QUROPE Quantum Information Processing and Communication in Europe

We study spin-1/2 fermions, interacting via a two-body contact potential, in a one-dimensional harmonic trap. Applying exact diagonalization, we investigate their behavior at finite interaction strength and discuss the role of the ground-state degeneracy which occurs for sufficiently strong repulsive interaction. Even low temperature or a completely depolarizing channel may then dramatically influence the system's behavior.

We study the ground states of lattice Hamiltonians that are invariant under permutations, in the limit where the number of lattice sites N

Bell inequalities define experimentally observable quantities to detect non-locality. In general, they involve correlation functions of all the parties. Unfortunately, these measurements are hard to implement for systems consisting of many constituents, where only few-body correlation functions are accessible.

Bell inequalities are natural tools that allow one to certify the presence of nonlocality in quantum systems. The known constructions of multipartite Bell inequalities contain, however, correlation functions involving all observers, making their experimental implementation difficult.

We study the nonequilibrium dynamics of correlations in quantum lattice models in the presence of long-range interactions decaying asymptotically as a power law. For exponents larger than the lattice dimensionality, a Lieb-Robinson-type bound effectively restricts the spreading of correlations to a causal region, but allows supersonic propagation. We show that this decay is not only sufficient but also necessary.

We propose a class of projected BCS wave functions and derive their parent spin Hamiltonians. These wave functions can be formulated as infinite matrix product states constructed by chiral correlators of Majorana fermions. In one dimension, the spin Hamiltonians can be viewed as SO(n) generalizations of Haldane-Shastry models. We numerically compute the spin-spin correlation functions and Rényi entropies for n=5 and 6. Together with the results for n=3 and 4, we conclude that these states are critical and their low-energy effective theory is the SO(n)1 Wess-Zumino-Witten model.

We study the dissipative dynamics and the formation of entangled states in driven cascaded quantum networks, where multiple systems are coupled to a common unidirectional bath. Specifically, we identify the conditions under which emission and coherent reabsorption of radiation drives the whole network into a pure stationary state with non-trivial quantum correlations between the individual nodes.