Twenty-seventh Erwin Schrödinger Lecture
Professor Serge Haroche, Chair in Quantum Physics and Director of the Collège de France, Paris and 2012 Nobel Laureate in Physics
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Abstract
Quantum theory has allowed scientists to understand better the subatomic world, and led to revolutionary technologies including computers, lasers and atomic clocks. In spite of its successes, quantum physics can seem strange and counterintuitive. It describes a world in which the concepts of waves and particles are deeply intertwined; and has led to the bizarre notions of superposition, which allows particles to exist in many concurrent states until observed, and entanglement, whereby particles control the state of distant and seemingly unconnected partners within a system.
Recent technological advances have allowed us to control and observe isolated quantum systems such as atoms, molecules, photons or superconducting microchips. Beyond fuelling a fundamental interest in their quantum behaviour, these advances open fascinating perspectives for new applications in which quantum strangeness could be directly harnessed to achieve tasks that are impossible with classical physics.
About the speaker
Serge Haroche is Chair in Quantum Physics and Director of the Collège de France, Paris. In 2012 he was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in recognition of his work to control and observe the fundamental particles of light and matter without destroying them.
He received his doctorate from Paris VI University, France, in 1971, where he returned in 1975 as Professor after a short post-doctoral position at Stanford University, USA. He was appointed Professor at Collège de France in 2001 and became its Director in 2012.
Professor Haroche has held positions at the prestigious École Polytechnique in Paris, and Harvard and Yale Universities, USA, and has won many international prizes in physics. He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences and a Foreign Member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States. He maintains an active research career, running a five year advanced research grant from the European Research Council (ERC).
Erwin Schrödinger
The Erwin Schrödinger Lecture is anannual event, held at Imperial College London, named after the noted Austrian scientist. Schrödinger was a theoretical physicist and a significant contributor to the wave theory of matter, a form of quantum physics. He mathematically devised an equation of wave mechanics that bears his name. He was a co-recipient of the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics. Today he is popularly known for the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat.