Quantum Institute: Visitor Schedule

The Quantum Lunch is regularly held on Thursdays in the Theoretical Division Conference Room, TA-3, Building 123, Room 121.

The organizing committee includes Malcolm Boshier (P-21), Diego Dalvit (T-4), Michael Di Rosa (C-PCS), Sebastian Deffner (T-4 & CNLS), Changhyun Ryu (P-21) , Nikolai Sinitsyn (T-4), Rolando Somma (T-4), Christopher Ticknor (T-1), and Wojciech Zurek (T-4).

For more information, or to nominate a speaker, contact Sebastian Deffner.

To add your name to the Quantum Lunch email list, contact Ellie Vigil.

Thursday April 23, 2015
12:30 PM - 2:00 PM

Speaker: Stephen Jordan (NIST)

Technical Host: Rolando Somma

TOPIC: Computational Complexity of Quantum Field Theory

Abstract
Numerical simulation of quantum dynamics is a notoriously difficult problem. In the worst case, simulating the quantum many-body problem is believed to require exponential time and memory as a function of the number of particles. On the other hand, quantum algorithms for simulating quantum many-body physics have been devised which provably scale polynomially in the number of particles. Simulating quantum field theories poses special challenges as particle number is not conserved and initial states may be difficult to prepare. In this talk I will describe recent work with Keith Lee, John Preskill, and Hari Krovi on quantum algorithms for simulating quantum field theories efficiently and on formal evidence that classical computers require exponential time to achieve this task.