Quantum Matter Out of Equilibrium
Dr. Vedika Khemani
Stanford University
Virtual only
Faculty Host: Nandini Trivedi
Abstract: A confluence of developments across a range of subfields --- particularly experimental advances in building Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices --- have opened up a vast new territory of studying many-body phenomena in completely novel regimes: highly excited, "post Hamiltonian", and far from equilibrium. NISQ devices, while still far from achieving fault-tolerant quantum computation, are exceptional laboratory systems, with large many-body Hilbert spaces and unprecedented capabilities for control and measurement. This allows the exploration of quantum dynamics in new regimes, particularly out of equilibrium, and motivates new paradigms of phase structure. I will describe some highlights of an active research program to advance many-body theory beyond the regime of near-equilibrium time-independent Hamiltonians, with a view towards uncovering novel emergent phenomena in the non-equilibrium dynamics of many-body systems. My talk will focus in particular on the theoretical formulation of discrete time crystals, which are novel out-of-equilibrium phases in periodically driven systems, and the recent experimental realization of this phase on NISQ hardware.
Bio
Vedika Khemani is an assistant professor of physics at Stanford University. After completing her Ph.D. at Princeton in 2016, she did her postdoctoral work as a Junior Fellow at Harvard. She is a recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, the William L. McMillan Award, the APS George E. Valley Jr. Prize, the Breakthrough New Horizons in Physics Prize, and a Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering.
Please use the Zoom link below to attend virtually:
https://osu.zoom.us/j/94858307115?pwd=K0JDMTROWVhIOUp6bU1sU0prZjNUZz09
Meeting ID: 948 5830 7115
Password: PRB1080
