Mathematical Physics Research Group

The Mathematical Physics Research Group at Lebanon Valley College conducts interdisciplinary, collaborative research involving undergraduate students from mathematics, physics, and computer science.

In the last decade alone, faculty and students in the mathematical sciences have received almost three-quarters of a million dollars from the National Science Foundation, Arnold Experiential Grant Fund, and Lebanon Valley College. In addition to student-faculty research, these grants have supported student travel to conferences such as the Mathematical Association of America, where several students have presented. They supported research projects ranging from Symmetry, Entanglement, and Application to Structure and Local Equivalence of Stabilizers and States.

The group's current primary research area is quantum information science. To date, they have focused on questions surrounding the phenomenon of quantum entanglement.

Loosely speaking, entanglement is a property of physical systems on the submicroscopic scale that can be used to build computation and communication devices that will perform tasks that are not possible on today's most advanced supercomputers. The prospect of powerful applications motivates entanglement research.

Ongoing work of faculty principal investigators Dr. David Lyons (mathematics) and Dr. Scott Walck (physics) centers around the problems of classifying types of entangled states, understanding entanglement as a resource for quantum computation and communication, and exploring the information contained in subsystems of multiparty quantum systems. This project is currently supported by the National Science Foundation.