About:
This public lecture was part of the Mathematical Physics in Quantum Technology: From Finite to Infinite Dimensions workshop at ICMS.
About the talk:
This year's Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to John Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger "for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities, and pioneering quantum information science". This is no less than the experimental demonstration that all classical descriptions, narratives, and visualizations fail in the domain of microscopic physics. This lecture outlined the ideas leading up to this breakthrough and aimed to clarify frequent misunderstandings, often connected to the phrase "spooky action at a distance". It is remarkable that the recipients of the prize were far off the main stream in their time. This is also true of the theoreticians who did the conceptual groundwork: Einstein (as a quantum theorist), Bell and the founders of Quantum Information Theory. Repeatedly we see here developments that were started by a handful of exotic outsiders, and became integral parts of established Physics decades later. The lecture ended with some ideas of what made these outsiders special, and how we can help their modern unconventional colleagues to be heard.
About the speaker:
Reinhard F. Werner (he/him), Institut für Theoretische Physik, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany
Professor Werner has studied and taught physics at many instututes across Europe and North America, including the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies and the Technical University of Braunschweig. He is interested in the conceptual and mathematical foundations of quantum theory. Anything, in which the structure of quantum mechanics plays a non-trivial role, really. In recent years this has mostly been quantum information theory, but also quantum statistical mechanics and the theory of time in quantum mechanics. He likes problems which are conceptually interesting and allow an answer in the form of a non-trivial theorem. As a mathematical physicist he also tries to answer questions at their appropriate level of generality.