Topics

Quantum computation, in a nutshell, is the art of mastering quantum phases to encode and process information. However, phases of quantum states are very fragile and decohere. A natural way to protect them from decoherence is to use topologically ordered quantum states which have a non-local kind of entanglement. The non-locality means that the quantum entanglement is distributed among many different particles in such a way that it cannot be destroyed by local perturbations. This reduces decoherence significantly.

Moreover, the quantum information encoded in the topological states can be manipulated by moving quasiparticle excitations around one another producing braiding effects that translate into universal quantum gates. There are also alternative topological schemes to do lots of quantum information tasks, including universality, by only using the entanglement properties of the ground state. Even other types of possible techniques maybe awaiting for being uncovered and a summer school is a nice meeting point to think about them.

A new field of applications for topological orders has emerged with the theory of quantum information and computation. New developments in each field will certainly have potential applications and will influence one another.

The school is intended for an interdisciplinary audience:
- Quantum information scientists, with an interest in fault-tolerant quantum computation.
- Condensed matter scientists, with an interest in strongly correlated systems.
- Quantum field theorists, with an interest in topological field theories.
- Physicists in general, with an interest in the problem of battling decoherence in quantum systems.

The summer school is aimed at a broad audience of students, postdocs, senior scientists, etc. willing to get to know about these new intertwined fields.