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Video Library

Since 2002 Perimeter Institute has been recording seminars, conference talks, and public outreach events using video cameras installed in our lecture theatres.  Perimeter now has 7 formal presentation spaces for its many scientific conferences, seminars, workshops and educational outreach activities, all with advanced audio-visual technical capabilities.  Recordings of events in these areas are all available On-Demand from this Video Library and on Perimeter Institute Recorded Seminar Archive (PIRSA)PIRSA is a permanent, free, searchable, and citable archive of recorded seminars from relevant bodies in physics. This resource has been partially modelled after Cornell University's arXiv.org.

Hopf algebras and parafermionic lattice models

Friday Aug 04, 2017
Speaker(s):

Ground state degeneracy is an important characteristic of topological order. It is a natural question under what conditions such topological degeneracy extends to higher energy states or even to the full energy spectrum of a model, in such a way that the degeneracy is preserved when the Hamiltonian of the system is perturbed. It appears that Ising/Majorana wires have this property due to the presence of robust edge zero modes.

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Frobenius algebras, Hopf algebras and 3-categories

Thursday Aug 03, 2017

It is well known that commutative Frobenius algebras can be represented as topological surfaces, using the graphical calculus of dualizable objects in monoidal 2-categories. We build on related ideas to show that the interacting Frobenius algebras of Duncan and Dunne, which have a Hopf algebra structure, arise naturally in a similar way, by requiring a single 3-morphism in a 3-category to be invertible.

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Quantum computation with Turaev-Viro codes

Thursday Aug 03, 2017
Speaker(s):

The Turaev-Viro invariant for a closed 3-manifold is defined as the contraction of a certain tensor network. The tensors correspond to tetrahedra in a triangulation of the manifold, with values determined by a fixed spherical category. For a manifold with boundary, the tensor network has free indices that can be associated to qudits, and its contraction gives the coefficients of a quantum error-correcting code. The code has local stabilizers determined by Levin and Wen.

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The exponential expansion of the universe from unrenormalised energy momentum tensor

Thursday Aug 03, 2017
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The unrenormalised energy momentum tensor is both huge and fluctuating from point to point. Taking this seriously we (Qingdi Wang, Zhen Zhu, and myself) argue that the slow exponential expansion of the universe (on time scales of 10^10 years) comes from a very weak parametric resonance induced by the fluctuating energy mementum tensor on the rapidly fluctuating scale factor (on time scales much shorter than the Planck scale). We see only the slow exponential growth because we avarage over the scale factor squared.

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The Kitaev model and aspects of semisimple Hopf algebras via the graphical calculus

Thursday Aug 03, 2017
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The quantum double models are parametrized by a finite-dimensional semisimple Hopf algebra (over $\mathbb{C}$). I will introduce the graphical calculus of these Hopf algebras and sketch how it is equivalent to the calculus of two interacting symmetric Frobenius algebras. Since symmetric Frobenius algebras are extended 2D TQFTs, this suggests that there is a canonical way to 'lift' a compatible pair of 2D TQFTs to a 3D TQFT.

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A tensor network framework for topological phases of quantum matter

Thursday Aug 03, 2017
Speaker(s):

We present a general scheme for constructing topological lattice models in any space dimension using tensor networks. Our approach relies on finding "simplex tensors" that satisfy a finite set of tensor equations. Given any such tensor, we construct a discrete topological quantum field theory (TQFT) and local commuting projector Hamiltonians on any lattice. The ground space degeneracy of these models is a topological invariant that can be computed via the TQFT, and the ground states are locally indistinguishable when the ground space is nondegenerate on the sphere.

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Interacting Hopf monoids and Graphical Linear Algebra

Wednesday Aug 02, 2017
Speaker(s):

The interaction of Hopf monoids and Frobenius monoids is the productive nucleus of the ZX calculus, where famously each Frobenius monoid-comonoid pair corresponds to a complementary basis and the Hopf structure describes the interaction between the bases. The theory of Interacting Hopf monoids (IH), introduced by Bonchi, Sobocinski and Zanasi, features essentially the same Hopf-Frobenius interaction pattern.

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Introduction to CQM

Wednesday Aug 02, 2017
Speaker(s):

Categorical quantum mechanics is a research programme which aims to axiomatise (finite dimensional) quantum theory as an algebraic theory inside an abstract symmetric monoidal category. The central idea is that quantum observables can be
axiomatised as certain Frobenius algebras, and that two observables are (strongly) complementary when their Frobenius algebras jointly form a Hopf algebra. The resulting theory is surprisingly powerful, especially when combined with its graphical notation. In this talk

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Kitaev models based on unitary quantum groupoids

Wednesday Aug 02, 2017
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Kitaev originally constructed his quantum double model based on finite groups and anticipated the extension based on Hopf algebras, which was achieved later by Buerschaper, etc. In this talk, we will present the work on the generalization of Kitaev model for quantum groupoids and discuss its ground states.

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Symmetry-enriched topological order in tensor networks: Gauging and anyon condensation

Tuesday Aug 01, 2017
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I will describe a framework for the study of symmetry-enriched topological order using graded matrix product operator algebras. The approach is based upon an explicit construction of the extrinsic symmetry defects, which facilitates the extraction of their physical properties. This allows for a simple analysis of dual phase transitions, induced by gauging a global symmetry, and condensation of a bosonic subtheory.

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Next Public Lecture

ERIK VERLINDE: A NEW VIEW ON GRAVITY AND THE DARK SIDE OF THE COSMOS

Wednesday Oct 04, 2017