Entanglement in Fluctuating Phases

Speaker: Ari Turner, Johns Hopkins

When: February 11, 2016 (Thu), 02:00PM to 03:00PM (add to my calendar)
Location: SCI 352

This event is part of the Condensed Matter Theory Seminar Series.

I will show how entanglement (familiar from the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paradox about perfect correlations between pairs of spins) explains some properties of condensed matter. Entanglement can be described by introducing an imaginary system of one dimension less than a given system, known as the entanglement Hamiltonian.

I will use the entanglement Hamiltonian to understand the properties of phases of magnetic systems that have no long-range order (even at zero temperature) due to quantum fluctuations. I will show that it can be used to identify a hidden order that distinguishes between different phases of this type (known as topological phases). I will also use it to predict the probability distribution for spin fluctuations, and to show the differences between quantum and thermal fluctuations.