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--></style><title>Special MIT Quantum Information Processing Seminar
Announc</title></head><body>
<div>Contrary to an earlier announcement, there will be NO seminar at
16:00 hours on Monday March 7, due to a conflict with Frank Wilczek's
Nobel Laureate Lecture at that time (see
http://web.mit.edu/nobel-lectures/).</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>The following Chez Pierre lunch-time seminar at noon on Monday
March 7 in MIT room 12-132 may also be of interest to the readers of
this list:</div>
<div><br></div>
<hr>
<div align="center"><font size="+2"><b>Fractionalized Phases in
Condensed Matter: Search for a Non-Abelian Topological
Order</b></font></div>
<div align="center"><br></div>
<div align="center"><font size="+1"><i>by</i> Kirill Shtengel
(<i>California Institute of Technology</i>)</font></div>
<div align="center"><br></div>
<div align="center"><u>ABSTRACT</u></div>
<div align="center"><br></div>
<blockquote>A concept of topological order originally introduced in
the context of Fractional Quantum Hall Effect has recently become a
hot topic in such diverse fields as high temperature
superconductivity, frustrated magnetism and quantum computation. Among
other things, topological order is manifested by the non-trivial
exchange statistics of excitations, Abelian and non-Abelian anyons. In
one of its simplest forms, such order in a magnetic system should lead
to spin-charge separation - one of the interesting (yet unlikely)
possible mechanisms for high-temperature superconductivity. After
reviewing the current state of search for topological phases in
condensed matter, I will discuss models with non-Abelian topological
order, their relation to Topological Quantum Field Theory as well as
some new ideas about physical implementation of such systems. I will
also mention the potential applications of such systems, should they
be found experimentally, for fault-tolerant quantum
computation.</blockquote>
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