Award Abstract # 2143635
CAREER: New Regimes of Coherent Nonequilibrium Dynamics in Quantum Many-Body Systems

NSF Org: DMR
Division Of Materials Research
Recipient: IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Initial Amendment Date: December 23, 2021
Latest Amendment Date: March 3, 2025
Award Number: 2143635
Award Instrument: Continuing Grant
Program Manager: Alexios Klironomos
aklirono@nsf.gov
 (703)292-4920
DMR
 Division Of Materials Research
MPS
 Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences
Start Date: July 1, 2022
End Date: June 30, 2027 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $470,284.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $401,468.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2022 = $181,672.00
FY 2024 = $124,461.00

FY 2025 = $95,335.00
History of Investigator:
  • Thomas Iadecola (Principal Investigator)
    iadecola@iastate.edu
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: Iowa State University
1350 BEARDSHEAR HALL
AMES
IA  US  50011-2103
(515)294-5225
Sponsor Congressional District: 04
Primary Place of Performance: Iowa State University
2323 Osborn Dr
Ames
IA  US  50011-1026
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
04
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): DQDBM7FGJPC5
Parent UEI: DQDBM7FGJPC5
NSF Program(s): CONDENSED MATTER & MAT THEORY
Primary Program Source: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
01002526DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT

01002223DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT

01002425DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 9150, 1045, 8084, 7203
Program Element Code(s): 176500
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.049

ABSTRACT

NONTECHNICAL SUMMARY

This CAREER award supports theoretical research and education in the broad field of nonequilibrium quantum dynamics with a view towards emerging quantum technologies. Quantum computing is a new mode of computation that harnesses the principles of quantum mechanics to store and process information. Rapid experimental progress is ushering in an era of useful near-term quantum computing platforms, with potential applications ranging from cryptography to drug design. Quantum computation relies on controlling the nonequilibrium dynamics of systems of many interacting quantum particles. Comprehending such dynamics thus plays a critical role in enabling future advances.

Many-particle quantum systems tend to lose information about the state in which they were prepared. This tendency, known as quantum ergodicity, is detrimental to quantum computation, which hinges on the ability to preserve delicate quantum states and perform operations on them. The research component of this project will develop a theoretical understanding of a variety of mechanisms through which quantum ergodicity can be avoided. It will also consider how to realize these mechanisms on present-day quantum hardware with the long-term goal of expanding the toolkit for the study and manipulation of complex quantum systems.

Quantum science and technology has been identified as a key national research priority. Sustaining leadership in this field requires nurturing a robust quantum workforce. To this end, the education component of this project includes developing an interdisciplinary quantum computing curriculum at Iowa State University (ISU), whose success will grow the quantum talent pipeline. The principal investigator will also engage in outreach around quantum physics topics in partnership with two ISU-led initiatives, Science Bound and Go Further, aimed at increasing the participation of underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. These activities will reach hundreds of precollege and college students and tap into popular excitement about quantum physics using hands-on activities and active learning approaches.

TECHNICAL SUMMARY

This CAREER award supports theoretical research and education in the broad field of nonequilibrium quantum dynamics with a view towards emerging quantum technologies. The research component addresses the foundational question of how quantum many-body systems can fail to relax to thermal equilibrium and maintain quantum coherence in the presence of strong interactions.

Research activities are organized into three interrelated thrusts whose goals are: (1) Elucidate the role of emergent dynamical constraints in the far-from-equilibrium behavior of gauge theories and related quantum spin models. This question will be investigated using a combination of perturbation theory and numerical exact diagonalization to extract the timescales of relaxation processes in such systems. (2) Explore a general construction of quantum many-body scars, a dynamical regime where thermalization can be avoided by preparing the system in a special class of initial states. The construction hinges on the use of infinite-temperature thermofield-double states, which are of interest in both the high-energy physics and quantum information science communities. (3) Discover novel roadblocks to thermalization and decoherence intrinsic to quantum circuits, the natural setting for quantum computation. This project focuses on quantum circuits related to classical cellular automata, as well as circuits based on deterministic aperioidic sequences. All three topics are relevant to present-day experiments on platforms including cold atomic gases of bosons and fermions, arrays of Rydberg atoms in optical tweezers, and present day noisy intermediate-scale quantum hardware.

The education component of this project includes developing an interdisciplinary quantum computing curriculum at Iowa State University (ISU), whose success will grow the quantum talent pipeline. The PI will also engage in outreach around quantum physics topics in partnership with two ISU-led initiatives, Science Bound and Go Further, aimed at increasing the participation of underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. These activities will reach hundreds of precollege and college students and tap into popular excitement about quantum physics using hands-on activities and active learning approaches.

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.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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Pan, Haining and Ganeshan, Sriram and Iadecola, Thomas and Wilson, Justin_H and Pixley, J_H "Local and nonlocal stochastic control of quantum chaos: Measurement- and control-induced criticality" Physical Review B , v.110 , 2024 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.110.054308 Citation Details
Zhang, Shun-Yao and Yuan, Dong and Iadecola, Thomas and Xu, Shenglong and Deng, Dong-Ling "Extracting Quantum Many-Body Scarred Eigenstates with Matrix Product States" Physical Review Letters , v.131 , 2023 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.020402 Citation Details
Xiang, Liang and Jiang, Wenjie and Bao, Zehang and Song, Zixuan and Xu, Shibo and Wang, Ke and Chen, Jiachen and Jin, Feitong and Zhu, Xuhao and Zhu, Zitian and Shen, Fanhao and Wang, Ning and Zhang, Chuanyu and Wu, Yaozu and Zou, Yiren and Zhong, Jiarun "Long-lived topological time-crystalline order on a quantum processor" Nature Communications , v.15 , 2024 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-53077-9 Citation Details
Allocca, Andrew_A and LeMaire, Conner and Iadecola, Thomas and Wilson, Justin_H "Statistical mechanics of stochastic quantum control: d -adic Rényi circuits" Physical Review E , v.110 , 2024 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.110.024113 Citation Details
Chandran, Anushya and Iadecola, Thomas and Khemani, Vedika and Moessner, Roderich "Quantum Many-Body Scars: A Quasiparticle Perspective" Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics , v.14 , 2023 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-031620-101617 Citation Details
Iadecola, Thomas and Ganeshan, Sriram and Pixley, J. H. and Wilson, Justin H. "Measurement and Feedback Driven Entanglement Transition in the Probabilistic Control of Chaos" Physical Review Letters , v.131 , 2023 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.060403 Citation Details
Iadecola, Thomas and Sen, Srimoyee and Sivertsen, Lars "Floquet Insulators and Lattice Fermions" Physical Review Letters , v.132 , 2024 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.136601 Citation Details
Iadecola, Thomas and Sen, Srimoyee and Sivertsen, Lars "Floquet insulators and lattice fermions beyond naive time discretization" Physical Review Research , v.6 , 2024 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.6.013098 Citation Details
LeMaire, Conner and Allocca, Andrew_A and Pixley, J_H and Iadecola, Thomas and Wilson, Justin_H "Separate measurement- and feedback-driven entanglement transitions in the stochastic control of chaos" Physical Review B , v.110 , 2024 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.110.014310 Citation Details
Wildeboer, Julia and Langlett, Christopher M. and Yang, Zhi-Cheng and Gorshkov, Alexey V. and Iadecola, Thomas and Xu, Shenglong "Quantum many-body scars from Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen states in bilayer systems" Physical Review B , v.106 , 2022 https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.106.205142 Citation Details

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