Quantum Information Science for Fundamental Physics

17 Feb 2020, 08:00 → 22 Feb 2020, 22:00 US/Mountain

Aaron Chou (Fermilab), Brian Swingle (University of Maryland, College Park), Kathryn Zurek, Konrad Lehnert (University of Colorado and NIST)

The last decade has seen wonderful progress on fundamental physics, including both the discovery of the Higgs boson by the LHC and the direct detection of gravitational waves and black holes by LIGO. These successes increasingly highlight other fundamental challenges in physics ranging from understanding the nature of dark matter to unraveling the quantum physics of spacetime itself. At the same time, there have been dramatic improvements in our ability to manipulate complex quantum systems and a concomitant explosion in our theoretical understanding of the nature of information in a quantum universe. An exciting possibility raised by these two parallel developments is that quantum information and systems could provide a powerful new approach to questions in fundamental physics. Nevertheless, efforts in this direction are still nascent. 

One set of ideas revolves around using engineered quantum systems to make ultra-precise measurements to directly detect faint dark matter signatures. Another set of ideas attempts to decode the way spacetime emerges from microscopic degrees of freedom using the language of entanglement, complexity, and computation. Given these and other early developments, the time is ripe for a meeting across communities to share ideas and look forward.  This Aspen Winter Conference will bring these communities together in a focused meeting to identify common goals and look for new opportunities. Such a meeting should be more productive than previously possible thanks to the new common language of quantum information and a new set of experimental tools of broad interest.

The application deadline is November 30, 2019.  

Please complete your application at https://aspenphys.org/physicists/winter/winterapps.html

 

 

20200219 - Vanner_QISForFundamentalPhysics.pdf

Aspen 2020 shared Leibfried.pptm

Regal_aspen.pptx

Monday, 17 February

17:00 → 19:00 Reception and registration at the Aspen Center for Physics

Tuesday, 18 February

08:00 → 11:05 Morning session: Big questions

08:00 Perspectives on Quantum Information Science for Fundamental Physics

Speaker: John Preskill (Caltech)

08:40 Quantum electromagnetic sensors and the search for axion dark matter below 1 micro-eV

Speaker: Kent Irwin (Stanford University)

Irwin Aspen vFinal2.pdf

09:20 Coffee break

09:40 New Ideas in Dark Matter Detection

Speaker: Kathryn Zurek

20_Aspen.pdf

10:20 Quantum technologies for gravitational wave detectors

Speaker: Nergis Mavalvala (MIT)

Aspen_feb2020_web.pdf

16:30 → 17:30 Evening session: Quantum information and space-time

16:30 Comments on QI in accelerating cosmology (phenomenological and thought-experimental)

Speaker: Eva Silverstein (Stanford)

ACP winter 2020 cosmo and QI.pdf

17:00 Quantum entropy generated by dynamical evolution

We introduce the notion of a time density matrix which captures a probabilistic ensemble of systems in specified states at different times. The quantum entropy of a time density matrix quantifies the information needed to track the unitary evolution of an arbitrary quantum system. As such it can grow with time, and is a finer probe of the dynamics of the system than the quantum entropy of a regular density matrix. This dynamical quantum entropy is expected to be useful in characterizing chaotic quantum systems, as well as in studying how certain quantum systems are encoded in dual gravity theories.

Speaker: Josephine Suh

17:30 → 19:00 Poster session: Posters

Wednesday, 19 February

08:00 → 11:10 Morning session: Quantum sensing and error correction

08:00 Sensing, Entanglement, and Scrambling

We will begin by discussing optimal entanglement-based protocols for measuring spatially varying fields with a sensor network. We will then discuss fast protocols for preparing the required entangled states and lower bounds on the preparation time. Finally, we will discuss applications of these and related bounds to quantum information scrambling.

Speaker: Alexey Gorshkov

GorshkovAspen.pdf

08:30 Advanced Characterization and Sensing with Squeezed Optomechanical Systems

In this talk I will outline quantum-enhanced sensing modalities for nanoscale displacement and phase
sensing. Optomechanical devices use optical readout of micro/nano-electromechanical systems (MEMS)
displacement in order to transduce displacement and phase signals. New detection modes that focus on
ultrasonic measurements have brought the shot noise of the optical field into play when transducing
signals near resonance, allowing for shot noise limited measurements even at room temperature.
However, state of the art approaches to date have been unable to leverage the lower noise floor away
from the mechanical resonance frequency because minimum resolvable signals fall below the noise floor
off-resonance. As a result, many MEMS measurement techniques can only probe the RF responses of
materials or fields at discrete mechanical frequencies, with slow measurements associated with
micromechanical ringdown times that are highly susceptible to nonlinear dynamics. In the shot noise
limited regime, far below the back-action limit, these devices are good candidates for quantum sensing,
where quantum effects like entanglement are used to enhance the readout of optical beam
displacements, revealing signals that were previously buried in the noise. For example, in the case of
atomic force microscopy, the ability to lower the noise floor beyond current classical limits enables
broadband materials characterization critical to describing electronic dynamics in complex materials
with orders of magnitude faster acquisition times than are currently available. I will compare and
contrast two common readout techniques, with added quantum enhancement: direct detection readout
and interferometric readout. I will outline a new scheme that relies on squeezed light and nonlinear
interferometry to move nanoscale displacement sensing, phase sensing, and quantum imaging below
the shot noise limit.

Speaker: Raphael Pooser (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)

Quantum_sensing.pdf

09:00 Coffee break

09:30 Cavity Optomechanics: Generating Mechanical Interference Fringes and Brillouin Optomechanical Strong Coupling

Cavity quantum optomechanics utilizes electromagnetic fields to generate and study quantum states of motion of macroscopic mechanical oscillators. The field has undergone significant growth recently owing to its significant promise for both quantum technology development and to test the foundations of physics. Our new team at Imperial College London - the Quantum Measurement Lab - pursue a combination of experiment and theory in these directions with key interests including quantum-state engineering of mechanical systems and exploring the quantum-to-classical transition. In this talk, results from two of our research programs will be presented. Firstly, our work towards creating a mechanical superposition state will be described including experimentally generating interference fringes in the motion of a mechanical oscillator using single-photon detection [1], and theoretical work proposing how to grow a mechanical superposition state using a sequence of pulsed interactions and single-photon measurements [2]. Secondly, our experimental work on Brillouin optomechanics with high-frequency phonons (~10 GHz) will be presented including the first observation of Brillouin optomechanical strong coupling [3]. This observation provides a powerful new direction that unites several favorable properties for mechanical quantum state engineering including very low optical loss and absorption, and back-scatter operation to allow the signal to be easily separated from the pump.

[1] Ringbauer et al, New J. Phys. 20, 053042 (2018).
[2] Clarke and Vanner, Quantum Sci. Technol. 4, 014003 (2019).
[3] Enzian et al, Optica 6, 7 (2019).
https://groups.physics.ox.ac.uk/QMLab/

Speaker: Michael Vanner (Imperial College, London)

20200219_-_Vanner_QISForFundamentalPhysics.pdf

10:00 Quantum Control of Harmonic Oscillator Motional States of Ions

This talk will give an overview of recent work on quantum control of the har- monic oscillator states of motion realized with trapped ions at NIST. We prepare non-classical states of the motion of a single Be+ or Mg+ ion, such as approxi- mately pure number states of ion motion up to n = 100 [1], coherent superpo- sitions of the ground state with number states up to n = 16 [1] and squeezing to more than 20 dB over a motional ground state [2]. These states are useful to characterize ion motional excitation and frequency noise over a wide range of time-scales, with a quantum advantage over more traditional approaches.

Besides being useful for exploring quantum control of harmonic oscillators, atomic ions are also sensitive to coherent electric fields, such as those that may result from hidden photons or from axions in the presence of a magnetic field. The motional frequencies of ions in the quantum regime typically range from 100 kHz - 10 MHz and can be tuned by changing their confining potential. Harmonic oscillator quality factors of at least 105 have been observed and even better quality factors may be realized by more careful elimination of noise and drifts in the system. Therefore, it could be interesting to use ions as field-sensors for searches of axions and hidden photons in a frequency range where electrical circuits may be limited by thermal noise. Similar experiments can also be done in a Penning trap with hundreds of ions [3]. Penning trap operation requires a strong magnetic field that can potentially serve to convert axion fields into elec- tric fields and the larger number of ions allows for faster averaging of projection noise during readout of the ion state.

[1] K. C. McCormick, J. Keller, S. C. Burd, David J. Wineland, A. C. Wilson,
and D. Leibfried, Nature 572, 86 (2019).

[2] S. C. Burd, R. Srinivas, J. J. Bollinger, A. C. Wilson, D. J. Wineland, D.
Leibfried, D. H. Slichter, and D. T. C. Allcock, Science 364, 1163 (2019).

[3] K. A. Gilmore, J. G. Bohnet, B. C. Sawyer, J. W. Britton, and J. J.
Bollinger, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 263602 (2017).

This work was supported by the NIST Quantum Information Program.

Speaker: Dietrich Leibfried

Aspen_2020_shared_Leibfried.pptm

16:30 → 17:30 Public Event at Aspen Center for Physics: Physics Cafe

17:30 → 18:30 Public Event at Aspen Center for Physics: Public lecture from John Preskill

17:30 Quantum Computing and the Entanglement Frontier

Speaker: John Preskill (Caltech)

Thursday, 20 February

08:00 → 09:00 Morning session: Quantum information and black holes

08:00 Replica Wormholes and the Black Hole Interior

Naïve semiclassical arguments suggest that the entropy of Hawking radiation should continue to grow even at very late times, a result that is inconsistent with the unitarity of quantum mechanics. In this talk, I will argue that a more careful replica trick calculation shows that the gravitational path integral becomes dominated (at late times) by saddles containing spacetime wormholes. These wormholes cause the entropy to decrease after the Page time, consistent with unitarity, and allow information to escape from the interior of the black hole.

Speaker: Geoff Penington (Stanford University)

AspenSlides.pdf

08:30 A Traversable Wormhole Teleportation Protocol in the SYK Model

Speaker: Ping Gao

Teleportation SYK.pptx

09:00 → 10:00 Coffee break

10:00 → 11:00 Morning session: New technologies

10:00 Superconducting Kinetic Inductance Technologies for Submillimeter Single-Photon Detection and Quantum-Limited Amplification for Spectroscopy in Space

Speaker: Omid Noroozian

SinglePhotonKIDs_AspenWorkshop_Feb2020_forUpload_sm.pdf

10:30 Superconducting Nanowire Detectors for rare event searches

Speaker: Sae Woo Nam

QI_Fundamental_Physics_Nam.pdf

16:30 → 19:30 Evening session: Dark matter detection ideas

16:30 Axion and Gravitational Waves from Black Hole Superradiance

Theories beyond the Standard Model of particle physics often predict new, light, feebly interacting particles whose discovery requires novel search strategies. A light particle, the QCD axion, elegantly solves the outstanding strong-CP problem of the Standard Model; cousins of the QCD axion can also appear, and are natural dark matter candidates. I will show how rotating black holes turn into axionic and gravitational wave beacons, creating nature's laboratories for ultralight bosons. When an axion's Compton wavelength is comparable to a black hole size, energy and angular momentum from the black hole source exponentially-growing bound states of particles, forming gravitational atoms'. Thesegravitational atoms' emit monochromatic gravitational wave signals, enabling gravitational wave observatories to discover ultralight axions. If the axions interact with one another, instead of gravitational waves, black holes populate the universe with axion waves.

Speaker: Masha Baryakhtar (NYU)

Aspen2020.pdf

17:00 Searching for Dark Matter with Athermal Phonon Detectors Throughout the Mass Range from 50meV through 500MeV

Substantial astronomical observations have established that approximately 25% of the energy density of the universe is composed of cold non-baryonic dark matter, whose detection and characterization could be key to improving our understanding of the laws of physics. Over the past three decades, physicists have largely focused on searching for dark matter within the 10 GeV-1 TeV range (WIMPs), unfortunately without success. These experimental failures and recent theoretical realizations, have motivated new experimental searches for dark matter with much lower masses.

In this talk, we’ll discuss the experimental requirements when searching for dark matter throughout the mass range from 50meV- 500 MeV. We’ll also discuss recent R&D breakthroughs in athermal phonon sensor technology that will enable experiments that are being proposed using silicon, polar crystal and superfluid He as the detector material.

Speaker: Matt Pyle (Berkeley)

17:30 ABRACADABRA-10cm: Searching for Axions and Preparing for DMRadio-m3

Speaker: Lindley Winslow (MIT)

Conference_ABRA_Aspen2020.pdf

18:00 Coffee break

18:30 Dark Matter Detection with Magnons and Phonons

Speaker: K. Zhang

2002_ldm_aspen.key.zip

19:00 Plasmons and Excesses in Low-Threshold Dark Matter Experiments

Spectacular advances in dark matter detection experiments, using a variety of detector materials, have pushed energy thresholds below 60 eV and charge detection to single-charge resolution. Eleven such low-threshold experiments have observed an unexplained excess of events at low energies. Surprisingly, the excess rates of ~ 10 Hz/kg in semiconductor detectors are the same to within a factor of a few, independent of exposure, overburden, shielding, or detector location, while the rates at noble liquid detectors are much smaller but are also consistent to within an order of magnitude. Taken together, I will argue that these disparate results can be explained if some external source is exciting a plasmon resonance in the semiconductor detectors, which is absent in disordered materials. If the external source happens to be dark matter, the couplings and masses required to explain the observed rate are consistent with standard thermal mechanisms for obtaining the correct relic abundance. I will mention numerous testable predictions for this scenario, many of which imply interesting new detector physics whether or not dark matter is the source of the observed events.

Speaker: Yoni Kahn (UIUC)

Aspen 2-19-20.pdf

20:00 → 22:00 Conference banquet

Friday, 21 February

08:00 → 11:00 Morning session: Holography and quantum simulation

08:00 Synthesis of Quantum-Noise-"Free" Systems

The sensitivity of quantum-noise limited systems can be greatly increased by engineering the quantum correlations of the probing field either externally (e.g. squeezed light) or internally (e.g. strong nonlinearities and/or coherent quantum control). Techniques used in the optimization of classical electrical circuits can be applied to the maximization of SNR in the context of the quantum Rao-Cramer bound, including losses, and thereby minimize the impact of decoherence on the reconstruction of the desired signal (e.g. LIGO, ADMX, etc). Not only can this approach be used for linear measurements of classical fields, but also for hypothesis testing of deviations from QM and GR.

Speaker: Rana Adhikari

08:30 Mechanical architectures for fundamental physics detection

Mechanical sensing technologies in the classical and quantum regimes have been demonstrated across an enormous range of frequency and mass scales. I'll overview some ideas about using these sensing techniques to look a diverse variety of dark matter candidates, including ultra-light (m < meV) and ultra-heavy (m > m_GUT) fields. The theory of quantum backaction-evading measurements, especially of the momentum of a device, will play a key role in the more ambitious examples.

Speaker: Dan Carney

carney-aspen-slides-2020.pdf

09:00 A Supersonically expanding BEC: An expanding universe in the lab

The massive scale of the universe makes the experimental study of cosmological inflation
difficult. This has led to an interest in developing analogous systems using table top
experiments. One possible system for such simulations is an expanding atomic quantum gas.
In recent experiments, we have modeled the basic features of an expanding universe by
drawing parallels with an expanding ring-shaped Bose Einstein Condensate (BEC). The Bose-
Einstein condensate can be thought of as a vacuum for phonons, and used in analogy to the
quantum field proposed to have driven the expansion of the early universe. Here, while the
ring-shaped BEC serves as the background vacuum, the phonons are the analogue to photons
in the expanding universe. We have studied the dynamics of a supersonically expanding ringshaped
BEC both experimentally and theoretically. I will present our results and discuss
prospects for future experiments.

Speaker: Gretchen Campbell

09:30 Coffee break

10:00 Quantum Gravity in the Lab

The trend of theoretical advances in AdS/CFT suggests that quantum gravity is broadly applicable as an effective description of chaotic many-body physics. Experimental realizations of such systems are now coming online, with more progress expected in the next few years. We can and should use tools of quantum gravity to describe the physics of these experiments. I will sketch one possible experiment exhibiting nontrivial behavior which, though perfectly understandable in hindsight using conventional methods, is motivated entirely by the physics of wormholes.

Speaker: Stefan Leichenauer

10:30 Hidden Space-times in Quantum Spin Chains

It has been suggested that space-time geometries can emerge from quantum entanglement in the context of AdS/CFT and beyond. Inspired by travel-time tomography in seismology, we construct a geometry detector that quantitatively determines whether classical space-times can actually emerge from certain entanglement patterns. Then we explicitly reconstruct the best-fit emergent holographic geometries from various entanglement data extracted from a 1-dimensional quantum system, such as a quantum spin chain at criticality, for both static and dynamical cases. Finally, we discuss how this approach may be used for understanding simulated classical/quantum gravitational dynamics in a laboratory setting.

Speaker: Charles Cao

16:30 → 17:30 Evening session: Quantum control of oscillators

16:30 Precision searches for new physics using optically levitated sensors

Speaker: David Moore (Yale)

20200221_aspen.pdf

17:00 Exploring sensing and quantum measurement with membrane cavity optomechanics

Speaker: Cindy Regal (University of Colorado)

Regal_aspen.pptx

17:30 → 18:00 Coffee break

18:00 → 19:40 Evening session: Qubits and quantum sensing

18:00 Quantum metamaterial for nondestructive microwave photon detection

Detecting traveling photons is an essential primitive for many quantum information processing tasks. We propose a single-photon detector operating in the microwave domain based on a nonlinear metamaterial built from a large number of coupled Josephson junctions. By trading local nonlinearity for large spatial extent, this approach allows for a large detection bandwidth. Using numerical simulations based on many-body physics methods, we show that the single-photon detection fidelity increases with the length of the metamaterial to approaches one. The photon is not destroyed and the photon wavepacket is only minimally disturbed by the detection, in stark contrast to conventional photon detectors operating in the optical domain. The proposed detector thus offers new possibilities for quantum information processing with superconducting qubits, as well as fundamentally new experiments exploring single-photon physics and phenomenology.

Speaker: Alexandre Blais

18:30 TBD

Speaker: Dave Schuster (Chicago)

19:00 HAYSTAC and the Search for Dark Matter Axions above 10 micro-eV

Speaker: Reina Maruyama (Yale)

Saturday, 22 February

08:00 → 09:00 Morning session: Particle physics and quantum information

08:00 Quantum algorithms for pattern recognition in high-energy physics experiments

Speaker: Heather Gray

08:30 Quantum Algorithms for High Energy Physics Simulations

Speaker: Christian Bauer

Quantum Algorithm.pdf

09:00 → 09:30 Coffee break

09:30 → 10:30 Morning session: New technologies II

09:30 Axion Searches from Micro-eV to Milli-eV

Speaker: Andrew Sonnenschein

SonnenscheinAspen2020.pdf

10:00 First results of DarkSRF: a dark photon search using SRF cavities

Speaker: Anna Grasselino (Fermilab)

DarkSRF-Aspen-2.pdf

10:30 → 12:00 Evening session: Towards the future

10:30 Panel discussion: Strategies for Advancing QIS and Fundamental Science (Raphael Bousso, Joe Lykken, Yoshihisa Yamamoto, Maria Spiropulu + ...)

Gathering the perspective of leaders in quantum computing, quantum gravity, HEP theory and experiment. Where do we think each of the fields is going? What are near-term opportunities for cross-fertilization? How can we make best use of the opportunities offered by the National Quantum Initiative, by investments made by industry, and by the HEP Snowmass process? What are the long-term prospects for advancing scientific knowledge and technical capabilities if we are allowed to dream?

Speakers: Aaron Chou, Joe Lykken (Fermilab), Kathryn Zurek, Konrad Lehnert, Maria Spiropulu (Caltech), Raphael Bousso (Berkeley)