2026 CAP Congress / Congrès de l'ACP 2026

Thermalization of a quantum circuit

22 Jun 2026, 15:15

15m

U. Ottawa - Learning Crossroads (CRX) Building

Oral (Non-Student) / Orale (non-étudiant(e)) Division for Quantum Information / Division de l'information quantique (DQI / DIQ) (DQI) M2-5 | (DIQ)

Speaker

Thomas Baker (Department of Physics & Astronomy and also of Chemistry, University of Victoria)

Description

Thermalization is a common phenomenon in classical statistical mechanics. We encounter this every time we pour milk into a coffee cup or release a gas into a larger volume. The system loses the memory of its initial conditions and achieves the equilibrium statistical value. Quantum systems normally display a unitary evolution in the time-dependent case. I show an application of the arguments for thermalization applied to quantum algorithms for linear algebra. The result is to remove wavefunction preparation in several examples.

This research was undertaken, in part, thanks to funding from the Canada Research Chairs Program (CRC-2021-00257). This work has been supported in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) under grants RGPIN-2023-05510 and DGECR-2023-00026.