Dynamical Quantum Matter Theory

The new independent research group started in May 2024 and is affiliated with MPQ’s Theory Division headed by Professor Ignacio Cirac.

Leader: Dr Jad C. Halimeh

The new independent research group “Dynamical Quantum Matter Theory” is an interdisciplinary group that focuses on quantum simulation and computing, as well as quantum many-body dynamics and far-from-equilibrium statistical mechanics. Intersecting quantum many-body and high-energy physics, the “Dynamical Quantum Matter Theory” group involves a strong numerical element using tensor networks and exact diagonalisation. The work will also entail scientific collaboration with experimental groups and quantum computing companies, including Google and IBM.

One of the main goals of the research group is to engineer and understand exotic far-from-equilibrium quantum many-body dynamics that evades thermalisation. The purpose is twofold: Thermalisation is usually expected in interacting quantum many-body models, so when dynamics in such systems exhibits nonthermal behaviour, this can indicate rich physics that challenges our understanding of quantum thermalisation. Secondly, nonthermal dynamics allows storing quantum information locally for long times, which can be useful for technological applications such as quantum metrology and sensing.

The research group employs a diverse collection of quantum many-body models from lattice gauge theories and quantum spin systems to the SYK model when it comes to exploring their far-from-equilibrium properties and possible universality. A major drive of the group is to propose experimentally feasible schemes for the realisation of such dynamics on existing quantum hardware. Recent years have witnessed tremendous progress in large-scale analog and digital quantum simulators, which has facilitated testing the group’s theoretical proposals in the laboratory as well as discovering new physics on these devices.

“A beautiful synergy is created where our theoretical proposals facilitate real-life experiments, and then those lead us to discover new physics, which we build a theory on”, comments research group leader Jad C. Halimeh.

The group’s research will pave the way towards a deeper understanding of far-from-equilibrium quantum many-body dynamics and its criticality not just from a theoretical point of view, but also from an experimentally relevant angle allowing the realisation of such dynamics on state-of-the-art quantum devices.

Jad C. Halimeh recently won an ERC Starting Grant for his project QuSiGauge – Quantum simulation of far-from-equilibrium gauge theories, which focuses on novel gauge-protection schemes to design the next generation of quantum simulation of gauge theories in two spatial dimensions.