stable, and scalable are essential in this endeavor.
Improved diagnostics and implementation for quantum error correction
Abstract: Fault-tolerant quantum computing will require accurate estimates of the resource overhead, but standard metrics such as gate fidelity and diamond distance have been shown to be poor predictors of logical performance. We present a scalable experimental approach based on Pauli error reconstruction to predict the performance of concatenated codes. Numerical evidence demonstrates that our method significantly outperforms predictions based on standard error metrics for various error models, even with limited data. We illustrate how this method assists in the selection of error correction schemes.
IQC researchers Dr. Raymond Laflamme, Dr. Eduardo Martín-Martínez, Dr. Nayeli Rodríguez-Briones and Dr. Hemant Katiyar experimentally tested the impact of entanglement between particles to extract energy from a vacuum state.
March is National Engineering Month in Canada! IQC is celebrating engineering excellence by recognizing some of our amazing members and their achievements.
Roger Melko: Language models for quantum simulation
Abstract: As the frontiers of artificial intelligence advance more rapidly than ever before, generative language models like ChatGPT are poised to unleash vast economic and social transformation. In addition to their remarkable performance on typical language tasks (such as writing undergraduate research papers), language models are being rapidly adopted as powerful ansatze states for quantum many-body systems. In this talk, I will discuss the use of language models for learning quantum states realized in experimental Rydberg atom arrays. By combining variational optimization with data-driven learning using qubit projective measurements, I will show how language models are poised to become one of the most powerful computational tools in our arsenal for the design and characterization of quantum simulators and computers.