Distinguished Lecturer Series

Computational Complexity of Quantum Systems

Sandy Irani

Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of California, Irvine

Friday October 23, 2009
10:30 am - SENSQ 5317

Hosted by Kirk Pruhs

Abstract

One of the goals of quantum information theory is to understand quantum systems from the standpoint of computational complexity. How difficult is it to compute fundamental properties of a quantum system or simulate a particular system over time? Physicists have been using computers for decades to understand various aspects of quantum systems, but these methods are typically heuristic and achieve success on only limited classes of systems. This talk will give an overview of recent developments in the effort to understand these problems from a formal complexity-theoretic point of view. In particular, one of the most basic properties of a system is its lowest energy state or ground state. I will survey recent results on the complexity of ground states and the computational resources required to compute them.

Biography of Speaker

Sandy Irani received her PhD from UC Berkeley in 1991 after which she spent one year as a University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellow. She joined the faculty of UC Irvine in 1992 where she is currently a full professor. Much of her research has focused on algorithm design and analysis with an emphasis on applications to computing systems. In the last few years she has been working in Quantum Computation and Quantum Information Science.

This Computer Science Distinguished Lecture is supported by Compunetix.