Dartmouth Events

Abstract: Since the discovery of the Schrödinger equation a century ago, the central problem of physics and chemistry has been the construction of tractable solutions in the many-body context. That this problem is hard is both a blessing and a curse: a blessing, as it gives rise to remarkable physical phenomena and to the prospect of quantum computers; a curse, because simulating quantum matter appears to carry exponential cost. Recent years have made clear that the states realized in nature evade this obstruction, occupying a small corner of Hilbert space characterized by limited and locally distributed entanglement, an insight that tensor networks turn into an explicit parametrization. I will discuss what has followed from this, both for numerical simulation and for the classification of quantum phases beyond the Landau paradigm. Taken together, these developments suggest that entanglement is best understood not as a curiosity of quantum mechanics but as the organizing principle of quantum matter.

Hosted by Associate Professor James Whitfield

Zoom Webinar Link: https://dartmouth.zoom.us/j/91888702369?pwd=aUlaVEFYNGZHNlZWL0R3cEVWQXg4UT09