HTML clipboard Statistical physics seeks to explain macroscopic properties of matter in terms of microscopic interactions. Of particular interest is the phenomenon of phase transition: the sudden changes in macroscopic properties as external conditions are varied. Two models in particular are of great interest to mathematicians, namely the Ising model of a magnet and the percolation model of a porous solid. These models in turn are part of the unifying framework of the random-cluster representation, a model for random graphs which was first studied by Fortuin and Kasteleyn in the 1970’s. The random-cluster representation has proved extremely useful in proving important facts about the Ising model and similar models. In this work we study the corresponding graphical framework for two related models. The first model is the transverse field quantum Ising model, an extension of the original Ising model which was introduced by Lieb, Schultz and Mattis in the 1960’s. The second model is the space–time percolation process, which is closely related to the contact model for the spread of disease. In Chapter 2 we define the appropriate space–time random-cluster model and explore a range of useful probabilistic techniques for studying it. The space– time Potts model emerges as a natural generalization of the quantum Ising model. The basic properties of the phase transitions in these models are treated in this chapter, such as the fact that there is at most one unbounded fk-cluster, and the resulting lower bound on the critical value in <img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/a/b/8/ab820da891078a8245d7f4f3252aee4f.png" />. In Chapter 3 we develop an alternative graphical representation of the quantum Ising model, called the random-parity representation. This representation is based on the random-current representation of the classical Ising model, and allows us to study in much greater detail the phase transition and critical behaviour. A major aim of this chapter is to prove sharpness of the phase transition in the quantum Ising model—a central issue in the theory— and to establish bounds on some critical exponents. We address these issues by using the random-parity representation to establish certain differential inequalities, integration of which gives the results. In Chapter 4 we explore some consequences and possible extensions of the results established in Chapters 2 and 3. For example, we determine the critical point for the quantum Ising model in <img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/a/b/8/ab820da891078a8245d7f4f3252aee4f.png" /> and in ‘star-like’ geometries. / HTML clipboard Statistisk fysik syftar till att förklara ett materials makroskopiska egenskaper i termer av dess mikroskopiska struktur. En särskilt intressant egenskap är är fenomenet fasövergång, det vill säga en plötslig förändring i de makroskopiska egenskaperna när externa förutsättningar varieras. Två modeller är särskilt intressanta för en matematiker, nämligen Ising-modellen av en magnet och perkolationsmodellen av ett poröst material. Dessa två modeller sammanförs av den så-kallade fk-modellen, en slumpgrafsmodell som först studerades av Fortuin och Kasteleyn på 1970-talet. fk-modellen har sedermera visat sig vara extremt användbar för att bevisa viktiga resultat om Ising-modellen och liknande modeller. I den här avhandlingen studeras den motsvarande grafiska strukturen hos två näraliggande modeller. Den första av dessa är den kvantteoretiska Isingmodellen med transverst fält, vilken är en utveckling av den klassiska Isingmodellen och först studerades av Lieb, Schultz och Mattis på 1960-talet. Den andra modellen är rumtid-perkolation, som är nära besläktad med kontaktmodellen av infektionsspridning. I Kapitel 2 definieras rumtid-fk-modellen, och flera probabilistiska verktyg utforskas för att studera dess grundläggande egenskaper. Vi möter rumtid-Potts-modellen, som uppenbarar sig som en naturlig generalisering av den kvantteoretiska Ising-modellen. De viktigaste egenskaperna hos fasövergången i dessa modeller behandlas i detta kapitel, exempelvis det faktum att det i fk-modellen finns högst en obegränsad komponent, samt den undre gräns för det kritiska värdet som detta innebär. I Kapitel 3 utvecklas en alternativ grafisk framställning av den kvantteoretiska Ising-modellen, den så-kallade slumpparitetsframställningen. Denna är baserad på slumpflödesframställningen av den klassiska Ising-modellen, och är ett verktyg som låter oss studera fasövergången och gränsbeteendet mycket närmare. Huvudsyftet med detta kapitel är att bevisa att fasövergången är skarp—en central egenskap—samt att fastslå olikheter för vissa kritiska exponenter. Metoden består i att använda slumpparitetsframställningen för att härleda vissa differentialolikheter, vilka sedan kan integreras för att lägga fast att gränsen är skarp. I Kapitel 4 utforskas några konsekvenser, samt möjliga vidareutvecklingar, av resultaten i de tidigare kapitlen. Exempelvis bestäms det kritiska värdet hos den kvantteoretiska Ising-modellen på <img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/a/b/8/ab820da891078a8245d7f4f3252aee4f.png" /> , samt i ‘stjärnliknankde’ geometrier. / QC 20100705

This Thesis focuses on different aspects of quantum computation theory: adiabatic quantum algorithms, decoherence during the adiabatic evolution and quantum simulators. After an overview on the area of quantum computation and setting up the formal ground for the rest of the Thesis we derive a general error estimate for adiabatic quantum computing. We demonstrate that the first-order correction, which has frequently been used as a condition for adiabatic quantum computation, does not yield a good estimate for the computational error. Therefore, a more general criterion is proposed, which includes higher-order corrections and shows that the computational error can be made exponentially small – which facilitates significantly shorter evolution times than the first-order estimate in certain situations. Based on this criterion and rather general arguments and assumptions, it can be demonstrated that a run-time of order of the inverse minimum energy gap is sufficient and necessary. Furthermore, exploiting the similarity between adiabatic quantum algorithms and quantum phase transitions, we study the impact of decoherence on the sweep through a second-order quantum phase transition for the prototypical example of the Ising chain in a transverse field and compare it to the adiabatic version of Grover’s search algorithm. It turns out that (in contrast to first-order transitions) the impact of decoherence caused by a weak coupling to a rather general environment increases with system size (i.e., number of spins/qubits), which might limit the scalability of the system. Finally, we propose the use of electron systems to construct laboratory systems based on present-day technology which reproduce and thereby simulate the quantum dynamics of the Ising model and the O(3) nonlinear sigma model.

This Thesis focuses on different aspects of quantum computation theory: adiabatic quantum algorithms, decoherence during the adiabatic evolution and quantum simulators. After an overview on the area of quantum computation and setting up the formal ground for the rest of the Thesis we derive a general error estimate for adiabatic quantum computing. We demonstrate that the first-order correction, which has frequently been used as a condition for adiabatic quantum computation, does not yield a good estimate for the computational error. Therefore, a more general criterion is proposed, which includes higher-order corrections and shows that the computational error can be made exponentially small – which facilitates significantly shorter evolution times than the first-order estimate in certain situations. Based on this criterion and rather general arguments and assumptions, it can be demonstrated that a run-time of order of the inverse minimum energy gap is sufficient and necessary. Furthermore, exploiting the similarity between adiabatic quantum algorithms and quantum phase transitions, we study the impact of decoherence on the sweep through a second-order quantum phase transition for the prototypical example of the Ising chain in a transverse field and compare it to the adiabatic version of Grover’s search algorithm. It turns out that (in contrast to first-order transitions) the impact of decoherence caused by a weak coupling to a rather general environment increases with system size (i.e., number of spins/qubits), which might limit the scalability of the system. Finally, we propose the use of electron systems to construct laboratory systems based on present-day technology which reproduce and thereby simulate the quantum dynamics of the Ising model and the O(3) nonlinear sigma model.

Mon travail de thèse est consacré à l’étude de quelques aspects de la physique quantique des systèmes quantiques à N corps en interaction. Il est orienté vers l’étude des chaînes de spins quantiques. Je me suis intéressé à plusieurs questions relatives aux chaînes de spins quantiques, du point de vue numérique et analytique à la fois. J'aborde en particulier les questions relatives à la structure des fonctions d'onde, la forme de la densité d'états et les propriétés spectrales des Hamiltoniens de chaînes de spins. Dans un premier temps, je présenterais très rapidement les techniques numériques de base pour le calcul des vecteurs et valeurs propres des Hamiltonien de chaînes de spins. Les densités d’états des modèles quantiques constituent des quantités importantes et très simples qui permettent de caractériser les propriétés spectrales des systèmes avec un grand nombre de degrés de liberté. Alors que dans la limite thermodynamique, les densités d'états de la plupart des modèles intégrables sont bien décrites par une loi gaussienne, dans certaines limites de couplage de la chaîne de spins au champ magnétique et pour un nombre de spins N fini sur la chaîne, on observe l’apparition de pics dans la densité d’états. Je montrerais que la connaissance des deux premiers moments du Hamiltonien dans le sous-espace dégénéré associé à chaque pics donne une bonne approximation de la densité d’états. Dans un deuxième temps je m'intéresserais aux propriétés spectrales des Hamiltoniens de chaînes de spins quantiques. L’un des principal résultats sur la statistique spectrale des systèmes quantiques concerne le comportement universel des fluctuations des mesures telles que l’espacement entre valeurs propres consécutives. Ces fluctuations sont bien décrites par la théorie des matrices aléatoires mais la comparaison avec les prédictions de cette théorie nécessite généralement une opération sur le spectre du Hamiltonien appelée unfolding. Dans les problèmes quantiques de N corps, la taille de l’espace de Hilbert croît généralement exponentiellement avec le nombre de particules, entraînant un manque de données pour pouvoir faire une statistique. Ces limitations ont amené l’introduction d’une nouvelle mesure se passant de la procédure d’unfolding basée sur le rapport d’espacements successifs plutôt que les espacements. En suivant l’idée du “surmise” de Wigner pour le calcul de la distribution de l’espacement, je montre comment calculer une approximation de la distribution du rapport d’espacements dans les trois ensembles gaussiens invariants en faisant le calcul pour des matrices 3x3. Les résultats obtenus pour les différents ensembles de matrices aléatoires se sont révélés être en excellent accord avec les résultats numériques. Enfin je m’intéresserais à la structure des fonctions d’ondes fondamentales des modèles de chaînes de spins quantiques. Les fonctions d’onde constituent, avec le spectre en énergie, les objets fondamentaux des systèmes quantiques : leur structure est assez compliquée et n’est pas très bien comprise pour la plupart des systèmes à N corps. En raison de la croissance exponentielle de la taille de l’espace de Hilbert avec le nombre de particules, l’étude des vecteurs propres est une tâche très difficile, non seulement du point de vue analytique mais aussi du point de vue numérique. Je démontrerais en particulier que l’état fondamental de tous les modèles que nous avons étudiés est multifractal avec en général une dimension fractale non triviale. / My thesis is devoted to the study of some aspects of many body quantum interacting systems. In particular we focus on quantum spin chains. I have studied several aspects of quantum spin chains, from both numerical and analytical perspectives. I addressed especially questions related to the structure of eigenfunctions, the level densities and the spectral properties of spin chain Hamiltonians. In this thesis, I first present the basic numerical techniques used for the computation of eigenvalues and eigenvectors of spin chain Hamiltonians. Level densities of quantum models are important and simple quantities that allow to characterize spectral properties of systems with large number of degrees of freedom. It is well known that the level densities of most integrable models tend to the Gaussian in the thermodynamic limit. However, it appears that in certain limits of coupling of the spin chain to the magnetic field and for finite number of spins on the chain, one observes peaks in the level density. I will show that the knowledge of the first two moments of the Hamiltonian in the degenerate subspace associated with each peak give a good approximation to the level density. Next, I study the statistical properties of the eigenvalues of spin chain Hamiltonians. One of the main achievements in the study of the spectral statistics of quantum complex systems concerns the universal behaviour of the fluctuation of measure such as the distribution of spacing between two consecutive eigenvalues. These fluctuations are very well described by the theory of random matrices but the comparison with the theoretical prediction generally requires a transformation of the spectrum of the Hamiltonian called the unfolding procedure. For many-body quantum systems, the size of the Hilbert space generally grows exponentially with the number of particles leading to a lack of data to make a proper statistical study. These constraints have led to the introduction of a new measure free of the unfolding procedure and based on the ratio of consecutive level spacings rather than the spacings themselves. This measure is independant of the local level density. By following the Wigner surmise for the computation of the level spacing distribution, I obtained approximation for the distribution of the ratio of consecutive level spacings by analyzing random 3x3 matrices for the three canonical ensembles. The prediction are compared with numerical results showing excellent agreement. Finally, I investigate eigenfunction statistics of some canonical spin-chain Hamiltonians. Eigenfunctions together with the energy spectrum are the fundamental objects of quantum systems: their structure is quite complicated and not well understood. Due to the exponential growth of the size of the Hilbert space, the study of eigenfunctions is a very difficult task from both analytical and numerical points of view. I demonstrate that the groundstate eigenfunctions of all canonical models of spin chain are multifractal, by computing numerically the Rényi entropy and extrapolating it to obtain the multifractal dimensions.