physics

Matthias Troyer

Matthias Troyer is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Matthias Troyer rather than just read about it. In short: Matthias Troyer (born 1968) is an Austrian physicist and computer scientist specializing in quantum computing. He is also Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President of Quantum at Microsoft.

Key takeaways

Matthias Troyer belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Matthias Troyer to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Matthias Troyer from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Matthias Troyer (born 1968) is an Austrian physicist and computer scientist specializing in quantum computing. He is also Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President of Quantum at Microsoft.

Education and career Troyer was born April 18, 1968, in Linz, Austria. He completed University Studies in Technical Physics at the Johannes Kepler Universität Linz, Austria, in 1991 as well as Diploma in Physics and Interdisciplinary PhD thesis at the ETH Zürich Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich in 1994. His PhD on "Simulation of Constrained Fermions in Low-Dimensional Systems" was completed under Diethelm Wurtz and Thomas Maurice Rice, earning the ETH medal for outstanding doctoral thesis Following earning his PhD he spent three years as a fellow of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Sciences at the Institute for Solid State Physics. In 2000, he was awarded an assistant professorship of the Swiss National Science Foundation. In June 2002 he became associate professor at the ETH Zurich and in 2005 Full Professor of Computational Physics before joining Microsoft's quantum computing program in 2017. He is also an Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington. He initiated the open-source project ALPS (Algorithms and Libraries for Physics Simulations), to make algorithms in many-body systems accessible to the scientific public. Troyer develops practical algorithms and applications for quantum computing with high performance computing, including library design, simulations of quantum devices, chemical reactions, neural networks and AI. He also studies simulation algorithms for quantum many body systems, quantum phase transitions, strongly correlated materials, and ultracold quantum gases.

Honors and awards In 2019, Troyer received the Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics. In 2015, he was awarded the Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics of the American Physical Society for pioneering work in several seemingly inaccessible areas of the quantum mechanical many-body problem and for making efficient, sophisticated computer programs accessible to the scientific community. Troyer has been a Fellow of the American Physical Society since 2011. He is also the president of the Aspen Center for Physics and has been a member since 2004. He is also a board member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences. Troyer received the gold medal at the International Chemistry Olympiad in 1986 and the silver medal in 1985.

Selected work Matthias Troyer and Uwe-Jens Wiese. "Computational complexity and fundamental limitations to fermionic simulations." Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 170201 (2005). Philipp Werner, Armin Comanac, Luca de' Medici, Matthias Troyer, and Andrew J. Millis. "Continuous-Time Solver for Quantum Impurity Models." Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 076405 (2006) Emanuel Gull, Andrew J. Millis, Alexander I. Lichtenstein, Alexey N. Rubtsov, Matthias Troyer, and Philipp Werner. "Continuous-time Monte Carlo methods for quantum impurity models." Phys. Rev. Mod. Phys. 83, 349 (2011). Troels F. Rønnow, Zhihui Wang, Joshua Job, Sergio Boixo, Sergei V. Isakov, David Wecker, John M. Martinis, Daniel A. Lidar, Matthias Troyer. "Defining and detecting quantum speedup." Science 345, 420 (2014) Bettina Heim, Troels F. Rønnow, Sergei V. Isakov, and Matthias Troyer. "Quantum versus Classical Annealing of Ising Spin Glasses." Science 348, 215 (2015) A.A. Soluyanov, D. Gresch, Z. Wang, Q.S., Wu, M. Troyer, Xi Dai, and B. A. Bernevig. "A new type of Weyl semimetal." Nature 527, 495 (2015) Giuseppe Carleo, Matthias Troyer. "Solving the Quantum Many-Body Problem with Artificial Neural Networks." Science 355, 580 (2017) Giacomo Torlai, Guglielmo Mazzola, Juan Carrasquilla, Matthias Troyer, Roger Melko & Giuseppe Carleo. "Neural-network quantum state tomography." Nature Physics 14, 447–450 (2018) Torsten Hoefler, Thomas Häner, and Matthias Troyer. "Disentangling Hype from Practicality: On Realistically Achieving Quantum Advantage." Communications of the ACM 66, 5, 82-87 (2023)

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Matthias Troyer

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Matthias Troyer claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Matthias Troyer before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Matthias Troyer ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Matthias Troyer

In research: Matthias Troyer appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Matthias Troyer in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Matthias Troyer is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1968 births, Academic staff of ETH Zurich, Austrian physicists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Matthias Troyer outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Matthias Troyer in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Matthias Troyer means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Matthias Troyer out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Matthias Troyer in simple terms?

Matthias Troyer (born 1968) is an Austrian physicist and computer scientist specializing in quantum computing. He is also Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President of Quantum at Microsoft.

Why does Matthias Troyer matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Matthias Troyer?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Matthias Troyer.