Abstract: We discuss an information-theoretic approach to quantum phase and phase transitions, by exploring a relationship between the topological entanglement entropy and the irreducible many-body correlations. This relationship leads to a new type of topological entanglement entropy, which can be used to probe the symmetry-breaking properties hidden in the exact ground states of the symmetry-breaking orders. To use this new topological entanglement entropy for probing a quantum phase transition with symmetry-breaking, there is no need to know the symmetry or the symmetry-breaking order parameter.

About the Speaker: Bei Zeng received the B.Sc. degree in physics and mathematics and M.Sc. degree in physics from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2002 and 2004, respectively. She received the Ph.D. degree in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, in 2009. From Sept. 2009 to Aug. 2010, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) and the Department of Combinatorics & Optimization, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. In Sept. 2010, she joined the Department of Mathematics & Statistics, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, as an assistant professor.