"Generating Quantum Gibbs States"
Sandy Irani
University of California, Irvine
Monday, March 12th, 2012, 2:00 pm
EBU3B, Room 4140
Abstract
One of the original visions for quantum computation was to design and implement a universal quantum computer which can take in parameters of a system and compute properties of that system. While the problem computing low energy states comes up against hard complexity constraints, computing natural states at higher temperatures may be more tractable. In this talk I will discuss quantum Gibbs states and survey algorithms for computing them, in particular the recently developed quantum Metropolis algorithm. I will discuss properties of the Gibbs distribution and convergence rates for the Metropolis algorithm for several commonly studied physical models.
Short biography
Sandy Irani Sandy Irani received her PhD from UC Berkeley in 1991 after which she was a University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellow at UCSD. She joined the faculty of UC Irvine in 1992 where she is currently a full professor. Much of her research has focused on algorithm design and analysis with an emphasis on applications to computing systems. In the last few years she has been working in Quantum Computation and Quantum Information Science.