Events

Friction under microscope in a trapped-ion optical-lattice emulator

Alexei Bylinskii, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Friction is the ubiquitous mechanical process of sticking and energy dissipation at the interface between objects. Despite its technological and economic significance, friction remains poorly understood, being a non-linear, out-of-equilibrium, many-body process. According to the widely known empirical laws of friction, it is proportional to the load on the interface and independent of velocity.

Quantum Technologies for Cyber Security: from threats to solutions

Bruno Huttner, ID Quantique, Switzerland

Recent developments in quantum computers have spurred renewed interest in quantum-safe solutions for information security [1]. It is now widely accepted that the current public key infrastructures, which are the foundation of cyber security, will not withstand the arrival of the quantum computer [2], [3], and that this arrival will occur with high probability within the next ten to fifteen years. New solutions are called for, and these solutions should at least be partly based on quantum technologies.

Join us at the Institute for Quantum Computing for a two-week introduction to the theoretical and experimental study of quantum information processing.

Correlated decay in driven quantum systems

Tom Stace, University of Queensland, Australia

Gate defined quantum dots are "artificial atoms", with well defined energy levels. They interact strongly with microwave resonators, and with the solid-state environment in which they live. These systems can exhibit population inversion, single-atom masing and other phenomena familiar to the quantum optics community. The environment also produces higher-order correlated decay processes, which are typically not included in quantum-optical Lindblad master equations.

The Relativistic Quantum Information North (RQI-N) Conference, hosted by the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC), will bring together an interdisciplinary community of researchers at the interface of quantum information science and relativity.

Public lecture by Bill Unruh, The University of British Columbia

On February 11, 2016 it was announced that gravitational  waves have been detected affecting an instrument on earth. In addition to the realization of a 100 year old prediction the astounding sensitivity of the detector demanded the approaching and overcoming of seemingly fundamental quantum limits on measuring the motion of 25Kg masses. Quantum mechanics is usually thought of applying only to the very small (zeptogrammes and nanometers).

The role of dual-nuclear baths on singlet-triplet dynamics in a double quantum dot

Bhaskaran Muralidharan, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

A deeper understanding of electronic transport phenomena at the nanoscale is a cross-disciplinary effort that intertwines quantum dynamics, electronic structure and statistical physics.

Information, Holography & Gravity

Robert Myers, Perimeter Institute

In science, new advances and insights often emerge from the confluence of different ideas coming from what appeared to be disconnected research areas. The theme of my talk will review an ongoing collision between the three topics listed in my title which has been generating interesting new insights about the nature of quantum gravity, as well as variety of other fields, such as condensed matter physics and quantum field theory.

Where are the branches in a many-body wavefunction?

Jess Riedel, Perimeter Institute

When the wavefunction of a macroscopic system (such as the universe) unitarily evolves from a low-entropy initial state, we expect that it develops quasiclassical "branches", i.e., a decomposition into orthogonal components each taking well-defined, distinct values for macroscopic observables. Is this decomposition unique? Can the number of branches decrease in time?

Quantum thermodynamics - a review

Jonathan Oppenheim, University College London

I review recent results in quantum thermodynamics. This includes the emergence of many second laws at the micro-scale, fully quantum fluctuation relations for work and for states, a proof of the third law of thermodynamics applicable to erasing a bit of memory, and a grand canonical ensemble for non-commuting conserved quantities. Progress has been made using tools from quantum information theory.