Prediction and Discovery of Many-Body Phenomena in Quantum Simulators Enabled by High-Performance Computation
PI: Bryce Gadway (Physics)
Gadway group funding will be used to pay remaining salary for postdoc and/or tuition for graduate students
Other senior team members: Tom Iadecola and Zhen Bi
This project is aimed at developing tight-knit collaborations between theory and experiment for the development of quantum simulations and quantum computation at Penn State related to Rydberg quantum simulator experiments. In particular, we plan to develop these systems for applications in scientific discovery relevant to condensed matter physics and nonequilibrium quantum dynamics. The applicant will work with a team of theorists and experimentalists with expertise in computational and theoretical physics, will contribute and will develop capabilities in numerical and computational techniques, with the goal of motivating or inspiring quantum simulation experiments that uncover new dynamical phenomena or states of matter. Topics of interest to the collaboration include topological many-body systems, emergent behavior in spin systems (including high-spin SU(N) systems), many-body scars and quantum dynamics, open quantum systems.
Relevant background references:
- https://journals.aps.org/prl/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.147201
- https://journals.aps.org/prx/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevX.9.021034
- https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.91.134404
Level of Effort:
- Postdoctoral researcher: this effort would be at the level of 50% effort for a postdoctoral researcher
- Graduate student: this project would be at a smaller effort for any relevant graduate students (roughly half effort or less)
Computational expertise sought: application of exact diagonalization techniques, DMRG, Monte-Carlo, and open quantum systems approaches to many-body quantum systems. Familiarity with machine learning or artificial intelligence is also beneficial.
Other requirements: none
Objectives: to explore, in theory, the many-body phases and dynamics achievable in synthetic quantum matter, particularly spin systems, with the goal of submitting scientific papers related to these studies
Medium to long term goal: discovering new phenomena or phases of matter based on quantum simulators
Description of connections to ICDS-affiliated centers: This project should be of relevance to a planned Quantum Hub that is to be affiliated with the ICDS
Team members engagement with ICDS: Gadway is a new faculty member at PSU starting to engage with ICDS through the newly planned quantum hub, Tom Iadecola is a new faculty member at PSU who is a co-hire ICDS, and Zhen Bi regularly engages with a group of researchers across Physics, Maths, and CS with connections to ICDS on topics related to quantum physics. The group has shared expertise in computational techniques and quantum simulators, and this effort helps to build cross-disciplinary expertise at Penn State at this nexus.