Stuttgart 2012 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 5: SAMOP Dissertation Prize Symposium

A 5.1: Invited Talk

Monday, March 12, 2012, 14:00–14:30, V47.01

A Quantum Information approach to Statistical Mechanics — •Gemma De las Cuevas — Max-Planck-Institut fuer Quantenoptik, Garching, Germany

The field of quantum information and computation harnesses and exploits the properties of quantum mechanics to perform tasks more efficiently than their classical counterparts, or that may uniquely be possible in the quantum world. Its findings and techniques have been applied to a number of fields, such as the study of entanglement in strongly correlated systems, new simulation techniques for many-body physics or, generally, to quantum optics. We aim at broadening the scope of quantum information theory by applying it to problems in statistical mechanics. We focus on classical spin models, which are toy models used in a variety of systems, ranging from magnetism, neural networks, to quantum gravity, and we tackle them from three different angles. First, we show how the partition function of a class of widely different classical spin models (models in different dimensions, different types of many-body interactions, different symmetries, etc) can be mapped to the partition function of a single model. Second, we give efficient quantum algorithms to estimate the partition function of various classical spin models, such as the Ising or the Potts model. Finally, we outline the possibility of applying quantum information concepts and tools to certain models of discrete quantum gravity.