This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This project will create and support an open source computer code for entangled quantum many-body dynamics called Time-Evolving Block Decimation (TEBD). Such open source efforts have had a tremendous impact on the solution of complex quantum problems; for example, when density functional theory (an important, now standard numerical solution method in quantum mechanics, quite different in aim and scope than TEBD), became open source, it led to a rapid development of advanced materials for renewable energy and other sectors of key national interest. TEBD uses entanglement as a convergence parameter to yield a huge advantage in solving quantum problems such as design of nano-systems in reduced dimensions. A goal of this research is to massively parallelize this method for use on the NSF-supported high performance computing (HPC) cluster at the Colorado School of Mines. The specific application focuses on ultracold heteronuclear polar molecules in optical lattices and simulations of these systems to aid experiments designed to explore their use for quantum computing.
Several undergraduate researchers will be trained in HPC and quantum many body theory, with the goal of co-authoring publications on ultracold molecules. This will be done through CSM's senior thesis program, through summer REUs, and through the joint 5 year Engineering Physics BS / Mathematical and Computational Sciences MS program at CSM. Graduate student diversity will be increased through explicit recruiting programs in Africa and South America, as well as of Hispanic-Americans in the US. The award supports graduate students.
