Joint IQI/CMP Seminar

Quantum information science has been developed in the past twenty years with an eye on future technologies, such as quantum computers and quantum cryptography. In this talk I will argue that the theory is also very useful as a tool for studying other areas of physics.

I will exemplify this feature mainly focusing on the problem of describing low-temperature states of quantum many-body models. I will show how both non-critical states in one-dimension and low-energy states in very large dimensions have a simple entanglement structure, thus being well describable by classical means. Both results will follow from the theory of entanglement originally developed for understanding the capabilities of quantum systems for information processing (in particular we will employ optimal protocols for entanglement distillation and an information-theoretic characterization of the so-called monogamy of entanglement).

Time permitting I will also briefly mention applications of quantum information theory to the study of the quantum-to-classical transition (in particular to the proposal termed quantum Darwinism) and to thermodynamics on the nanoscale. The talk will be geared at a general physics audience and no background on quantum information will be assumed.