Taming, controlling and harnessing quantum complexity

Quantum processes hold tremendous potential for the development of novel technologies, as epitomized by the recent proliferation of commercially available quantum devices.

To date, most research and innovation in the field has focused on spatial quantum effects – most prominently entanglement -- leaving quantum effects in time an as-of-yet untapped resource.

Progress in understanding such effects has been hindered by the inherent complexity of quantum memory and the lack of an adequate conceptual framework. This, in turn, has prevented the development of tools to probe, predict and compress general quantum processes.

This action aims to overcome these hurdles and answer the following fundamental questions: What kinds of quantum memory effects are physically possible? How can they be efficiently probed? How can predictive models for quantum processes be constructed?

Answers to these questions will be obtained by combining a novel, fully-general approach to the dynamics of open quantum systems, with a proven, systematic construction of memory-minimal models of classical phenomena.

The ensuing framework and tools will engender bounds on the strength and distribution of quantum memory, enable the construction of predictive models for complex quantum processes, and render their characterization experimentally tractable.

These crucial innovations will pave the way to a reconceptualization of quantum information processing that provides the means to harness the full potential of quantum processes, both in space and time.

As a result, the outcomes of the action are expected to find long-term application in a wide array of fields, ranging from quantum information to complexity theory and bio-chemical processes.The research will be carried out at Trinity College Dublin, in the perfectly suited group of Felix Binder, who is a leading expert working at the interface of quantum thermodynamics, classical complexity theory and quantum information theory.