Physics Colloquium: A Walk through a Fluctuating Forest: Seeing Entanglement in Condensed Matter

Abstract:

In solid state physics, one uses  quantum mechanics to understand properties such as the colors of crystals or their electrical conductivity, and it seems disappointing that the quantum mechanics is mainly a very complex framework for calculating lots of numbers.  The interesting paradoxes of quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle and the possibility of particles being entangled with one another, seem to lurk somewhere in these details.  

I will talk about phenomena where the quantum phenomena are especially easy to see, in particular, how entanglement lies behind topological phases.  I will also talk about how the virtual particles in Feynman diagrams are not just a representation of calculations, but that they actually exist in the ground state and they are related to phenomena such as magnetic interactions that lead to spin glasses.

They can be described by an entanglement Hamiltonian, which is like a dynamics for the virtual fluctuations, and which can theoretically be measured in atomic lattices.

Event Organizer: Dr. Eran Sela