Events for
Past Seminars and Events
October 22, 2020
October 08, 2020
October 01, 2020
September 14, 2020
September 11, 2020
  • Title: QICI online seminar: Noncommuting conserved quantities in quantum many-body thermalization

    Time: 10:00pm 

    Venue: Online

    Speaker(s): Dr. Nicole Yunger Halpern, Harvard University

    Remark(s): 

    Date: Sept 11, 2020 (Friday)
    Time: 10:00 pm (HK Time) (GMT+8)
    Join Zoom Meeting
    https://hku.zoom.us/j/95512510759?pwd=cUZ1Z3BjY0ZBV0lDYzdoaGpHVlpkQT09

    Meeting ID: 955 1251 0759
    Password: 373431

    Speaker: Dr. Nicole Yunger Halpern, Harvard University

    Abstract:

    In statistical mechanics, a small system exchanges conserved quantities— heat, particles, electric charge, etc.—with a bath. The small system may thermalize to the canonical ensemble, the grand canonical ensemble, etc. The conserved quantities are represented by operators usually assumed to commute with each other. But noncommutation distinguishes quantum physics from classical. What if the operators fail to commute? I will argue, using quantum-information-theoretic thermodynamics, that the small system thermalizes to near a “non-Abelian thermal state.” I will present a protocol for realizing this state experimentally, supported with numerical simulations of a spin chain. The protocol is suited to ultracold atoms, trapped ions, quantum dots, and more. This work introduces a nonclassical phenomenon—noncommutation of conserved quantities—into a decades-old thermodynamics problem.

    About the Speaker

    Dr. Nicole Yunger Halpern currently is an ITAMP Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard. She completed her Ph.D. in 2018, under John Preskill's supervision at Caltech. Her dissertation won the Ilya Prigogine Prize for a thermodynamics Ph.D. thesis. She earned her Master's degree from the Perimeter Scholars International (PSI) program of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, working with Rob Spekkens and Markus P. Müller. Before that, she was at Dartmouth College from where she earned her Bachelor's degree and graduated as a co-valedictorian of her class.

    All are welcome!

September 03, 2020
August 27, 2020
August 26, 2020
  • Title: [CANCELLED] Informative Planning of Autonomous Robots for Spatiotemporal Environmental Monitoring

    Time: 10:00am 

    Venue: Online

    Speaker(s): Professor Lantao Liu, Indiana University

    Remark(s): 

    Zoom meeting link:
    https://hku.zoom.us/j/99484141050
    Meeting ID: 994 8414 1050

    Title: Informative Planning of Autonomous Robots for Spatiotemporal Environmental Monitoring
     
    Speaker: Professor Lantao Liu, Indiana University
     
    Abstract:
    Date: August 26, 2020 (Wednesday)
    Time: 10:00 am (HK Time) (GMT+8)
    Adaptive sampling and planning in robotic environmental monitoring are challenging when the target environmental process varies over space and time.  I will first discuss a Monte Carlo tree search method which enables the robot to not only well balance the environment exploration and exploitation in space, but also catch up to the environmental dynamics that are related to time. This is achieved by incorporating multi-objective optimization and a look-ahead model-predictive rewarding mechanism. The method produces optimized decision solutions for the robot based on its knowledge (estimation) of the environment model, leading to better adaptation to environmental dynamics. Then I will discuss robot decision-making in uncertain and unstructured environments, such as in the scenario when strong winds and water flows cause robot stochastic behaviors. We explore the time-varying stochasticity of robot motion and investigate robot states' reachability, based on which we develop an efficient iterative method that offers a good trade-off between solution optimality and time complexity.
     
    About the speaker:
     
    Lantao Liu is an Assistant Professor in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University-Bloomington. He has been working on planning, learning, and coordination techniques for autonomous systems involving single or multiple robots with potential applications in environmental monitoring, surveillance and security, search and rescue, as well as smart transportation. Before joining Indiana University, he was a Research Associate in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California during 2015 - 2017. He also worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University during 2013 - 2015. He received a Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University in 2013, and a Bachelor degree from the Department of Automatic Control at Beijing Institute of Technology in 2007. 
     
    All are welcome!
    Tel: 2859 2180

August 20, 2020



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