3:30–4:30 pm Maria Geoppert-Mayer Lecture Hall, KPTC 106
Quantum emergence, engineered in superconducting circuits
Andrew Higginbotham, UChicago
Modern superconducting quantum computers bear some similarities to crystalline materials: they are periodic arrays of quantum objects that exhibit emergent behavior. However, in a quantum computer the states of interest are finely prepared through gates and projective measurements, whereas in a solid they emerge passively as ground states and are measured with macroscopic response functions.
I will pursue the analogy between superconducting quantum circuits and condensed matter systems, and describe our efforts to build circuits which behave more like solids and less like computers. We have built large circuits exhibiting phenomena such as superconductivity stabilized by thermal fluctuations, and kinetics reminiscent of wave turbulence. As in natural solids, these phenomena were unanticipated, despite our microscopic understanding of the constituent pieces. Most recently, we have introduced circuits that realize effective pure three-body interactions and that provide a path to studying quantum solids in almost any geometry and in dimensions greater than three.