Purdue Quantum Theory Neighborhood Seminar

Logistics

Email list: We maintain an email list through Purdue's Listserv. To request to be added, please email quantum-theory-request at lists.purdue.edu.
Schedule: for the fall 2026 semester, the regular meeting time is Mondays, 1-2pm Eastern. For the 26-27 academic year, we aim to have external speakers approximately every two weeks, with internal speakers on the other weeks.
Location: Hall of Data Science and AI (DSAI) 1069 for Monday events. Most seminars will be in-person but some will be virtual. Please consult the calendar below. When we have virtual talks, we will arrange watch parties in this room (although you are of course welcome to watch over Zoom as well). Wednesday and Friday events will have variable location that will be communicated via the email list.
Zoom link: For security reasons, the Zoom link is only available to individuals who are on the email list.
Affiliated faculty: Saugata Basu, Claudio Chamon, Shawn Cui, Colleen Delaney, Tyler Ellison, Ananth Grama, Birgit Kaufmann, Ralph Kaufmann, Laimei Nie, Yuxiang Peng, Eric Samperton, Wojciech Szpankowski, Jukka Vayrynen, Wei Zhan, Ruizhe Zhang

Scope

More-or-less anything related to the theory of quantum mechanics is fair game, but we tend to be especially interested in mathematically rigorous research related to quantum computation, quantum information and quantum error correction, and adjacent matters in condensed matter theory. The current and past schedules should give the most direct sense of the topics of interest.

View past semester schedules

Fall 2026 Schedule

Date & Format	Speaker	Title
Monday 24 August 1-2pm IN-PERSON		Organizational meeting
Monday 31 August 1-2pm IN-PERSON	Ruizhe Zhang, Muhammad Salah Shatla, Ralph Razzouk	Quantum Theory Neighborhood Meeting We will have three 15 minute talks from Purdue speakers.
Labor Day is 9/7		NO TALK
Monday 14 August 1-2pm IN-PERSON	Internal speakers TBD	Quantum Theory Neighborhood Meeting We will have three 15 minute talks from Purdue speakers.
Monday 21 September 1-2pm IN-PERSON	Internal speakers TBD	Quantum Theory Neighborhood Meeting We will have three 15 minute talks from Purdue speakers.
Monday 28 September 1-2pm IN-PERSON	Victor Gurarie (UC Boulder)	TBA TBA
Monday 5 October 1-2pm IN-PERSON	Shiyu Zhou (Perimeter)	TBA TBA
Fall Break is 10/12 and 10/13		NO TALK
Monday 19 October 1-2pm IN-PERSON	Charles Stahl (Stanford)	TBA TBA
Monday 26 October 1-2pm IN-PERSON	Lin Lin (Caltech)	TBA TBA
Monday 2 November 1-2pm IN-PERSON	Internal speakers TBD	Quantum Theory Neighborhood Meeting We will have three 15 minute talks from Purdue speakers.
Monday 9 November 1-2pm IN-PERSON	Wilbur Shirley (UChicago)	TBA TBA
Monday 16 November 1-2pm IN-PERSON	Internal speakers TBD	Quantum Theory Neighborhood Meeting We will have three 15 minute talks from Purdue speakers.
Monday 23 November 10-11am VIRTUAL	Zishuo Zhao (Tsinghua)	Axiomatization of Levin-Wen wave function Levin-Wen model describes topological orders for a given unitary fusion category. An intrinsic characterization of the Levin-Wen ground-state wave functions without prior categorical symmetry nor Hamiltonian is a major open question. We answer this question in terms of six axioms on a family of wave functions associated with lattices in different scales. These conditions allow us to reconstruct the underlying unitary fusion category, and prove that the wave functions are the corresponding Levin-Wen ground states. By weakening some of the conditions, our approach provides a framework for studying lattice models before RG fixed points.
Monday 30 November 1-2pm IN-PERSON	Internal speakers TBD	Quantum Theory Neighborhood Meeting We will have three 15 minute talks from Purdue speakers.
Monday 7 December 1-2pm IN-PERSON	TBD	TBD