[QIP-Sem] Special MIT Quantum Information Processing Seminar Announcement

[QIP-Sem Mailing List]

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/).

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:


Fractionalized Phases in Condensed Matter: Search for a Non-Abelian 
Topological Order

by Kirill Shtengel (California Institute of Technology)

ABSTRACT

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.
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