Hello!

I'm Victor Drouin-Touchette, a Research Coordinator at the Université de Sherbrooke in Québec, Canada. I am also a Junior Trainer at PASQAL. My research focus is on the development of new algorithms to tackle industry-relevant optimization problems using analog neutral atoms quantum computers. More broadly, I also dip into the issue of quantum simulations of frustrated spin systems, as the insight gained there helps further understand capabilities of current quantum computers. If this is interesting to you, contact me, I am always looking for new and inventive collaborators.

Prior to this position, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher in Prof. Ananda Roy's group at Rutgers University, with a focus on applying many-body perspectives to quantum computing. Some of my work was on a quantum Monte-Carlo approach to the toric code and the study of frustrated spin systems via adiabatic quantum computing.

I obtained my Ph.D. in theoretical condensed matter physics in July 2022 at Rutgers University under the supervision of Prof. Piers Coleman . During my studies, I worked on analytical and numerical approaches of competing phases in many-body physics.

From 2013 to 2016, I was an undergraduate student in physics and mathematics at the Université de Montréal. During that time, I was also a research intern at University of Waterloo and at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in frustrated magnetism.

Research

My thesis research in theoretical condensed matter physics focused on analytical and numerical approaches to strongly correlated phenomena. The main thrust of my thesis was devoted to the study of electron correlations in iron-based superconductors, as driven by the local physics of the iron atoms, leading to further understanding of how the development of quantum entanglement within multiorbital systems could lead to electron pairing. A complementary component to my research covered the study of hidden order in the context of classical statistical mechanics. This involved the study of coupled XY models, used to describe the melting of nematic liquid crystals. These studies lead to the proposal of confinement of fractional vortices, while also explaining an enduring experimental puzzle. The image above is a visualization by the popular AI Dall-E of the title of my Ph.D. thesis, Emergent Quantum and Classical Phases from Competing Interactions.

I have now turned my attention to the fascinating topics of quantum information and quantum computing. In particular, I explore the links between the study and simulation of many-body entangled states and optimization problems in operations research. These may seem like disjoint research areas, but there has been significant advances recently in solving NP-hard optimization problems using quantum computers, and in particular quantum annealers. My focus is then on finding a way to bridge the gap between the constrained optimization problems that operations research is faced with and the current capabilities of analog quantum computers. Naturally, part of my work is also on the quantum simulation of spin, bosonic or fermionic systems, as progress in that area of research is intimately related to better performance of the quantum hardware and algorithms.

Quantum Computing

You can find some information about quantum computing projects I have done on this link.

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Publications

A sample of my publications is shown below.

  • Victor Drouin-Touchette, The Kosterlitz-Thouless phase transition: an introduction for the intrepid student, arxiv:2207.13748
  • Victor Drouin-Touchette, Elio J. König, Yashar Komijani, and Piers Coleman, Interplay of charge and spin fluctuations in a Hund’s coupled impurity, arxiv:2203:05172
  • Victor Drouin-Touchette, Peter P. Orth, Piers Coleman, Premala Chandra, and Tom C. Lubensky, Emergent Potts Order in a Coupled Hexatic-Nematic XY Model, Physical Review X 12 (2022) 011043
  • Xiaoran Liu, Sobhit Singh, Victor Drouin-Touchette, T. Asaba, Jess H. Brewer, Qinghua Zhang, Yanwei Cao, B. Pal, S. Middey, P. S. Anil Kumar, M. Kareev, Lin Gu, D. D. Sarma, P. Shafer, E. Arenholz, J. W. Freeland, Lu Li, David Vanderbilt, and Jak Chakhalian, Proximate Quantum Spin Liquid on Designer Lattice, Nano Letters 21, no. 5 (2021): 2010-2017

You can find a full list of my publications on Google Scholar .

Curriculum Vitae

I am currently a Research Coordinator at the Université de Sherbrooke and a Junior Trainer at PASQAL.

For a PDF version of my CV, click here .

Pour une version en français, voir ici .