FESTKOLLOQUIUM: Verleihung des Physik-Preis Dresden an Dr. Adam Nahum

PRIZE COLLOQUIUM

on the occasion of the presentation of the Physik-Preis Dresden awarded jointly by TU Dresden and MPIPKS to Dr. Adam Nahum, University of Oxford.

Program (pdf):

• 16:00 Reception
• 16:40 Opening and laudatio
  • Prof. Dr. Michael Kobel, Dean of the Faculty of Physics, TU Dresden
  • Prof. Dr. Roderich Moessner, MPIPKS

Followed by talk:
Dr. Adam Nahum: 'Universal structures in the quantum butterfly effect' 

Abstract: I will describe universal aspects of the spreading of quantum information through many-body systems. Isolated quantum systems, if initialised in states of low entanglement, will dynamically generate entanglement (shared quantum information) between distant degrees of freedom. Similarly, information about a local disturbance to the system will be spread over a growing spatial region, within an effective ‘lightcone’. I will describe how simple models for many-body dynamics — quantum circuits made up of randomly chosen gates — yield universal coarse-grained descriptions for these information spreading processes, relating them to models in classical statistical mechanics. I will also touch on how we can extend these calculations to more realistic systems, and on what happens when we go beyond isolated systems by including measurement events in the dynamics.

CV: Adam Nahum obtained an M.Sc. in Physics from Chicago and a DPhil from Balliol College at Oxford University. He has been a postdoctoral associate, and then Fellow, at MIT and is now back to Balliol College as Science Research Fellow.
Adam Nahun’s research is in theoretical condensed matter physics and concerns fundamental questions about quantum dynamics out of equilibrium, quantum phase transitions, topological phases of matter, and disordered systems.