Physics & Astronomy Colloquium

3:30 PM, Friday, October 23, 2009
Room 155, Chem-Phys Building

Dr. Eduardo Fradkin
Department of Physics
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

"Can you hear the shape of Schroedinger's cat?''

In this colloquium I will discuss the physics of topological phases in condensed matter. The prototype of systems of this type are two-dimensional electron gases in large magnetic fields in the regime of the fractional quantum Hall effect. The behavior of the entanglement entropy turns out to be a powerful way to characterize these topological fluids and their quantum phase transitions. Systems of these type have been proposed as candidates for topological quantum computation.

Refreshments will be served in CP 179 at 3:15 PM