Harnessing quantum entanglement
Laura Mancinska, University of Bristol
The phenomenon of entanglement is one the key features of quantum mechanics. It can be used to attain functionality lying beyond the reach of classical technologies. In practice, however, finding the best way of harnessing entanglement for a given task is extremely challenging and one is often forced to resort to ad hoc methods. The mathematical structure of entanglement- enabled strategies is poorly understood and many basic questions remain open. This lack of understanding has prevented us from fully exploiting the advantages that entanglement can offer for operational tasks.
In this talk, I will discuss future directions of mathematical inquiry which would lay the foun- dation for general methods and a mathematical theory for dealing with entanglement-enabled strategies. We will see that understanding certain quantum variants of well-studied combina- torial quantities, such as independence and chromatic numbers, can help us answer questions about entanglement. I will end by sketching some novel and some actively-investigated applica- tions of entanglement to real-world problems such as certification of quantum devices, routing of quantum data, and control theory.