Ph.D. Defense Bhavik Kumar

Title: Learning from dynamics in analogue quantum simulators

Abstract: 

Analogue quantum simulation uses a controllable quantum system to mimic and study the behaviour of complex quantum phenomena that can be difficult to simulate on classical computers. As these experiments grow in size and complexity, an important challenge is to verify that the intended physics is realized and to extract useful information despite limited site-resolved control and restricted measurement bases. This thesis develops protocols that use the simulator’s native dynamics to address both problems. First, we reconstruct spatially varying potentials in cold-atom optical lattices from time-resolved density snapshots, providing a sample and computationally efficient calibration method. Second, we develop Hamiltonian-driven shadow tomography using global fluctuating fields, allowing many local properties of quantum states to be efficiently estimated using only global control and standard measurements, including correlation functions in cold-atom lattice simulators that are difficult to access directly with quantum gas microscopes.

The thesis will be announced later.

Advisor: Prof. Henrik Laurberg Pedersen, MATH, University of Copenhagen 

co-supervisor: Prof. Daniel Malz, University of Basel, Schweiz

Assessment committee members:

Prof. Søren Fournais (Chair). University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Prof. Annabelle Bohrdt, LMU Munich, Germany
Prof. Andreas Nunnenkamp, University of Vienna, Austria