Accessing Fundamental Symmetries with Quantum Entanglement and Bell Inequalities
Mentors:
Sebastián Urrutia Quiroga (INSPIRE-HEP, email: suq90@uw.edu)
Vincenzo Cirigliano (INSPIRE-HEP, email: cirigv@uw.edu)
Prerequisites:
The project will require some basic knowledge of quantum mechanics. While coding skills are not required (though highly desired and appreciated), students must be comfortable using a computer, particularly for programming tasks.
What Students Will Learn:
Students are expected to become familiar with the overall project framework (by reading Ref. [4] and similar references) and rapidly adopt standard computer tools in particle physics [5], such as Madgraph or Delphes, for event simulation and analysis. These tools are open-source, and there is a large, dedicated community that helps resolve installation and compatibility issues.
Expected Project Length:
One year
Project Description:
Quantum entanglement (QE) is a fundamental property of quantum mechanics that reveals the inherent nonlocality of nature, famously highlighted by violations of Bell inequalities (BI) [1].
In recent years, the study of QE has expanded to particle physics in the context of high-energy collisions. Although it was once thought that these conditions were not feasible for studying fundamental quantum properties, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations have demonstrated the opposite [2, 3]. QE has also been proposed as a new tool to constrain beyond the Standard Model (BSM) physics and to test fundamental symmetries, as discussed in Ref. [4].
The goal of this project is to study the potential of QE and BI as fundamental symmetry tests using colliders, likely beginning with lepton number (LN). In simple terms, one uses the kinematic properties (different frames and angles in the figure) of a particular collision event (like pp or e+e−) to reconstruct the elements of the density matrix ˆρ, which allows you to quantify the level of entanglement of the system.
References:
[1] J.J. Sakurai and J. Napolitano, Modern Quantum Mechanics, Quantum physics, quantum information and quantum
computation, Cambridge University Press, 3 ed. (10, 2020), 10.1017/9781108587280.
[2] ATLAS collaboration, Observation of quantum entanglement with top quarks at the ATLAS detector, Nature 633
(2024) 542 [2311.07288].
[3] CMS collaboration, Observation of quantum entanglement √ in top quark pair production in proton–proton collisions at
s = 13 TeV, Rept. Prog. Phys. 87 (2024) 117801 [2406.03976].
[4] A.J. Barr, M. Fabbrichesi, R. Floreanini, E. Gabrielli and L. Marzola, Quantum entanglement and Bell inequality
violation at colliders, Prog. Part. Nucl. Phys. 139 (2024) 104134 [2402.07972].
[5] A. Vicente, Computer tools in particle physics, 1507.06349.