# Perimeter Institute Quantum Discussions

This series consists of weekly discussion sessions on foundations of quantum Theory and quantum information theory. The sessions start with an informal exposition of an interesting topic, research result or important question in the field. Everyone is strongly encouraged to participate with questions and comments.

## Seminar Series Events/Videos

Currently there are no upcoming talks in this series.

## PPT pure state transformations and catalysis

Wednesday May 14, 2008

In an effort to better understand the class of operations on a bipartite system which preserve positivity of partial transpose (PPT operations), we have investigated the (non-asymptotic) transformation of pure states to pure states by operations in this class. Under local operations and classical communication (LOCC) Nielsen\'s majorization criterion provides a necessary and sufficient condition for such a transformation.

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## Topological Quantum Order: A paradigm for the physics of matter

Wednesday May 07, 2008
Speaker(s):

What does a fractional quantum Hall liquid and Kitaev\'s proposals for topological quantum computation have in common? It turns out that they are physical systems that exhibit degenerate ground states with properties seemingly different than ordinary (Landau-type) vacua, such as the ground states of a Heisenberg magnet. For example, those (topologically quantum ordered)states cannot be characterized by (local) order parameters such as magnetization. How does one characterize this new order?

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## Relativistic quantum description of particle decays

Wednesday May 07, 2008
Speaker(s):

Wigner-Dirac relativistic quantum theory is applied to decay laws of an unstable particle in different reference frames. It is shown that decay slows down from the point of view of the moving observer, as expected. However, small deviations from Einstein\'s time dilation formula are also found. The origin of these deviations is discussed, as well as possibilities for their experimental detection.

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## Particle Detector Model Questions the Unruh Effect

Wednesday Apr 30, 2008
Speaker(s):

The Hamiltonian of traditionally adopted detector models features out of diagonal elements between the vacuum and the one particle states of the field to be detected. We argue that reasonably good detectors, when written in terms of fundamental fields, have a more trivial response on the vacuum. In particular, the model configuration detector in its ground state + vacuum of the field\' generally corresponds to a stable bound state of the underlying theory (e.g.

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## Minimum Uncertainty States, the Clifford Group and Galois Extension Fields

Wednesday Mar 26, 2008
Speaker(s):

The talk concerns a generalization of the concept of a minimum uncertainty state to the finite dimensional case. Instead of considering the product of the variances of two complementary observables we consider an uncertainty relation involving the quadratic Renyi entropies summed over a full set of mutually unbiased bases (MUBs).

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## Quantum weak coin flipping with arbitrarily small bias

Wednesday Mar 05, 2008
Speaker(s):

Coin flipping by telephone (Blum \'81) is one of the most basic cryptographic tasks of two-party secure computation. In a quantum setting, it is possible to realize (weak) coin flipping with information theoretic security. Quantum coin flipping has been a longstanding open problem, and its solution uses an innovative formalism developed by Alexei Kitaev for mapping quantum games into convex optimization problems.

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## Unsharp pointer observables and the structure of decoherence

Wednesday Feb 27, 2008
Speaker(s):

Decoherence attempts to explain the emergent classical behaviour of a
quantum system interacting with its quantum environment. In order to
formalize this mechanism we introduce the idea that the information
preserved in an open quantum evolution (or channel) can be
characterized in terms of observables of the initial system. We use
this approach to show that information which is broadcast into many
parts of the environment can be encoded in a single observable. This
supports a model of decoherence where the pointer observable can be an

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## Metaphysical deductions and assumptions in quantum and classical physics

Wednesday Feb 13, 2008

I should like to show how particular mathematical properties can limit our metaphysical choices, by discussing old and new theorems within the statistical-model framework of Mielnik, Foulis & Randall, and Holevo, and what these theorems have to say about possible metaphysical models of quantum mechanics.

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## Playing the quantum harp: from quantum metrology to quantum computing with harmonic oscillators

Wednesday Feb 06, 2008
Speaker(s):

The \\\"frequency comb\\\" defined by the eigenmodes of an optical resonator is a naturally large set of exquisitely well defined quantum systems, such as in the broadband mode-locked lasers which have redefined time/frequency metrology and ultra precise measurements in recent years. High coherence can therefore be expected in the quantum version of the frequency comb, in which nonlinear interactions couple different cavity modes, as can be modeled by different forms of graph states.

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## Hamiltonian Quantum Cellular Automata in 1D

Wednesday Jan 30, 2008
Speaker(s):

We construct a simple translationally invariant, nearest-neighbor Hamiltonian on a chain of 10-dimensional qudits that makes it possible to realize universal quantum computing without any external control during the computational process, requiring only initial product state preparation. Both the quantum circuit and its input are encoded in an initial canonical basis state of the qudit chain. The computational process is then carried out by the autonomous Hamiltonian time evolution.

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## RECENT PUBLIC LECTURE

### Pauline Gagnon: Improbable Feats and Useless Discoveries

Speaker: Pauline Gagnon