With the development of ultrabright electron sources capable of literally lighting up atomic motions, the fundamental space-time limit to imaging chemistry has been achieved.

Feynman's original vision for a quantum computer was of a physical quantum system whose Hamiltonian could be adjusted in situ in order to simulate the physics of other quantum systems.  Quantum magnetic systems, with localized spins and short range interactions, are perhaps the simplest such physical quantum system that can be implemented in existing solid state technologies.  This lecture will review how a D-Wave 2X quantum annealing processor can be used to realize quantum phase transitions in the transverse field Ising model on an embedded 3-dimensional lattice.

One-dimensional (1D) magnetic materials have attracted significant interest as a platform for studying phenomena such as quasiparticle fractionalization and quantum criticality. The spin-1/2 1D Heisenberg antiferromagnet is a vital system;  its elementary excitations are chargeless spin-1/2 quasiparticles called spinons that are created in pairs.

As microelectronics technology nears the end of exponential growth over time, known as Moore’s law, there is a renewed interest in new computing paradigms such as quantum computing.   A key step in the roadmap to build a scientifically or commercially useful quantum computer will be to demonstrate its exponentially growing computing power.

Chemists have made tremendous advances in synthesizing a variety of nanostructures with control over their size, shape, and chemical composition. Plus, it is possible to control nanostructure assembly and to make macroscopic materials. This affords an opportunity to realize a wide range of controlled and potentially even new behaviours. 

 

In condensed matter physics, the essential properties of a physical system are determined by the phase in which it resides. Recent years have witnessed tremendous progress in the classification of physical phases, and it is thus pertinent to ask: What can we use quantum phases of matter for? Superconductivity is a classic example for a fundamental quantum phenomenon that finds a wide range of technological applications. It does not require fine- tuning of parameters; rather it is a property of a whole quantum phase.

To date, magnetic frustration has primarily been studied in insulators. There have been little theoretical and experimental studies in magnetically frustrated conducting materials, where the localized moments reside on geometrically frustrated lattices (pyrochlore, kagome, triangular). For the 4f - electron metallic systems, the competition between Kondo and RKKY interactions results in a great variety of ground states, leading to a rich phase diagram, which can be tuned through a quantum critical point.

Abrikosov proposed in 1974 that a 3D electronic system with its fermi level at the point of quadratic band crossing, as in the (spin-orbit coupled) gray tin or mercury telluride, should represent the simplest non-fermi liquid. I will review this idea and discuss how a non-fermi liquid ground state may become unstable to ordering via the mechanism of "fixed-point collision".