The physicist who successfully demonstrated quantum entanglement, a defining moment in modern physics, will give a free public lecture at the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo this Thursday.
Professor Alain Aspect from Institut d'Optique in France is internationally recognized for performing a series of experiments in 1982 that demonstrated that one of the strangest predictions of quantum mechanics—quantum entanglement—was true. This discovery sparked the second quantum revolution and directly led to the birth of quantum information processing.
In the classical world as described by the physics discovered by Newton, Galileo, Maxwell and others, an object has either wave or a particle properties, but a quantum particle has both. This duality is at the heart of quantum information and shows that quantum mechanics is inherently different than classical physics. In Thursday's lecture, Professor Aspect will present and explain experiments using single photons that emphasize the counter-intuitiveness of quantum mechanics. He will receive an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Science at Waterloo the next day.
Quantum Frontiers Distinguished Lecture
Date: Thursday, October 23, 2014
Time: 4 - 5:00 p.m.
Location: Room 0101, Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre, University of Waterloo
