Project IV 2025-26

Quantum Entanglement

Simon Ross

Description

Entanglement is a fundamental property of quantum systems; the existence of entanglement is a key difference between classical and quantum systems. A multicomponent quantum system is entangled when its state is not the product of states of its components: we say that the components do not have “states by themselves”.

Entanglement plays a central role in many aspects of quantum physics, in quantum information and computing, condensed matter physics, and quantum gravity. The aim of the project is to explore some aspects of this. Possible topics include:

• Entanglement and non-locality: Bell experiments
• Entanglement as a resource: quantum teleportation, computation.
• Classification of entanglement: entropy, equivalence under local operations
• Multiparty entanglement (I am currently doing research on this)
• Entanglement in quantum field theory
• Entanglement in condensed matter: tensor network models for ground states
• Entanglement in quantum gravity and holography.

Pre-requisites

It will be a big advantage to have done Quantum Computing III, but I won’t insist on it. You will need to have seen quantum mechanics before.

Resources

There are a lot of popular articles on entanglement, but mostly not that useful.

• Wikipedia page on Quantum entanglement – quite extensive
• Horodecki, Horodecki, Horodecki and Horodecki, Quantum entanglement.