Dear all,
Hope you are doing well. This is to announce a special seminar next week, as well as two visitors to our group. Maximilian Lock and Veronika Baumann from The Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI), Vienna will be visiting us between the 15th to the 19th of May. We will have a talk by Maximilian Lock at 4pm on Wednesday the 17th of May, which can be attended in-person at HIT E41.1 as well as online via the zoom link: https://ethz.zoom.us/j/64206497803. The title and abstract for the talk are given below.
Title: Quantum measurements and equilibration: modelling the emergence of objectivity via entropy maximisation
Abstract: Textbook quantum physics features two types of dynamics: reversible unitary dynamics and irreversible measurements. The latter stands in conflict with the laws of thermodynamics and has evoked debate on what actually constitutes a measurement. With the help of modern quantum statistical mechanics, we take a first step in formalising the hypothesis that quantum measurements are instead driven by the natural tendency of closed systems to maximise entropy, a notion that we call the Measurement-Equilibration Hypothesis. In this paradigm, we investigate how objective measurement outcomes can emerge within an purely unitary framework, and find that: (i) the interactions used in standard measurement models fail to spontaneously feature emergent objectivity and (ii) while ideal projective measurements are impossible, we can (for a given form of interaction) approximate them exponentially well as we collect more physical systems together into an "observer system". We thus lay the groundwork for self-contained models of quantum measurement, and conclude by proposing some improvements to our simple scheme.
Hope to see you there! Best regards, Vilasini