Coherent Dynamics of Complex Quantum Systems is aimed at senior-level undergraduate students in the areas of atomic, molecular, and laser physics, physical chemistry, quantum optics and quantum informatics. It should help them put particular problems in these fields into a broader scientific context and thereby take advantage of the well-elaborated technique of the adjacent fields.

This book is a collection of articles on the contemporary status of quantum mechanics, dedicated to the fundamental issues of entanglement, decoherence, irreversibility, information processing, and control of quantum evolution, with a view of possible applications. It has multidisciplinary character and is addressed at a broad readership in physics, computer science, chemistry, and electrical engineering. It is written by the world-leading experts in pertinent fields such as quantum computing, atomic, molecular and optical physics, condensed matter physics, and statistical physics.

A quantum origin of life? -- Quantum mechanics and emergence -- Quantum coherence and the search for the first replicator -- Ultrafast quantum dynamics in photosynthesis -- Modelling quantum decoherence in biomolecules -- Molecular evolution -- Memory depends on the cytoskeleton, but is it quantum? -- Quantum metabolism and allometric scaling relations in biology -- Spectroscopy of the genetic code -- Towards understanding the origin of genetic languages -- Can arbitrary quantum systems undergo self-replication? -- A semi-quantum version of the game of life -- Evolutionary stability in quantum games -- Quantum transmemetic intelligence -- Dreams versus reality : plenary debate session on quantum computing -- Plenary debate: quantum effects in biology : trivial or not? -- Nontrivial quantum effects in biology : a skeptical physicists' view -- That's life! : the geometry of p electron clouds.

This book gathers together a range of similar problems that can be encountered in different fields of modern quantum physics and that have common features with regard to multilevel quantum systems. The main motivation was to examine from a uniform standpoint various models and approaches that have been developed in atomic, molecular, condensed matter, chemical, laser and nuclear physics in various contexts. The book should help senior-level undergraduate, graduate students and researchers putting particular problems in these fields into a broader scientific context and thereby taking advantage of well-established techniques used in adjacent fields. This second edition has been expanded to include substantial new material (e.g. new sections on Dynamic Localization and on Euclidean Random Matrices and new chapters on Entanglement, Open Quantum Systems, and Coherence Protection). It is based on the author’s lectures at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, at the CNRS Aimé Cotton Laboratory, and on other courses he has given over the last two decades.

Recent work in quantum information science has produced a revolution in our understanding of quantum entanglement. Scientists now view entanglement as a physical resource with many important applications. These range from quantum computers, which would be able to compute exponentially faster than classical computers, to quantum cryptographic techniques, which could provide unbreakable codes for the transfer of secret information over public channels. These important advances in the study of quantum entanglement and information touch on deep foundational issues in both physics and philosophy. This interdisciplinary volume brings together fourteen of the world's leading physicists and philosophers of physics to address the most important developments and debates in this exciting area of research. It offers a broad spectrum of approaches to resolving deep foundational challenges - philosophical, mathematical, and physical - raised by quantum information, quantum processing, and entanglement. This book is ideal for historians, philosophers of science and physicists.

These three lectures cover a certain aspect of complexity and black holes, namely the relation to the second law of thermodynamics. The first lecture describes the meaning of quantum complexity, the analogy between entropy and complexity, and the second law of complexity. Lecture two reviews the connection between the second law of complexity and the interior of black holes. Prof. L. Susskind discusses how firewalls are related to periods of non-increasing complexity which typically only occur after an exponentially long time. The final lecture is about the thermodynamics of complexity, and “uncomplexity” as a resource for doing computational work. The author explains the remarkable power of “one clean qubit,” in both computational terms and in space-time terms. This book is intended for graduate students and researchers who want to take the first steps towards the mysteries of black holes and their complexity.

Entanglement was initially thought by some to be an oddity restricted to the realm of thought experiments. However, Bell’s inequality delimiting local - havior and the experimental demonstration of its violation more than 25 years ago made it entirely clear that non-local properties of pure quantum states are more than an intellectual curiosity. Entanglement and non-locality are now understood to ?gure prominently in the microphysical world, a realm into which technology is rapidly hurtling. Information theory is also increasingly recognized by physicists and philosophers as intimately related to the foun- tions of mechanics. The clearest indicator of this relationship is that between quantum information and entanglement. To some degree, a deep relationship between information and mechanics in the quantum context was already there to be seen upon the introduction by Max Born and Wolfgang Pauli of the idea that the essence of pure quantum states lies in their provision of probabilities regarding the behavior of quantum systems, via what has come to be known as the Born rule. The signi?cance of the relationship between mechanics and information became even clearer with Leo Szilard’s analysis of James Clerk Maxwell’s infamous demon thought experiment. Here, in addition to examining both entanglement and quantum infor- tion and their relationship, I endeavor to critically assess the in?uence of the study of these subjects on the interpretation of quantum theory.