Category: News

Job Opening: software developer in the Quantum group We have an opening  for a Software Developer/Computational Physicist to maintain and manage the Quantum Tea software package (https://www.quantumtea.it/). The job offer details can be found at this link. PhD positions  The call for admission to the PhD courses for the 2025/26 academic year will open soon. Stay updated by checking the website: PhD unipd For further information about all openings, please contact Dr. Giuseppe Calajò (giuseppe.calajo@pd.infn.it) The Quantum Information and Matter Theory group of the Department of Physics, University of Padua (Italy) opens 3 postdoctoral positions to start in Fall 2023. We are looking for motivated candidates with a strong track record to work in the following areas:   Tensor Network methods and their applications in high-energy physics, condensed matter and machine learning (PI: Simone Montangero) Topological and chiral states with quantum simulators (PI: Marco Di Liberto) Open quantum system dynamics (PI: Pietro Silvi) Interested candidates should provide their expression of interest by September 30th, 2023 by sending a CV, two reference letters and a motivation letter indicating the main area of interest among the ones listed above. Applicants will nevertheless be considered for all the areas. The positions will be filled on a rolling basis.  Send your application to matilde.cassin [at] unipd.it  

Our researchers were privileged to spend a week at the prestigious physics centre in Bad Honnef, where they had the opportunity to meet and collaborate with esteemed Rydberg physics experts from all over the world. This highly anticipated workshop brought together leading researchers from various disciplines of Rydberg physics, fostering meaningful exchanges and strengthening the sense of community within the field. Moreover, among various research works presented at the workshop, the poster “Tree Tensor Networks for quantum many-body systems at finite temperature” from our PhD student Nora Reinić got awarded with the prize for the best poster.

The engage workshop was the first official meeting for the Engage doctoral students, taking place in Nicosia, Cyprus. The first part focused on theoretical and practical aspects of high performing computing (HPC), from efficient/scalable implementations  of simulation algorithms up to  GPU programming. In the final and second part of the program we learned methods to process and analyze large data sets with modern computing system, ML and deep learning. The theoretical lessons were complemented by hand-on sessions, focusing on use cases from physics and material science.

Nuove prospettive per la progettazione di dispositivi elettronici e atomici È stato pubblicato nella rivista scientifica «Nature Reviews Physics» l’articolo di Andrea Tononi, ricercatore del Laboratorio di Fisica teorica e modelli statistici dell’Università Parigi-Saclay, e Luca Salasnich, professore presso il Dipartimento di Fisica e astronomia “Galileo Galilei” dellìUniversità di Padova. In questo lavoro, i due fisici riassumono alcuni sviluppi recenti della ricerca scientifica sui cosiddetti “gas atomici ultrafreddi”, analizzando anche le prospettive per il futuro. Lo studio di Tononi e Salasnich analizza le nuova direzioni di ricerca della fisica degli atomi freddi, nata in seguito ad alcuni esperimenti condotti negli ultimi 3 anni: lo studio dei gas intrappolati in geometrie curve. Nel 2022, infatti, è stato prodotto per la prima volta un gas di atomi di rubidio confinati vicino ad un guscio ellissoidale. L’esperimento in questione si è svolto all’interno della Stazione Spaziale Internazionale (Figura in copertina), ed è stato controllato da remoto (sulla Terra) da ricercatori statunitensi della NASA. L’interesse fondamentale alla base della ricerca sui gas ultrafreddi in geometrie curve è comprendere come la geometria curva può modificare le proprietà dei sistemi fisici, per esempio innalzare la temperatura al di sotto della quale si innescano la superfluidità e la superconduttività. Come spiegato dai due autori, vi sono notevoli prospettive scientifiche e tecnologiche legate alla manipolazione della curvatura spaziale e della geometria curva nei più diversi materiali, sia fluidi che solidi. «Quello che abbiamo evidenziato nel nostro lavoro – aggiunge Salasnich – è che vari fenomeni, tra i quali la superfluidità e la superconduttività, possono essere controllati cambiando la curvatura spaziale del materiale nel quale avvengono. Infatti, a temperature ultrabasse, si osserva in certi materiali l’assenza di resistenza elettrica (superconduttività) e quindi la corrente elettrica scorre senza attrito. La stessa cosa avviene in questi esperimenti con gli atomi, dove c’è assenza di viscosità (superfluidità). La temperatura critica al di sotto della quale si ha l’assenza di attrito, cioè l’assenza di resistenza elettrica e viscosità, può essere in particolare controllata cambiando la curvatura spaziale del materiale.» «Queste ricerche innovative – conclude Salasnich – possono avere rilevanti ricadute nella progettazione e realizzazione di nuovi dispositivi elettronici ed atomici. Per esempio, c’è un nuovo settore di ricerca, chiamato atomtronica, che cerca di riprodurre con gli atomi l’elettronica che si fa attualmente con i dispositivi elettrici, con il vantaggio che con gli atomi è più semplice ottenere l’onda di materia macroscopica che produce una completa coerenza e superfluidità.»

Info Where is icecream ordered in wavelengths? Welcome to the Laser World of Photonics and World of Quantum conference in Munich where we visited for example our project partners from Toptica and got an overview of the most recent technology and quantum computer landscape in Germany and beyond.

Shots taken during the Nora Reinić’s talk at the Annual Network Meeting of the UNIPhD doctoral programme on 9th of June in Padova. Info With the main focus on communicating the research to the colleagues from other disciplines, the event included the researchers and experts from academic and non-academic sectors. The UNIPhD doctoral students presented their research projects through posters and 3-minute pitches, within which Nora Reinić won the 3rd place in the 3-minute pitch competition.

Shots taken during the Marco Ballarin and Lisa Zangrando’s talk at Workshop sul Calcolo nell’INFN. The QuantumTEA Cloud Platform Abstract Although quantum computers have the potential to outperform the classical computer capabilities, at the current moment noise in quantum gates still limits the size of quantum circuits that can be reliably executed. One way to avoid the noise obstacle and improve the circuit reliability includes adopting the classical computer emulators that closely mimic the behavior of quantum hardware. However, the memory required to store a quantum state scales exponentially with the number of qubits, and thus the exact representation of quantum objects is vastly limited by the large amount of computational resources needed. In the context of the Quantum Computing and Simulation Center (QCSC) project, we present the QuantumTEA (Quantum Tensor-network Emulator Applications) software. Exploiting the tensor network framework and efficient quantum state compression techniques, QuantumTEA emulator enables us to reduce the memory scaling from exponential to polynomial with system size and simulate large quantum systems with bounded entanglement. The emulator is being developed as an HPC-ready code available to be run on CINECA’s HPC platforms. Finally, we present the QuantumTEA Cloud Platform, a prototype based on Kubernetes that provides our emulator as a cloud service on CloudVeneto.

Photo taken during Prof. Silvi’s talk at CMT@BRIXEN, The Meeting of the Condensed Matter Theory Italian Community.   (2+1)D SU(2) YANG-MILLS LATTICE GAUGE THEORY AT FINITE DENSITY VIA TENSOR NETWORKS Abstract We demonstrate the feasibility of Tensor Network simulations of non-Abelian lattice gauge theories in two spatial dimensions. In particular, we focus on a SU(2) Yang-Mills model in the Hamiltonian formulation, including dynamical matter. Our sign-problem-free approach allows for characterizing the phase diagram of the model at zero and finite charge densities, as a function of the bare mass and the coupling constant g. We observe a transition, driven by g, from a phase with dominant electric fluctuations to a phase with dominant magnetic fluctuations. For the smallest nontrivial representation of the gauge field, at low values of the bare mass the deconfined regime is replaced by a superconducting phase of colorless mesons. In this representation, our simulations suggest that topological order does not survive within this phase, but it still may appear at the critical point.

Photo taken during Prof. Montangero’s talk on “Algorithms of tensor networks for high-dimensional quantum many-body systems” at the workshop dedicated to the memory of Lev Pitaevskii. The workshop, organized by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, aimed to put together experimental and theoretical physicists working in Italian laboratories on different aspects of atomic quantum gases in order to favor a constructive exchange of ideas and possibly identify future scientific strategies at the Italian and European level.

Giuseppe Calajò and Matija Tecer have partecipate to the 3rd Workshop on Waveguide QED (2023) in Erice. Giuseppe gave an invited talk and Matija presented a poster on the topic “Interacting photons in 2D Waveguide QED