Thermalization of quantum memories

Quantum memories are quantum spins systems designed to protect a quantum state from external noise. Contrary to the classical case, there are reasons to conjecture that there are no two-dimensional quantum memories that survive for long period of times at non-zero temperature.

In this talk, I will discuss a way to rigorously prove this conjecture, by estimating the mixing time of a class of Quantum Markovian Semigroups. I will then present some recent results, regarding the case of so-called Kitaev's quantum double models, for which we can perform such estimate and confirm the conjecture.

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This initiative is part of the "PhD Lectures" activity of the project "Departments of Excellence 2023-2027". This activity consists of seminars open to Ph.D. students, followed by meetings with the speaker to discuss and go into detail on the topics presented at the talk.