Faits saillants de la recherche

Distinguished scientist Marcela Carena appointed new Executive Director of Perimeter Institute

Perimeter will welcome Marcela Carena as its new Executive Director on November 4, 2024. Carena is one of the world’s most renowned experts on particle physics. She comes to Perimeter following her directorship of the Theory Group at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and her tenure as a physics professor at the University of Chicago. She has been a Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at Perimeter and served as the chair of Perimeter’s Scientific Advisory Committee from 2022. As Executive Director, she will take over from Robert Myers, a long-time faculty member at Perimeter, following the completion of his five-year term. During his term, Myers oversaw the establishment of Perimeter’s Clay Riddell Centre for Quantum Matter in 2020,

launched new initiatives in quantum causal inference and celestial holography, and established Perimeter’s innovative PSI Start training program. Myers remains at Perimeter as a faculty member and BMO Financial Group Isaac Newton Chair in Theoretical Physics. He passes the torch to Carena confidently, saying, “I am certain that her leadership will guide Perimeter into a bright and exciting future.” Carena’s scientific pedigree and her expertise in fostering strong partnerships and collaborations set her on good footing to lead the Institute through its twenty-fifth anniversary year and into its next quarter-century of foundational research.

Perimeter Institute receives renewed funding from the federal and provincial governments

The Province of Ontario and the Government of Canada announced new funding for Perimeter Institute this year. The Province committed $36 million over three years via the Ministry of Colleges and Universities while the federal government allocated $34.4 million over five years via Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada’s Strategic Science Fund. These investments let Perimeter continue offering world-class programs in research, training, and outreach. The funding also ensures that Canada, Ontario, and Perimeter remain hubs for scientific discovery in an increasingly competitive knowledge-based economy worldwide.

« Cet appui renouvelé aidera l’Institut Périmètre à faire avancer les recherches en sciences fondamentales, à inspirer les jeunes, à former des étudiants exceptionnels et à jouer un rôle central dans le développement de l’écosystème quantique de l’Ontario et du Canada. Nous sommes profondément reconnaissants envers nos partenaires fédéraux et provinciaux pour leur soutien continu à l’Institut et à sa mission. Sans eux, notre travail ne serait pas possible, car c’est ensemble que nous créons un pôle de classe mondiale en physique théorique, que nous formons des partenariats solides et que nous favorisons l’innovation scientifique »
Robert Myers, directeur de l’Institut Périmètre

A dazzling year for black hole imaging with the Event Horizon Telescope

A picture is worth a thousand words, and new images of supermassive black holes have a lot to say. It takes a global effort to capture and interpret images from the Event Horizon Telescope, and Canadian scientists play a crucial role in making it happen. As a partner institute of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, Perimeter researchers, led by Research Associate Faculty member Avery Broderick, are using tools and techniques designed right here in Waterloo to delve into the images of supermassive black holes M87* and SgrA*, telling the story of black hole evolution and bringing the unruly core of our galactic neighbourhood into sharper focus. New results this year produced a second image of M87*, as well as images of polarized light for the first time from both M87* and SgrA*.

Explore Further:

Les champ magnétique do M87*M87* un an plus tard

L’équipe de chercheurs du télescope Horizon des événements « Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) » a publié de nouvelles images de trou noir M87* à partir d’observations prises en avril 2018, un an après les premières observations d’avril 2017. Les nouvelles observations de 2018, qui comprennent la première participation du télescope du Groenland, révèlent un anneau d’émission familier et brillant de la même taille que celui que nous avons découvert en 2017.

Les trous noirs entrent en laboratoire

The black hole information paradox – the question of whether information can be recovered once it falls into a black hole – has occupied physicists for almost half a century. Perimeter Research Faculty member Beni Yoshida says he has an answer: it’s a yes. What’s more, it’s a yes that we can finally test. Yoshida and his collaborators used a toolkit to turn the question of how black holes scramble information into one about the preservation of information in quantum systems. Following Yoshida’s work, researchers at the Joint Quantum Institute at the University of Maryland ran the experiment using one of the most carefully controlled quantum systems in the world: a handful of very cold ions, caught in magnetic wells, and carefully nudged using laser pulses. The landmark result was originally published in a 2019 Nature paper, the first paper to report on simulating the physics of quantum black holes and observing quantum information scrambling in a convincing manner. Now, Yoshida is exploring the wide-ranging implications of this result for quantum information studies.

Refrences:

T. Schuster (UC Berkeley), B. Kobrin (UC Berkeley/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), P. Gao (MIT), I. Cong (Harvard), E.T. Khabiboulline (Harvard), N.M. Linke (Maryland U.), M.D. Lukin (Harvard), C. Monroe (Maryland U./IonQ), B. Yoshida (Perimeter), N.Y. Yao (UC Berkeley), “Many-body quantum teleportation via operator spreading in the traversable wormhole protocol,” Phys. Rev. X 12 (2022), arXiv: 2102.00010.

K.A. Landsman (Maryland U.), C. Figgatt (Maryland U.), T. Schuster (UC Berkeley), B. Yoshida (Perimeter), N.Y. Yao (UC Berkeley), C. Monroe (Maryland U./IonQ), “Verified quantum information scrambling,” Nature 567, 61-65 (2019), arXiv: 1806.02807.

Un univers miroir pourrait raconter une histoire plus simple

Dark matter and other key properties of the cosmos could be explained by a new theory describing the big bang as a mirror at the beginning of spacetime. The model, first developed by Perimeter’s Director Emeritus and Carlo Fidani Roger Penrose Distinguished Visiting Research Chair Neil Turok and Visting Fellow Latham Boyle when they were both faculty members at Perimeter, evokes a geometrically symmetrical universe that looks like an hourglass on its side.On the right side of the model is a universe flowing forward in time and on the left, a universe flowing backward in time. In between the two is the singularity. With the mirror universe model, a few cosmological problems could solve themselves, including the nature of dark matter. This theory will be testable soon, with galaxy surveys now being made by the Euclid satellite and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

Les indices selon lesquels l’énergie noire pourrait varier au fil du temps excitent les cosmologistes

Early results from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) team, including Research Associate Faculty member and Director of the Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics Will Percival, suggest our standard cosmological model may need to change. According to the Standard Model of cosmology, dark energy maintains a constant energy density across space and time. New analysis from DESI, however, doesn’t match that prediction. If the analysis is true, then the density of dark energy may be variable, which could mean the Standard Model is wrong – or that Einstein’s theories of gravity and general relativity may need adjusting. The DESI findings were a hot topic of discussion at this year’s 50 Years of Horndeski Gravity Conference, hosted jointly by Perimeter and the University of Waterloo. Researchers say this could impact how we think of the universe and may change our predictions for how it will end. These data are only preliminary, and further results from DESI in the coming years will tell us more about whether these hints at variable dark matter hold up to closer scrutiny.

Les Gens de l’Institut

Explorateur de la matière quantique

Timothy Hsieh

If you’ve ever heard an orchestra live, you know how music can swell and fill a space as each instrument combines into a beautiful song. Timothy Hsieh, Director of the Clay Riddell Centre for Quantum Matter and research faculty member, is interested in a similar phenomenon, albeit at a quantum level. Much like a music composer, Hsieh comes up with new combinations of nature’s tiniest pieces and creates blueprints for novel phenomena that could be more powerful than the sum of their parts. The goal is to discover interesting emergent properties in quantum matter that may be useful to the advancement of quantum computing.

Jeux olympiques de l’IA quantique

Imagine going to Olympic hurdle races where, instead of human runners, the competitors are different kinds of artificial intelligence (AI) models – some run on regular or “classical” computers and others on quantum computers. With each race, you can learn which type of computer “wins” and solves certain problems more efficiently. This was the goal of a paper published by a team of researchers including Mohamed Hibat-Allah, Perimeter Scholars International (PSI) Fellow, and Juan Carrasquilla, a former Perimeter postdoctoral researcher and current Visiting Fellow. Understanding the limits and potential of quantum computers is especially important in generative AI, where quantum computing may hold an advantage in areas with small sets of training data, like in the pharmaceutical industry. If quantum computing can make generative AI more efficient and effective, it could be a game-changer in fields like drug discovery.

Refrences:

M. Hibat-Allah (Perimeter/Zapata Computing/U. Waterloo), M. Mauri (Zapata Computing), J. Carrasquilla (Vector Institute/U. Waterloo/U. Toronto), A. Perdomo-Ortiz (Zapata Computing), “A framework for demonstrating practical quantum advantage: racing quantum against classical generative models,” Commun.Phys. 7, 68 (2024), arXiv: 2303.15626.

À la recherche des axions

Piezoelectricity, a phenomenon in which certain types of materials generate an electrical charge when compressed or squeezed, was first demonstrated by physicists almost 150 years ago. Now, Asimina Arvanitaki, research faculty member and Stavros Niarchos Foundation Aristarchus Chair in Theoretical Physics, together with Perimeter PhD student Amalia Madden and a team of researchers, think piezoelectricity could be used to find hypothetical dark matter particles called axions. In a paper published in Physical Review Letters this year, they argue that axions could produce a detectable signal in some piezoelectric materials. This newly hypothesized “piezoaxionic effect” could be the key to detecting this dark matter candidate. With the theory in place, Arvanitaki and Madden are now exploring collaborations with experimental researchers to test out the idea.

Refrences:

A. Arvanitaki (Perimeter), A. Madden (Perimeter/U. Waterloo), K. Van Tillburg (New York U./Flatiron Institute), “Piezoaxionic effect,” Phys. Rev. D 109, 072009 (2024), arXiv: 2112.11466.

En revenant en arrière, on constate que l’espace-temps s’est « désintégré » dans l’univers primitif

Barbara Šoda, a postdoctoral researcher at Perimeter Institute, is using mathematical tools of spectral geometry to bring a fresh perspective to the origins of the universe. Her work with Achim Kempf, a Perimeter Affiliate and University of Waterloo professor, and Marcus Reitz of Jagiellonian University in Poland, suggests spacetime could emerge from shapeless bits of quantum information. If true, spacetime could change its very structure and number of dimensions, such as going from two dimensions to the three dimensions of space (and one of time) that we know.

Šoda is also working with physicists Jonathan Oppenheim, Carlos Sparaciari, and Zachary Weller-Davies, a recent Perimeter postdoctoral researcher, to dig into Oppenheim’s “postquantum theory of gravity.” This theory predicts that random fluctuations in spacetime can also render the apparent weight of objects unpredictable, if the objects are measured precisely enough. All this plays into the grand quest of modern physics research: uniting our understanding of general relativity (Einstein’s gravity theory) with quantum theory, which describes the interactions of fundamental particles and forces in nature.

References: M. Reitz (Jagiellonian U.), B. Šoda (Perimeter), A. Kempf (U. Waterloo/Perimeter), “Model for emergence of spacetime from fluctuations,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 131, 211501 (2023), arXiv: 2303.01519

J. Oppenheim (UCL), C. Sparaciari (UCL), B. Šoda (Perimeter), Z. Weller-Davies (UCL/Perimeter), “Gravitationally induced decoherence vs space-time diffusion: testing the quantum nature of gravity,” Nature Commun. 14, 7910 (2023), arXiv: 2203.01982.

Un nouveau lien entre les codes correcteurs d’erreurs quantiques généralisés, la complexité et la physique

Quantum computers are fragile, and interference from the outside world can disrupt the quantum entanglement on which these computers rely. To combat this, quantum computer programmers use error-correcting codes to keep things on track. One such code type, approximate quantum error correction, or AQEC, can be useful, but researchers need a method to separate the trivial codes from the nontrivial. A recent paper in Nature Physics written by Daniel Gottesman, a Perimeter Distinguished Visiting Research Chair and professor at the University of Maryland, Perimeter postdoctoral researcher Zi-Wen Liu, and Perimeter PhD students Jinmin Yi and Weicheng Ye, establishes a new rigorous AQEC framework to weed out nontrivial codes. So what happens when you apply the framework to real data? The answer is twofold: First, it helps define the relationships between entanglement and its accompanying code property. Second, it offers new insights into the relationship between quantum mechanics and theories of gravity.

Reference: J. Yi (Perimeter/U. Waterloo), W. Ye (Perimeter), D. Gottesman (U. Maryland, College Park), Z.-W. Liu (Perimeter/Tsinghua U.), “Complexity and order in approximate quantum error-correcting codes,” Nat. Phys. (2024), arXiv: 2310.04710.

A unique Perimeter collaboration explores the link between quantum information and tiling patterns

What happens when you put a quantum computing researcher and an aperiodic tiling expert on a shuttle from Perimeter to Toronto? For postdoctoral researcher Zhi Li and Visiting Fellow Latham Boyle, the answer is a new type of quantum coding. The two struck up an unlikely conversation last year while on the way to Toronto, where they noticed that aperiodic tiling, a non-repeating way to tile a plane with limited tile sets, and quantum error-correcting coding used different math that shared intriguing resemblances. They started to wonder if one could inform the other and began a new research program to find out. The result: a new type of quantum error-correcting coding that could help find and correct errors in quantum computing codes.

Refrences:

Z. Li (Perimeter), L. Boyle (Perimeter/U. Edinburgh), “The Penrose tiling is a quantum error-correcting code,” arXiv:2311.13040

Lisez l’histoire dans Quanta Magazine

Faits saillants de la recherche

Distinguished scientist Marcela Carena appointed new Executive Director of Perimeter Institute

Perimeter Institute receives renewed funding from the federal and provincial governments

A dazzling year for black hole imaging with the Event Horizon Telescope

Les trous noirs entrent en laboratoire

Un univers miroir pourrait raconter une histoire plus simple

Les indices selon lesquels l’énergie noire pourrait varier au fil du temps excitent les cosmologistes

Timothy Hsieh

Jeux olympiques de l’IA quantique

À la recherche des axions

En revenant en arrière, on constate que l’espace-temps s’est « désintégré » dans l’univers primitif

Un nouveau lien entre les codes correcteurs d’erreurs quantiques généralisés, la complexité et la physique

A unique Perimeter collaboration explores the link between quantum information and tiling patterns

La physique théorique d'aujourd'hui est la technologie de demain

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