Quantum Computation and Information Seminar 

02/11/2010, 15:00 — 16:00 — Room P4.35, Mathematics Building
Markus Tiersch, U Innsbruck

Benchmarks and statistics of entanglement dynamics

The endeavor to extend genuine quantum effects to ever larger systems, and to elucidate whether or not such quantum effects play a non-trivial role in driven, complex molecular systems poses a great technological and, moreover, conceptual challenge. Entanglement is a quantum effect that is required to demonstrate the genuine features of quantum physics beyond the wave-particle duality, namely to violate a Bell-inequality, and thereby proof correlations stronger than explainable by classical physics. In order to understand and efficiently assess entanglement in dynamical, complex systems under realistic conditions, we develop a unified picture of the dynamics of entanglement in general open quantum systems. A detailed algebraic analysis reveals evolution equations of entanglement, which show that it is possible to benchmark the entanglement dynamics with a single test state. A topological perspective for large quantum systems that employs results of high dimensional geometry yields effective, statistical results, which unveil a typical behavior of entanglement evolution. Both approaches thereby simplify the understanding of entanglement in a dynamical system, and stimulate the investigation of the role that entanglement plays in driven, complex systems far from thermal equilibrium.