Quantum Extreme Universe: Matter, Information and Gravity 2024

Theoretical physics has been divided into different fields such as particle physics, condensed matter theory, and gravity, depending on the length scale of targets. However, by introducing the ideas of quantum information to quantum many-body systems and by its deep connection to quantum gravity, it is becoming clear that what underlies all these theories is actually the same. This workshop aims at exploring these quantum information theoretic connections between the various fields.

Quantum entanglement, the most fundamental idea in quantum information theory, plays crucial roles to understand important problems in physics. Quantum many-body systems, which are main targets in condensed matter physics, can be geometrically characterized by quantum entanglement and can be regarded as collections of quantum information. This consideration leads to a powerful numerical method for analyzing quantum many-body systems, called tensor networks. Efficient numerical algorithms, based on tensor networks, draw heavily on estimation techniques from quantum information theory. Similarly, owing to the recent remarkable progress on building quantum computers, devising quantum computing algorithms for analyzing quantum many-body systems is becoming an urgent problem.

More surprisingly, the holographic duality (or gauge/gravity correspondence) relates gravity to quantum many-body systems and leads to the idea that the gravitational spacetime emerges from quantum information properties of underlying degrees of freedom. Interestingly, the way spacetime emerges from quantum entanglement, can qualitatively be explained by tensor networks, where the quantum many-body wave functions are geometrically described in terms of collections of entangled quantum bits. More recently, this research direction gave a crucial hint for resolving the black hole information paradox. The unitary behavior of quantum entanglement in evaporating black holes, called Page curve, has been theoretically derived by extending the above connection between quantum entanglement and gravity. This analysis gives us the scenario that quantum information hidden inside a black hole, can be reproduced from Hawking radiation at late times. The mechanism of successful recovery of information in black holes is expected to be closely related to quantum information theoretic tools such as quantum error correcting codes, quantum cryptography, quantum complexity and quantum scrambling. In this way, for further developments of various unsolved problems in theoretical physics, the advanced methods using quantum information theory are becoming necessary.

In addition, it has turned out that condensed matter experiments, such as cold atom systems, trapped ion systems, and quantum Hall effects, can be used as laboratories of quantum gravity owing to the holographic dualities. Therefore, experimental approaches have also attracted much attention and are getting very important.

Motivated by this recent progress, this workshop will be held in collaboration between OIST and the MEXT-KAKENHI-Grant-in-Aid for Transformative Research Areas (A) funded “Extreme Universe (ExU)” consortium (head investigator Tadashi Takayanagi, YITP Kyoto) to promote the interdisciplinary collaborations between research in quantum information and several other fields of physics. 

For further details please see the workshop's website.

OIST is deeply committed to the advancement of women in science, in Japan and worldwide. Women are strongly encouraged to apply.