Accessing Many-Body Localized States through the Generalized Gibbs Ensemble.

We show how the thermodynamic properties of large many-body localized systems can be studied using quantum Monte Carlo simulations. We devise a heuristic way of constructing local integrals of motion of high quality, which are added to the Hamiltonian in conjunction with Lagrange multipliers. The ground state simulation of the shifted Hamiltonian corresponds to a high-energy state of the original Hamiltonian in the case of exactly known local integrals of motion. The inevitable mixing between eigenstates as a consequence of nonperfect integrals of motion is weak enough such that the characteristics of many-body localized systems are not averaged out, unlike the standard ensembles of statistical mechanics. Our method paves the way to study higher dimensions and indicates that a fully many-body localized phase in 2D, where (nearly) all eigenstates are localized, is likely to exist.

Geometric mutual information at classical critical points.

A practical use of the entanglement entropy in a 1D quantum system is to identify the conformal field theory describing its critical behavior. It is exactly (c/3)lnℓ for an interval of length ℓ in an infinite system, where c is the central charge of the conformal field theory. Here we define the geometric mutual information, an analogous quantity for classical critical points. We compute this for 2D conformal field theories in an arbitrary geometry, and show in particular that for a rectangle cut into two rectangles, it is proportional to c. This makes it possible to extract c in classical simulations, which we demonstrate for the critical Ising and three-state Potts models.

Superglass phase of interacting bosons.

We introduce a Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian with random disordered interactions as a model to study the interplay of superfluidity and glassiness in a system of three-dimensional hard-core bosons at half-filling. Solving the model using large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we show that these disordered interactions promote a stable superglass phase, where superflow and glassy density localization coexist in equilibrium without exhibiting phase separation. The robustness of the superglass phase is underlined by its existence in a replica mean-field calculation on the infinite-dimensional Hamiltonian.

Monte Carlo study of degenerate ground states and residual entropy in a frustrated honeycomb lattice Ising model.

We study a classical fully frustrated honeycomb lattice Ising model using Markov-chain Monte Carlo methods and exact calculations. The Hamiltonian realizes a degenerate ground-state manifold of equal-energy states, where each hexagonal plaquette of the lattice has one and only one unsatisfied bond, with an extensive residual entropy that grows as the number of spins N. Traditional single-spin-flip Monte Carlo methods fail to sample all possible spin configurations in this ground state efficiently, due to their separation by large energy barriers. We develop a nonlocal "chain-flip" algorithm that solves this problem, and demonstrate its effectiveness on the Ising Hamiltonian with and without perturbative interactions. The two perturbations considered are a slightly weakened bond and an external magnetic field h. For some cases, the chain-flip move is necessary for the simulation to find an ordered ground state. In the case of the magnetic field, two magnetized ground states with nonextensive entropy are found, and two special values of h exist where the residual entropy again becomes extensive, scaling proportionally to N ln phi, where phi is the golden ratio.

Destroying a topological quantum bit by condensing Ising vortices.

The imminent realization of topologically protected qubits in fabricated systems will provide not only an elementary implementation of fault-tolerant quantum computing architecture, but also an experimental vehicle for the general study of topological order. The simplest topological qubit harbours what is known as a Z2 liquid phase, which encodes information via a degeneracy depending on the system's topology. Elementary excitations of the phase are fractionally charged objects called spinons, or Ising flux vortices called visons. At zero temperature, a Z2 liquid is stable under deformations of the Hamiltonian until spinon or vison condensation induces a quantum-phase transition destroying the topological order. Here we use quantum Monte Carlo to study a vison-induced transition from a Z2 liquid to a valence-bond solid in a quantum dimer model on the kagome lattice. Our results indicate that this critical point is beyond the description of the standard Landau paradigm.

Path-integral Monte Carlo method for Rényi entanglement entropies.

We introduce a quantum Monte Carlo algorithm to measure the Rényi entanglement entropies in systems of interacting bosons in the continuum. This approach is based on a path-integral ground state method that can be applied to interacting itinerant bosons in any spatial dimension with direct relevance to experimental systems of quantum fluids. We demonstrate how it may be used to compute spatial mode entanglement, particle partitioned entanglement, and the entanglement of particles, providing insights into quantum correlations generated by fluctuations, indistinguishability, and interactions. We present proof-of-principle calculations and benchmark against an exactly soluble model of interacting bosons in one spatial dimension. As this algorithm retains the fundamental polynomial scaling of quantum Monte Carlo when applied to sign-problem-free models, future applications should allow for the study of entanglement entropy in large-scale many-body systems of interacting bosons.

Wang-Landau method for calculating Rényi entropies in finite-temperature quantum Monte Carlo simulations.

We implement a Wang-Landau sampling technique in quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations for the purpose of calculating the Rényi entanglement entropies and associated mutual information. The algorithm converges an estimate for an analog to the density of states for stochastic series expansion QMC, allowing a direct calculation of Rényi entropies without explicit thermodynamic integration. We benchmark results for the mutual information on two-dimensional (2D) isotropic and anisotropic Heisenberg models, a 2D transverse field Ising model, and a three-dimensional Heisenberg model, confirming a critical scaling of the mutual information in cases with a finite-temperature transition. We discuss the benefits and limitations of broad sampling techniques compared to standard importance sampling methods.

Prospects for controlling future pandemics of influenza.

Pandemic influenza remains one of the most serious threats to global public health and continued global vigilance to monitor emerging threats is crucial. Of the weapons available to control a pandemic, vaccination is potentially the most powerful, but there are currently serious limitations to timely availability of vaccine supply in an emergency. Many novel influenza vaccines are in development, some of which have the potential to deliver the massive quantities of vaccine that would be required in a pandemic in a short period of time. However, for the foreseeable future, it is likely that the principal vaccine that will be deployed in a pandemic will be an inactivated egg-derived vaccine of the kind that has been available for several decades. This review will focus on the practical hurdles that need to be surmounted to deliver large amounts of safe and effective pandemic vaccine to the general public. There needs to be a continued focus on improvement to the vaccine response system that will require close collaboration between influenza and vaccine experts, manufacturers, regulators and public health authorities around the world.

Chapter 11: HPV vaccines: commercial research & development.

We are now in the fortunate position of having two highly promising human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines in the pipeline. Amidst the excitement of anticipating what these vaccines may be able to offer, it is worth pausing to look back at how the vaccine development story unfolded from an industrial perspective, since without the massive commitment shown by manufacturers over the last decade, without any guarantee of success, there would be no such prospect. This chapter focuses on the two HPV prophylactic vaccines, produced independently by Merck & Co., Inc. and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), that are in advanced clinical development, and it aims to provide an insight into the key considerations for initiating the programmes in a commercial context as well as some of the research and development hurdles that needed to be surmounted to bring them to the point where efficacy has been demonstrated and the licensing process is well underway.