Carol Rifelj Faculty Lecture: Chris Herdman

Chris Herdman, Department of Physics, “Black Holes, Superfluids & Quantum Entanglement: How Information Shapes the Physical World”

 Quantum entanglement is one the most bizarre phenomena of the laws of quantum mechanics that govern the microscopic world. We now understand quantum entanglement to be a fundamental feature of how information is encoded in the physical world. In fact, entanglement is a physical resource that could be harnessed by a quantum mechanical computer to solve seemingly unsolvable problems. In this talk, I will discuss how our understanding of quantum entanglement has led to new insights into the nature of matter and space. First I will discuss how a black hole—a region of a space that nothing can escape—can be viewed as a two-dimensional hologram of the three dimensional space it seems to occupy. I will then present a study of entanglement in a phase of matter known as a “superfluid.” Ordinary helium becomes a superfluid when it is cooled to very low temperatures and displays strange features that are fundamentally due to its quantum nature. Finally, I will explain how entanglement leads to surprising parallels between these vastly different physical systems.