Quantum-Classical Transition in Many-Body Systems: Indistinguishability, Interference and Interactions

Workshop Report

The international workshop "Quantum-classical transition in many-body systems: Indistinguishability, interference and interactions" took place at MPIPKS during Feb. 13-17. In terms of our initial objective- to open an space for communication and interactions between several different communities that deal with various aspects of the quantum-classical transition in many-body systems- the meeting was highly successful. The conference was very intensive and roughly organized in blocs of talks, dealing with the following specific aspects: - Multiparticle correlations in non-interacting many-body scattering: In this area we have the opportunity to hear the state of the art in the experimental implementation of photonic circuits with many-body states and its relevance in the context of a proposed realization of Quantum supremacy (the BosonSampling problem) and its certification. Several applications and extensions of suppression laws for many-body scattering through networks were also presented. - Exciton transport in complex networks: During the meeting, we enjoyed talks from world-leading experts in the experimental and theoretical study of quantum effects in the transport of excitations through biomolecular complexes, with emphasis in the effects of decoherence, dissipation and disorder. - Interplay between single-particle and many-body effects in the properties of cold atom systems in the mesoscopic and macroscopic domain. A major theme during the conference was the emergence of local equilibration due to interactions in many-body systems, a problem where several timely discoveries ply a role, like many-body localization, path interference in Fock space and the quantum signatures of mean-field solitons. The strongly inter-disciplinary character of the conference was very well received by all participants, and the general opinion was that the subjects and the speakers well appropriate for the task of presenting the sometimes rather technical concepts and results in an accessible manner fro people from different communities. We are happy to mention that a good half of the talks were given by young scientists, showing the healthy state of the communities working on the different aspects of the quantum-classical transition and its interplay with many-body interference. The poster sessions were lively and in general, the mood was that of open mindedness and readiness to discuss the implications of the new results in the broad context of many-body interference.