Quantum Entanglement: Spooky, Quirky, & Nobel Prize Worthy

Monday November 14th at 4pm in Olin 201. What makes the quantum world so bizarre and interesting? We will take a peek into the phenomenon of Quantum Entanglement -- strange correlations between particles that are not explainable in a classical world which can exist arbitrarily far distances apart. What was called "spooky action at a distance" by Einstein in 1947 was the focus of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Physics which honors Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger for their pioneering work experimenting and demonstrating the bizarre feature of quantum entanglement.

We will discuss why quantum is different, and along the way lay out some historical context and talk about the work done by the laureates. And it's not all austere, we will also see how entanglement can be used for some very powerful and cool things like quantum computing and quantum teleportation.

 

BIO: Ashmeet Singh is an Assistant Professor of Physics at Whitman College. He is a theoretical physicist whose work involves thinking about fundamental problems in quantum physics, and its broader impact in cosmology, gravity, and possible signatures in experiments. Before starting at Whitman, he was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in physics at Caltech and a Visiting Affiliate at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Ashmeet holds a PhD in Physics from Caltech where his doctoral work focussed on using ideas in foundational quantum mechanics to understand the emergence of space and time. He is also an amateur astronomer and astrophotographer who still hasn't gotten over the shimmering Milky Way. Outside of physics, he greatly enjoys traveling/road tripping, particularly to National Parks and Forests, and indulging in Indian Classical Music.