SPEAKER: Dr. Nicole Yunger Halpern
AFFILIATION: Harvard-Smithsonian ITAMP (Institute for Theoretical Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics) | Harvard University Department of Physics | MIT Research Lab of Electronics and Center for Theoretical Physics
TITLE: Noncommuting conserved quantities in thermalization
SESSION CHAIR: Professor Stephen Bartlett, University of Sydney, Australia
ABSTRACT:
In statistical mechanics, a small system exchanges conserved quantities—heat, particles, electric charge, etc.—with a bath. The small system may thermalize to the canonical ensemble, the grand canonical ensemble, etc. The conserved quantities are represented by operators usually assumed to commute with each other. But noncommutation distinguishes quantum physics from classical. What if the operators fail to commute? Quantum-information-theoretic thermodynamics has recently been used to argue that the small system thermalizes to near a “non-Abelian thermal state.” I will present a protocol for realizing this state experimentally, supported with numerical simulations of a spin chain. The protocol is suited to ultracold atoms, trapped ions, quantum dots, and more. This work introduces a nonclassical phenomenon—noncommutation of conserved quantities—into a decades-old thermodynamics problem.
