Lecture

Elements of Lie Groups and Algebras

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In course

PHYS-314: Quantum physics II

The aim of this course is to familiarize the student with the concepts, methods and consequences of quantum physics. ...

Description

This lecture covers the transformation of vectors and tensors in quantum physics, focusing on Lie groups and algebras. It explains the concept of reducible representations, possible states of rotational systems, and the distance between elements in a group. The instructor discusses the transformation according to different representations, the generators of Lie groups, and the unitary property of transformations. The lecture also delves into the structure constants of groups, the concept of simple connectedness, and the covering groups. It concludes with a detailed explanation of the smallest connected group and the modifications of forms in different groups.

Instructors (3)

Vincenzo Savona

Vincenzo Savona studied physics in Pisa at the Scuola Normale Superiore and the University of Pisa, prior to completing his PhD at the EPFL's Institute of Theoretical Physics. Subsequently he did post-doctoral work, first at the EPFL and then in the physics department of the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 2002, he returned to the EPFL to create his own research group, receiving a "professeur boursier" fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation. In 2006, he was appointed tenure-track assistant professor at the EPFL and joined the NCCR for Quantum Photonics. In 2010 he was appointed associate professor. Currently he directs the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics of Nanosystems.

Florent Gérard Krzakala

Zoë Holmes

Teaching & PhD PhD Students Ricard Puig, Sacha Lerch, Reyhaneh Aghaei Saem, Shao Hen Chiew, Weijie Xiong, Marc Sanz Drudis, Mehrad Sahebi, Manuel Rudolph Courses Quantum information theory PHYS-550 After recapping the basics of quantum theory from an informationtheoretic perspective, we will cover more advanced topics inquantum information theory. This includes introducing measures of quantum information, and developing a more advanced understanding quantum states, channels and measurement

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Mathematics

Algebra: Representation theory, Linear algebra, Abstract algebra

Analysis: Tensor analysis

Related concepts (32)

Vector (mathematics and physics)

In mathematics and physics, vector is a term that refers colloquially to some quantities that cannot be expressed by a single number (a scalar), or to elements of some vector spaces. Historically, vectors were introduced in geometry and physics (typically in mechanics) for quantities that have both a magnitude and a direction, such as displacements, forces and velocity. Such quantities are represented by geometric vectors in the same way as distances, masses and time are represented by real numbers.

Quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, quantum field theory, quantum technology, and quantum information science. Classical physics, the collection of theories that existed before the advent of quantum mechanics, describes many aspects of nature at an ordinary (macroscopic) scale, but is not sufficient for describing them at small (atomic and subatomic) scales.

Tensor

In mathematics, a tensor is an algebraic object that describes a multilinear relationship between sets of algebraic objects related to a vector space. Tensors may map between different objects such as vectors, scalars, and even other tensors. There are many types of tensors, including scalars and vectors (which are the simplest tensors), dual vectors, multilinear maps between vector spaces, and even some operations such as the dot product.

Transformation matrix

In linear algebra, linear transformations can be represented by matrices. If is a linear transformation mapping to and is a column vector with entries, then for some matrix , called the transformation matrix of . Note that has rows and columns, whereas the transformation is from to . There are alternative expressions of transformation matrices involving row vectors that are preferred by some authors. Matrices allow arbitrary linear transformations to be displayed in a consistent format, suitable for computation.

Geometric transformation

In mathematics, a geometric transformation is any bijection of a set to itself (or to another such set) with some salient geometrical underpinning. More specifically, it is a function whose domain and range are sets of points — most often both or both — such that the function is bijective so that its inverse exists. The study of geometry may be approached by the study of these transformations. Geometric transformations can be classified by the dimension of their operand sets (thus distinguishing between, say, planar transformations and spatial transformations).

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