February 27, 2024

Speaker: Lukasz Fidkowski (UWashington)

Title: Quantum cellular automata and quantum phases of matter

Abstract: We will show how quantum cellular automata (QCA), which originated in quantum information theory, appear naturally in the study of symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases of matter.  Specifically, they appear when one studies these phases in the "condensed matter" or "many-qubit model" context, i.e. in a Hamiltonian formalism with a tensor product Hilbert space of finite dimensional site Hilbert spaces.  We will connect these ideas to continuum field theory notions, and will endeavor to make the talk accessible to high energy and low energy theorists alike.