Seminars

The quest for small quantum thermal machines that can supersede their classical counterparts in performance has been an important and vibrant component in the field of quantum thermodynamics. These machines are expected to not only provide a better understanding of the interplay between the concepts from quantum information theory and thermodynamics, but also lead in building efficient quantum technologies. I will present a design of quantum thermal devices (e.g., quantum battery and quantum refrigerator) based on quantum spin models in arbitrary dimensions where the ground and the thermal states are chosen as initial states. We show that their performances are robust against decoherence and impurities which are inevitably present during preparation. Going beyond the usual convention, I will also discuss a measurement-based quantum refrigerator having an arbitrary number of qubits interacted through variable range interaction. I will show that in such a machine, repeated evolution followed by a measurement on the single accessible qubit has potential to reduce the temperature in the rest of the subsystems, thereby demonstrating cooling in the device.

Uncertainty relations express limits on the extent to which the outcomes of distinct measurements on a single state can be made jointly predictable. The existence of nontrivial uncertainty relations in quantum theory is generally considered to be a way in which it entails a departure from the classical worldview. However, this view is undermined by the fact that there exist operational theories which exhibit nontrivial uncertainty relations but which are consistent with the classical worldview insofar as they admit of a generalized-noncontextual ontological model. This prompts the question of what aspects of uncertainty relations, if any, cannot be realized in this way and so constitute evidence of genuine nonclassicality. We here consider uncertainty relations describing the tradeoff between the predictability of a pair of binary-outcome measurements (e.g., measurements of Pauli X and Pauli Z observables in quantum theory). We show that, for a class of theories satisfying a particular symmetry property, the functional form of this predictability tradeoff is constrained by noncontextuality to be below a linear curve. Because qubit quantum theory has the relevant symmetry property, the fact that it has a quadratic tradeoff between these predictabilities is a violation of this noncontextual bound, and therefore constitutes an example of how the functional form of an uncertainty relation can witness contextuality. We also deduce the implications for a selected group of operational foils to quantum theory and consider the generalization to three measurements.

Based on https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.11779.

Gaussian quantum states play a central role in many branches of physics – from quantum optics, to condensed matter and quantum field theory. In this talk, I aim to showcase the strength of the Kähler structure formalism for Gaussian states by discussing a recent result on the entanglement structure of supersymmetric (SUSY) bosonic and fermionic Gaussian states [1]. Mathematically, Gaussian states can be defined in terms of Kähler structures on classical phase space. In fact, this approach has proven to be very powerful: It yields a formalism which is both practical for applications, clearly captures the structure and geometry of Gaussian states, adapts to discrete and continuous settings and, moreover, can treat bosons and fermions simultaneously. To exemplify this, we will consider the basic example of a free SUSY system. This is a pair of one bosonic and one fermionic quadratic hamiltonian which is generated by a supercharge and, therefore, is isospectral. Not only does the Kähler structure formalism parallelly capture the Gaussian ground states and their entanglement structure of both the bosonic and the fermionic part. Moreover, it allows us to derive an appealing entanglement duality between bosonic and fermionic subsystems [1], and to interpret it in terms of phase space geometry and its physical implications. Time permitting, as a special application, we consider topological insulators and superconductors and their SUSY partners, discussing the recently derived classification of supercharges in this context [2]. [1] Jonsson, Robert H., Lucas Hackl, and Krishanu Roychowdhury. “Entanglement Dualities in Supersymmetry.” Physical Review Research 3, no. 2 (June 16, 2021): 023213. [2] Gong, Zongping, Robert H. Jonsson, and Daniel Malz. “Supersymmetric Free Fermions and Bosons: Locality, Symmetry, and Topology.” Physical Review B 105, no. 8 (February 24, 2022): 085423.