Operational Quantum Mereology: an Information Scrambling Approach

操作量子分体学：一种信息置乱方法

• 批准号: 2310227
• 负责人: Paolo Zanardi
• 金额: $ 40万
• 依托单位: University of Southern California
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-08-01 至 2026-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2310227&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Operational; Quantum; Mereology; Information; Scrambling

The ability of dividing a physical system into its smaller parts is a key aspect of the scientific reductionist method. It allows one to understand the behavior of complex systems in terms of fundamental, simpler components and their interrelations and dynamical interactions. For quantum systems this division can be performed in a multitude of ways depending on the experimental resources available, the operational constraints and on the pursued objectives. The aim of this project is the development of a unified, conceptual and mathematical, framework for the optimal selection of quantum "subsystems”. This will help the progress of Quantum Sciences and possibly the deployment of transformative novel quantum technologies. The project has also important educational and training components as it will involve, in an essential fashion, graduate students. This will facilitate their future enrollment into the national, academic as well industrial, quantum workforces.The technical approach will be based on the notion of "information scrambling” which is the way in which information, initially encoded on a definite and localized set of degrees of freedoms, gets quickly "lost” by its uncontrollable spreading over an increasingly large and delocalized set of degrees of freedom. A toolkit of novel mathematical tools will be designed to quantitatively measure the character, the speed and strength of this scrambling processes. Once this is achieved, the tools will be deployed to determine the optimal division of interesting many body systems into parts based on a minimal scrambling criterion. The latter is conceptually a sort of “minimal entropy production” principle telling us that the "emergent” subsystems are those more resilient to environmental noise and can then preserve their informational identity for the longest times.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

将物理系统分成更小部分的能力是科学还原方法的一个关键方面。它使人们能够理解复杂系统在基本的、更简单的组件以及它们的相互关系和动态相互作用方面的行为。对于量子系统，这种划分可以通过多种方式进行，取决于可用的实验资源、操作限制和追求的目标。该项目的目的是为量子“子系统”的最佳选择制定一个统一的、概念性和数学性的框架。这将有助于量子科学的进步，可能还有助于部署变革性的新型量子技术。该项目还包括重要的教育和培训部分，因为它将以一种基本的方式涉及研究生。这将有助于他们未来加入国家、学术以及工业和量子工作。技术方法将基于“信息加扰”的概念，这是指最初编码在一组确定的和局部的自由度上的信息，由于其无法控制地传播到越来越大的和非局部的一组自由度而迅速“丢失”。将设计一个新的数学工具工具包，以定量测量这种扰乱过程的特征、速度和强度。一旦实现了这一点，这些工具将被部署以基于最小扰乱标准来确定有趣的多体系统的最佳分割成部分。后者在概念上是一种“最小熵产生”原则，它告诉我们，“新兴”子系统对环境噪声更具弹性，因此可以最长时间地保持其信息身份。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。