This award supports theoretical research and education towards understanding the dynamics of quantum systems away from equilibrium. Statistical mechanics is a powerful formalism that allows us to determine, at least in principle, various properties of materials at equilibrium. Away from equilibrium, for example when a material is subject to external electromagnetic radiation, the situation is much more complex even at a basic level, and very few general principles exist. The fundamental question underlying this project concerns how to bridge disparate approaches for describing microscopic and macroscopic systems, merging the corresponding quantum and classical counterparts into a single unifying framework that accounts for quantum behavior.
Another goal of this project is finding protocols for suppressing heating losses in systems that are brought into nonequilibrium by external stimuli, such as electromagnetic radiation. Finding such protocols is important for many areas of science and technology, ranging from the design of fast heat engines that are operating near maximum efficiency, to the development of optimal quantum computation algorithms.
The project will also involve redesigning the graduate quantum mechanics course at the PI's institution by significantly updating the materials with modern developments and by adding computation-centric modules. The project also involves mentoring and training of graduate and undergraduate students both from Boston University and from other institutions through discussions and collaborations. The PI will continue providing pedagogical reviews and lecture notes aimed at both graduate and undergraduate student audiences.
This award supports theoretical research and education towards understanding the dynamics of quantum systems away from equilibrium. At equilibrium, statistical mechanics is a powerful formalism that allows us to determine, at least in principle, equilibrium phase diagrams, to identify possible phases and phase transitions, and to characterize various properties of materials. Away from equilibrium, the situation is much more complex even at a basic level, and very few general principles exist.
The project aims to build upon prior work and to develop new theoretical ideas focusing on three parallel topics: i) Developing semiclassical phase-space methods that encode quantum correlations in the form of extra classical degrees of freedom or extra dimensions in a controlled way, ii) Designing local protocols for the fast preparation of many-body states that minimize dissipative losses as well as understanding the general structure of adiabatic transformations in complex systems and their implications for (pre)thermalization, time-dependent integrability, dynamical phase transitions, and related topics, and iii) Understanding the structure and robustness of steady- or nearly-steady states in periodically driven systems. The new theoretical findings will be applied to and tested on experimental setups, continuing an active collaboration with various experimental groups to implement theoretical ideas in real systems.
The project will also involve redesigning the graduate quantum mechanics course at the PI's institution by significantly updating the materials with modern developments and by adding computation-centric modules. The project also involves mentoring and training of graduate and undergraduate students both from Boston University and from other institutions through discussions and collaborations. The PI will continue providing pedagogical reviews and lecture notes aimed at both graduate and undergraduate student audiences.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
