Events

Math/CS Seminar - Atsuya Hasegawa (University of Tokyo)

Recently, Chia, Chung and Lai (JACM 2023) and Coudron and Menda (STOC 2020) have shown that there exists an oracle $\mathcal{O}$ such that $\mathsf{BQP}^\mathcal{O} \neq (\mathsf{BPP^{BQNC}})^\mathcal{O} \cup (\mathsf{BQNC^{BPP}})^\mathcal{O}$. In fact, Chia et al. proved a stronger statement: for any depth parameter $d$, there exists an oracle that separates quantum depth $d$ and $2d+1$, when polynomial-time classical computation is allowed.

Exploring Wigner Negativity of Pure Spin States on a Spherical Phase Space

The past two decades have largely vindicated the long-held belief that Wigner negativity is an indicator of genuine nonclassicality in quantum systems.  Here we will discuss how Wigner negativity manifests in pure spin-j systems using the spherical Wigner function.  Common symmetric multi-qubit states are studied and compared, including Bell, W and GHZ states.  Spin coherent states are shown to never have vanishing Wigner negativity, in contrast to other phase spaces.  Pure states that maximize negativity are determined and analyzed using the Majorana stellar representation.  Time permitting, these results will be contrasted with similar works on symmetric state entanglement and other forms of phase-space nonclassicality.

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Near-Unity Entanglement from an Indium-Rich Nanowire Quantum Dot Source Compatible with Efficient Quantum Key Distribution

Thus far, the workhorse platform for generating entangled photons for many quantum information experiments has been spontaneous parametric down conversion (SPDC). However, due to their Poissonian photon statistics, these sources cannot operate in the high efficiency limit without a significant reduction in the degree of entanglement. In contrast, there are no such limits placed on semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) embedded in photonic nanostructures. To date, near-unity entanglement fidelity has not yet been measured from indium-rich QDs, which are promising candidates for realizing such a source. We performed quantum state tomography using single-photon detectors with ultra-low timing jitter and employed two-photon resonant excitation. We measured a raw peak concurrence and fidelity of 95.3 +/- 0.5% and 97.5 +/- 0.8%, respectively, as well as lifetime-weighted average concurrence and fidelity of 0.90 +/- 0.04% and 0.94 +/- 0.04%, respectively. These results conclusively demonstrate that most of the degradation from unity-measured entanglement fidelity in earlier studies was not due to spin dephasing. Additionally, we show that the exciton fine structure splitting, contrary to common understanding, is not in principle a fundamental barrier to implementing QKD with semiconductor QD entangled photon sources.

CS/Math Seminar - Andrew Nemec, Duke University

Impure quantum error-correcting codes display interesting properties not found among classical codes, such as having multiple low-weight errors map to the same syndrome. In this talk, we will look at how these codes can be used to design good variants of quantum codes, such as quantum-classical hybrid codes and quantum data-syndrome codes.

The Cooling and Manipulation of Ultra-Cold Atoms

Ultra-cold atoms have been used to simulate phenomena in condensed matter physics as well as in cosmology such as black holes. In this talk, we will give an overview of the field of ultra-cold atoms by discussing the physics behind the cooling and the manipulation of these atoms. Aimed to show the beautiful physics behind this process, this talk will be easy and general, requiring just an undergraduate level of physics understanding. 

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CS/Math Seminar - Yuming Zhao, IQC

Given that reliable cloud quantum computers are becoming closer to reality, the concept of delegation of quantum computations and its verifiability is of central interest. Many models have been proposed, each with specific strengths and weaknesses.

Wigner negativity on the sphere

The rise of quantum information theory has largely vindicated the long-held belief that Wigner negativity is an indicator of genuine nonclassicality in quantum systems.  This thesis explores its manifestation in spin-j systems using the spherical Wigner function.  Common symmetric multi-qubit states are studied and compared.  Spin coherent states are shown to never have vanishing Wigner negativity.  Pure states that maximize negativity are determined and analyzed using the Majorana stellar representation.  The relationship between negativity and state mixedness is discussed, and polytopes characterizing unitary orbits of lower-bounded Wigner functions are studied.  Results throughout are contrasted with similar works on symmetric state entanglement and other forms of phase-space nonclassicality.

Lindbladians Obeying Local Conservation Laws and Showing Thermalization

This talk will investigate the possibility of a Markovian quantum master equation (QME) that consistently describes a finite-dimensional system, a part of which is weakly coupled to a thermal bath. For physical consistency, we will demand that the QME should preserve local conservation laws and be able to show thermalization. After providing some background on QMEs, I will present our three main results: 

1. The microscopically derived Redfield equation (RE), which is known to preserve local conservation laws and show thermalization, necessarily violates complete positivity except in extremely special cases. These special cases can be easily identified.
2. I will then turn to Lindblad QMEs and show that imposing complete positivity and demanding preservation of local conservation laws enforces the Lindblad operators and the lamb-shift Hamiltonian to be `local', i.e. to be supported only on the part of the system directly coupled to the bath.
3. Finally, I will show how the problem of finding 'local' Lindblad QME, which can show thermalization, can be turned into a semidefinite program (SDP). This SDP can be solved numerically for any specific example, and its solution conclusively shows whether the desired type of QME is possible up to a given precision. Whenever a QME is possible, it also outputs a form for such a QME.

Taken together, our results indicate that the possibility of a Markovian QME with the desired properties must be taken on a case-by-case basis, since there are setups where such a QME is impossible.

This talk is based on https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.02146.

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Driving-enhanced Qudit-Oscillator Interactions

Classical drives on a qudit have been extensively used to create, control and read out quantum states. We consider a qudit-oscillator system where the qudit is continuously driven. We show that strong driving allows for qudit-conditional operations on the oscillator such as displacement, squeezing and higher order effects. We discuss the case of a driven qubit with linear or quadratic coupling to the oscillator, and we generalize the scheme to multi-qubit and qudit (d>2) systems. We discuss the use of driven qudit-oscillator systems for encoding and performing operations on bosonic codes.

Optimal Bounds for Quantum Learning via Information Theory

I will discuss our recent work on finding lower bounds to solve three problems in Quantum Learning Theory: Quantum PAC learning, Quantum Agnostic Learning and Quantum Coupon Collector. Our main goal was to use tools from Quantum Information Theory, specifically the data processing inequality, to obtain these results, instead of going for more exotic ones. We succeed in doing so for the first two problems, and we show concretely that it doesn't work for the last problem, due to an inherent loss of information that is possible even for valid learning algorithms, for which we give a bound using an alternate method that utilizes the analysis we went through previously. We hope that these tools are broadly applicable to other quantum learning problems.