Random walks and graphs in materials, biology, and quantum information science

What does mathematics, materials science, biology, and quantum
information science have in common? It turns out, there are many
connections worth exploring. I this talk, I will focus on graphs and random
walks, starting from the classical mathematical constructs and moving on to
quantum descriptions and applications. We will see how the notions of graph
entropy and KL divergence appear in the context of characterizing
polycrystalline material microstructures and predicting their performance
under mechanical deformation, while also allowing to measure adaptation in
cancer networks and entanglement of quantum states. We will discover
unified conditions under which master equations for classical random walks
exhibit nonlocal and non-diffusive behavior and see how quantum walks allow
to realize the coveted exponential speedup in quantum Hamiltonian
simulations. Recent classical and quantum breakthroughs and open questions
will be discussed.

For other events in this series see the quanTA events website.