Lecture "Entanglement and locality in quantum many-body systems" (winter term 2014/15)

Lecturer: Norbert Schuch

(This is a mirror copy of the original course website at RWTH Aachen.)

Description

Interacting quantum many-body systems appear in all areas of physics, from condensed matter systems to high-energy physics. A characteristic feature of these systems is the local nature of their interactions.

In the first part of this lecture, I will discuss the consequences of this locality, especially in the context of condensed matter systems. Most importantly, locality implies a finite propagation speed of excitations (the so-called Lieb-Robinson bounds), which have a number of remarkable consequences regarding the behavior of correlations, the stability of topological topological order, the classification of quantum phases, and the nature of the entanglement structure of these systems.

The second part of the lecture will focus on the consequences of the specific entanglement structure of many-body systems. This covers in particular their description in terms of Tensor Network States, such as Matrix Product States and Projected Entangled Pair States, and the resulting class of simulation methods, most importantly the Density Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG) algorithm.

Material

Lecture notes

Exercise sheets

Literature

Organisatorial issues

The lecture takes place Friday from 14:30 to 16:00 in room 26C401. Lecture notes will be posted on the course L2P site and this website.

There is a bi-weekly exercise on Friday 16:00-17:30, as posted on the website. The exercise is voluntary. Examination will be though an oral exam of 30 mins.

Please feel free to contact me if you have further questions.