Out of Equilibrium Quantum Systems
Coordinators: John Martinis, Miguel Ortuño, Michael Pollak, Clare Yu
Scientific Advisors: Claudio Chamon
Dealing with non-equilibrium systems has been a compelling need in modern condensed matter physics. Such situations are particularly common when dealing with disorder where equilibrium is not reached for very long times, sometimes times much longer than any reasonable duration of an experiment. One example of such systems are electron glasses where electrons are greatly slowed down by disorder and interactions. Another example is noise in electronic quantum information devices such as Josephson junction qubits that need to be kept from dephasing for very long times.
The fundamental difficulty in the full understanding of such systems is posed by the breakdown of the ergodic condition that (experimental) time averages equal (theoretical) ensemble averages. Since electrons are very light particles it is essential to consider quantum effects in these systems central to the conference. Coupling to a heat-bath (or a lack of it) is also common in these systems and we therefore expect this issues to be an important part of the program as well.
Subjects to be address at the conference include:
- Dephasing and noise in qubits, particularly Josephson junction qubits.
- Quantum computing and its relation to classical computing.
- Models for electron glasses and their relation to other glasses.
- Many-electron localization and collective modes.
- Quantum dissipation.
- Extrinsic and intrinsic electron glasses - how to distinguish them?
- Interacting two-level systems.
- Dipole-coupled spin systems.
- Appreciable time will be devoted to discussions which may generate other topics.