Quantum Hall states and quantum computers

Wahem Bishara
California Institute of Technology

Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 11:00am
Engr IV Room 57-124

Abstract
It is experimentally established that electrons confined to two dimensions, in a strong magnetic field, form exotic, strongly-correlated phases of matter, defined by their quantized response to electric fields. These quantum Hall systems posses a number of surprising properties such as particles with fractional charge or statistics. A particular subset of these states may even provide a path to storing and manipulating quantum information, i.e. build a quantum computer.

In this talk, we will review the properties of quantum Hall systems, both observed ones and theoretically proposed ones. We will describe our theoretical work towards verifying the usefulness of quantum Hall states for building quantum computers, and we will compare our predictions to recent results of interferometry experiments.

Biography
Waheb Bishara received his bachelor's degrees in Electrical Engineering and Physics from the Technion, Israel, in 2003. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in theoretical physics at Caltech. His research focuses on exotic states of matter, in particular fractional quantum Hall systems, and their possible uses as hardware for quantum computers.