Date/Time
Date(s) - 13/10/2004
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm

Title: Comparing classical and quantum complex systems

Speaker: Dr. Susan Coppersmith

Institute: Department of Physics
University of Wisconsin

Location: ABB 102

Description:

This talk will present work that attacks the question of whether there are fundamental differences between quantum and classical complex systems. Investigating this question is hard for the same reason that qualitatively new phenomena could emerge in quantum systems — specifying a system of N degrees of freedom classically can be done using a number of variables linear in N, while quantum mechanically the number of variables grows exponentially with N.

The talk will discuss different approaches to the problem. The first, long-term, approach is to build a silicon-based quantum dot quantum computer. The shorter term strategy is to do calculations using classical computers, in particular renormalization group calculations for a quantum spin glass in three dimensions with long range interactions, and numerically exact calculations for the dynamics of a quantum spin glass with nearest neighbor interactions in two dimensions.