Understanding, controlling, and utilizing the quantum world is challenging but holds great potential for designing new forms of matter and new paths for information processing. The Institute for Quantum Information and Matter (IQIM) will explore phenomena that arise in complex quantum systems. Through this Physics Frontiers Centers award, the IQIM will engage experimentalists and theorists in research to understand and harness quantum systems with the goals of developing new materials, new communication and computation methods, and new insights into the structure of the universe. The IQIM will also advance education and outreach, both for the scientific community and general public, with a broad portfolio of activities including online activities such as YouTube videos and animation, and on-campus activities such as summer programs for girls and under-served middle school students.
The IQIM research activities are organized into three areas. The first connects ideas drawn from computer science, information theory, engineering, and mathematics to experimental quantum information platforms such as superconducting circuits, ultracold atoms, and electron spins. The second spans a wide variety of topological phenomena in many-particle systems emphasizing the prospects for topologically-protected quantum information processing. The third area focuses on information scrambling in quantum many-body systems, dynamics of localized quantum phases, and ephemeral quantum phases of matter.
This Physics Frontiers Centers award is co-funded by the Division of Physics within the Directorate of Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and by the Division of Computing and Communication Foundations within the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering.
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.
