Public Talk: From Imaginary Experiments to Quantum Information

Luis A. Orozco

Joint Quantum Institute • Department of Physics • University of Maryland

Supported by the Division of Laser Sciences of the American Physical Society

Quantum mechanics is one of the pillars of contemporary physics. Its development took almost thirty years and its consolidation, took as many years. In the middle of last century, new predictions appeared that enabled the invention of the transistor. This brought the first quantum revolution as the transistor facilitated the processing and storage of information.

The founders of quantum mechanics realized that its formulation implied new properties of nature that were far from intuitive: for example, a special class of correlations that we call entanglement. Control of individual atoms or electrons was not possible so physicists used imaginary (gedanken) experiments designed to prove principles and predictions of quantum mechanics in the microscopic world. This changed with the development of traps for electrons, atoms, and ions in the seventies and eighties. The trapped particles showed, a never before achieved, control of microscopic individual entities. The experimentalists were now capable of interrogating and observing one and the same particle for long periods of time.

From the thirties to the eighties the non-intuitive quantum properties were just a curiosity; however, in the nineties it became clear that these properties of quantum mechanics could be used in the area of information processing. Quantum information was born. We are learning to understand, measure, and use a new resource of nature: quantum entanglement. I will present some of the fascinating world of quantum mechanics and the second revolution that is happening now.