Syllabus and Logistics
When and Where
Class will meet at 10.30-11.20am on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of each week (except Memorial Day, May 30) in PAA110 during the Spring Quarter (March 28 - June 3, 2022)
The Final Exam is scheduled for : Monday, June 6 2022.
Prerequisites : PHYS 517/518/519 - Quantum Mechanics
Text(s) : There is no required text for this class - the lectures will be self contained. There are a number of very good books on QIS, but currently not one related to quantum simulation as the field is still that young. Classics related books that will be of value are :
Quantum Continuous Variables, by A. Serafini (2017)
Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, by M.A. Nielson and I.L. Chuang (2000)
Communication : I intend to have most communication regarding the class happen through a slack channel that I will set up.
Reading : I will assign reading to the class when appropriate. They will indicated on the Homework page.
Problem Sets : There will be problem sets assigned on a regular basis. The scores obtained in these homeworks will determine your grade of a Cr or NCr. The assignment and due date will appear on the Homework page and be discussed in class. Please feel free to discuss the problems with others in the class, but the solution(s) you present must be your own. If you are unsure of a given situation, please come and see me.
Grades : A grade of Cr or NCr will be determined by your scores on the Problem Sets alone.
Religious Accommodations : Washington state law requires that UW develop a policy for accommodation of student absences or significant hardship due to reasons of faith or conscience, or for organized religious activities.
The UW’s policy, including more information about how to request an accommodation, is available at Religious Accommodations Policy (https://registrar.washington.edu/staffandfaculty/religious-accommodations-policy/).
Accommodations must be requested within the first two weeks of this course using the Religious Accommodations Request form (https://registrar.washington.edu/students/religious-accommodations-request/).
Syllabus and Schedule
(Disclaimer: As this is a new course, there will likely be adjustments to the content and schedule as the quarter proceeds)
Week-1 : 28 March - 1 April
The background, vision and complexity of classical and quantum simulation of quantum systems, including long-term scientific goals, universal quantum computing and bounded error computation. Introduction to quantum circuits.
Week-2 : 4 April - 8 April
Quantum Circuits continued. Entanglement - relevant aspects
Week-3 : 11 April - 15 April
Gaussian Systems of continuous variables– relevant aspects. Covariance matrices, correlators, entanglement entropy, negativity, separability.
Week-4 : 18 April - 22 April
Entanglement in quantum fields
Week-5 : 25 April - 29 April
Lattice Hamiltonian Scalar Field Theories – construction and quantum circuits
Week-6 : 2 May - 6 May
Quantum simulation of quantum field theories: state preparation and time evolution
Week-7 : 9 May - 13 May
Quantum simulation of quantum field theories: observables and measurements
Week-8 : 16 May - 20 May
Quantum simulation of U(1) and SU(N) Lattice Gauge Theories.
Week-9 : 23 May - 27 May
Error mitigation strategies in quantum simulations using NISQ-era devices. Error correction frameworks
Week-10 : 30 May - 3 June
AdS/CFT and Entanglement: Ryu-Takanagi, error correction, Ising theory
Exam Week : 6 June - 10 June
Logistics
I intend to make use of available quantum simulators for some of the homework assignments. I suggest installing qiskit or cirq or both onto your local compute environment, along with python and the anaconda environment and use jupyter notebooks.
I find it helpful to use Mathematica to construct and test quantum circuits before writing actual quantum simulator/computer scripts. I suggest that you have access to Mathematica or Matlab (or whatever you like best) as an environment to develop your physics ideas and for quantum circuit design.