CAREER:Entanglement in strongly interacting quantum liquids and gases

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NONTECHNICAL SUMMARYThis CAREER award will support research and education aimed at developing new theoretical techniques and high-performance computer software that enable the exploration and measurement of quantum properties of interacting quantum gases and liquids of atoms at low temperatures. The laws of quantum mechanics are fundamentally responsible for limiting the speed and efficiency of current computers by imposing a minimum physical size for their logical components. However, the same laws can be exploited to bring about exponentially faster computation and secure communication by harnessing quantum entanglement as a resource for information processing applications. Entanglement is a purely quantum property of a system that has no analog in our everyday experience. It reflects connections between the properties of a quantum system's parts, even after the parts become physically separated. For example, a measurement of a specific property on one part will instantly determine the outcome of a measurement of the same property on a physically separate part. The PI will investigate the feasibility of using quantum systems that can be easily produced in modern laboratories as sources of entanglement that can be exploited for future quantum technologies. All software developed as part of this project will be made available to the community on public repositories.In tandem with the research projects, the PI will drive increased enrollment in post-secondary science programs at the University of Vermont by engaging with a diverse group of high-school students, with a focus on students from low-income families. The PI will participate in the Upward Bound college preparation program, and provide pedagogical lectures, science career counseling, and summer research internship opportunities to local high schools. To address the fact that Vermont is the only state in the country not offering a Ph.D. degree in physics, this award will allow the PI to design graduate courses on quantum computing, and spearhead a grassroots strategic planning committee to advance the development of graduate physics programs in the state.TECHNICAL SUMMARYThis CAREER award supports research and education aimed at developing high-performance computer simulation tools that will be used to determine the amount of entanglement that can be extracted from strongly interacting quantum liquids and gases. By quantifying this quintessentially nonclassical correlation property in experimentally accessible phases of quantum many-body systems, their feasibility and potential as an entanglement resource for quantum information processing protocols will be evaluated. In this project, the PI will focus on: i) providing quantitative comparisons with nascent experimental measurements of the entanglement entropy across the Mott insulator to superfluid transition of ultracold atoms in optical lattices, aiding in the design of future searches, ii) discovering the amount of operational entanglement in superfluid helium-4, a tabletop macroscopic quantum phase, iii) exploring entanglement scaling in systems with long-range interactions and deformed spatial boundaries, which have implications for the discovery of universal, and potentially transformative, emergent physical phenomena. The quantum Monte Carlo algorithms and open-source software developed during this CAREER project will allow for the measurement and optimization of quantum entanglement in a large class of ab initio Hamiltonians describing interacting particles in the spatial continuum. These capabilities may contribute to accelerating the design and construction of next-generation quantum technologies. All software developed as part of this project will be made available to the community on public repositories.In tandem with the research projects, the PI will drive increased enrollment in post-secondary science programs at the University of Vermont by engaging with a diverse group of high-school students, with a focus on students from low-income families. The PI will participate in the Upward Bound college preparation program, and provide pedagogical lectures, science career counseling, and summer research internship opportunities to local high schools. To address the fact that Vermont is the only state in the country not offering a Ph.D. degree in physics, this award will allow the PI to design graduate courses on quantum computing, and spearhead a grassroots strategic planning committee to advance the development of graduate physics programs in the state.