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Anton Zeilinger
Of
Cats and Entanglement: From Schrödinger to Quantum Information.
Abstract:
In
his seminal paper published 1935 in Die Naturwissenschaften,
Erwin Schrödinger
both proposed his famous cat-paradox and coined the notion of
entanglement. Both turned out to be starting points for interesting
experimental research programs flourishing today. In the talk,
I will present recent results on quantum interference of macromolecules
and I will discuss the question from an experimentalist's point
of view: for how large and hot molecules one can expect to observe
quantum interference. I will also show how important the role
of entanglement is in various recent experiments, particularly
in quantum communication.
There,
verification of such phenomena as high fidelity teleportation
of entanglement and entanglement purification point into the
direction of possible long-distance quantum communication.
Biography:
Professor
Anton Zeilinger and his group - one of the world’s leading
experimental quantum physics research groups – have realized
in experiment many fundamental predictions of quantum theory
and so proved their amazing consequences for our view of the
world. These experimental realizations have also laid the foundation
for completely new forms of technology, such as fields like
quantum cryptography, quantum computation and quantum information
processing. Most recently it has led to a new understanding
of quantum mechanics.
His
group’s major current achievements include the world’s first
quantum teleportation (1997) and the first realization of quantum
cryptography based on quantum entanglement (1999). His work
is to a large extent an application of quantum entanglement,
the astonishing feature of quantum physics that Albert Einstein
had called “spooky action at a distance”.
The
group’s quantum interference experiments with "buckyball" molecules
in 1999 (whose shapes resemble the geodesic domes designed
by R. Buckminster Fuller), so far the largest objects to have
demonstrated quantum behavior, have attracted attention in
the scientific community. The investigation of quantum properties
with objects of increasing complexity extends the limit between
the quantum and the classical world.
Anton
Zeilinger, born 1945 in Austria, has held professorships at
Universities in Munich, Vienna, Innsbruck, Melbourne, at MIT
and the Collége de France. Among his many awards and prizes
are an Honorary Professorship at the University of Science
and Technology of China and the Senior Humboldt Fellow Prize
of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung. He is a member of the
German Order Pour le Mérite and of the Berlin-Brandenburg and
the Austrian Academies of Science. Currently, he is Director
of the Institute of Experimental Physics at the University
of Vienna.
Related Links:
Homepage:
http://www.quantum.univie.ac.at
Video
of his lecture (viewable
within HP only)
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