VCQ Summer School 2024: Speakers
2024 Confirmed speakers
Sougato Bose (UCL London)
Testing Gravity with Entanglement
Sougato Bose is a Professor of Physics at UCL. After his PhD at Imperial College, he worked at Oxford and Caltech before coming back to London to take up a faculty position at UCL. He has worked on quantum information, quantum computation, quantum optics and quantum many-body physics. He has recently proposed a laboratory based scheme to probe the quantum nature of gravity using techniques from quantum computation. His awards include the 2008 IOP Maxwell Medal and Prize, an ERC Starting grant, as well as a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.
Clare Burrage (University of Nottingham)
Beyond the Standard Model
Georgi (Gia) Dvali (LMU Munich)
What is quantum gravity and how to test it?
General Relativity and quantum information
Nick Huggett (University of Illinois, Chicaco)
Nick Huggett (PhD Rutgers University, 1995) is an LAS Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago. His specialties are the philosophy of science and the philosophy of physics. His early publications concentrated on quantum field theory, and theories of space from antiquity to the present. In recent years he has been collaborating with Christian Wüthrich (University of Geneva) on a project on the philosophy of quantum gravity. He has written or edited six books and over 50 articles on these topics, including Out of Nowhere: the emergence of spacetime in theories of quantum gravity, due out from Oxford University Press in 2024.
“What can we learn from table top quantum gravity experiments?”
Recent work (to be studied at this school) proposes that the quantum nature of gravity can be demonstrated by ‘gravitationally induced entanglement’, but just what would we learn if such an experiment (or similar) were successfully carried out? I will discuss some different views on the question, and place the experiments in the context of some older experiments involving both quantum mechanics and gravity. (Based on my recent book with Niels Linnemann, and Mike Schneider, Quantum Gravity in the Laboratory?.)
Eduardo Martin Martinez (University of Waterloo)
Eduardo Martín-Martínez is a professor of Theoretical Physics specializing in the field of Relativistic Quantum Information (RQI), a fascinating intersection of quantum theory and general relativity. He is a faculty member of the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Waterloo and is affiliated with the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. His research focuses on understanding the quantum aspects of spacetime and gravity, exploring how information theory can be integrated with the fundamental principles of modern physics.
Concepts of General Relativity
We will explore the elegant framework that reshaped our understanding of gravity and the large-scale structure of the cosmos. Let us dive into the groundbreaking theories of Albert Einstein, exploring how spacetime curvature governs the motion of planets, light, and even black holes. Let us unravel the mathematical beauty behind the framework of General Relativity in as much as one can in relatively small amount of (proper) time.
Tracy Northup (University of Innsbruck)
Tracy Northup is a professor of experimental physics at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Her research explores quantum interfaces between light and matter, focusing on trapped-ion and cavity-based interfaces for quantum networks and quantum optomechanics. She received her PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 2008 and then held an appointment as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Innsbruck, where she was the recipient of a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship and an Elise Richter Fellowship. She became an assistant professor at the University of Innsbruck in 2015 and has been a full professor since 2017; she held an Ingeborg Hochmair Professorship from 2017 to 2022. In 2016, she received the START Prize, the highest Austrian award for young scientists, from the Austrian Science Fund.
Experimental Quantum Information
We will examine a handful of examples of state-of-the-art quantum information experiments. The aim of these examples is to build on the concepts of the theoretical lectures and to provide a bridge to the tests that will be discussed later in the week. Specifically, we will focus on what can be measured in the laboratory and which aspects are most challenging.
Christopher Overstreet (John Hopkins University)
Chris Overstreet is an assistant professor of physics at Johns Hopkins University. His research interests are centered on using atomic, molecular, and optical systems to gain insight into fundamental physics. He received his PhD from Stanford University in 2020 and was a Bloch postdoctoral fellow at Stanford from 2021 to 2023.
Testing Gravity with Atoms
Precise measurements of atomic, molecular, and optical systems are opening a new experimental window into fundamental physics. The high sensitivity of light-pulse atom interferometry, which uses lasers to separate and interfere atomic wave packets, makes it particularly well-suited for such measurements. In this talk, I will discuss three experiments performed with the 10 meter atom interferometer at Stanford: a test of the equivalence principle, an observation of a quantum system in curved spacetime, and a measurement of a gravitational Aharonov-Bohm effect. I will also describe prospects for improved tests of gravity in next-generation experiments.
Anna Sanpera (ICREA & Universitat Autònoma Barcelona)
Concepts of Quantum Information
Hendrik Ulbricht (University of Southampton)
Hendrik is Professor of Physics. He obtained his undergraduate degree in physics (Dipl.-Phys.) from the Technical University at Berlin (Germany) and the Albert Einstein Institute (Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, Golm) in 2000 with a theoretical work on Black Hole Thermodynamics. He graduated with a PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) from the Free University of Berlin and the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society (Germany) in 2003 with a work on experimental surface science in the group of Nobel Laureate Gerhard Ertl (NP in Chemistry 2007). After a postdoc position at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, US on a Max Kade fellowship and as senior postdoc at the University of Vienna (Austria), he joined the School of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Southampton in 2008 as a Reader and was promoted a personal chair in 2014. He leads the Macroscopic Quantum System and Gravity research group.
Large-mass quantum systems
I will discuss some of the recently popular proposals for testing quantum mechanics and gravity by experiments with massive quantum systems in the laboratory. I will showcase some of the models describing wavefunction collapse and the role which gravity as well as noise might have in this. I will work out what features experiments must possess to allow for testing physics according to these models and finally review the state of play for actual experimental tests. My first lecture will focus on Theory & Ideas and my second lecture will focus on Experiments.