Boston Chapter of the IEEE Photonics Society

Abstract:  The interplay between Einstein’s theory of gravity and quantum mechanics remains one of the main open questions in physics. Each of the theories has been confirmed individually, but phenomena described by the two usually take place at very different physical regimes. Nevertheless, gravity can affect quantum systems and some aspects of the interplay can be probed in experiments. In this talk, I will discuss a quantum version of the "twin paradox" in which a clock is brought in superposition of being at two different gravitational potentials. The effect leads to new and measurable consequences at the interplay between quantum theory and general relativity and causes decoherence of composite quantum systems. I will also discussed how these effects can be accessed in quantum interference experiments.

Biography:  Igor Pikovski is a postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He received his PhD in 2014 from the University of Vienna, where he worked on quantum optics and quantum foundations in the group of Caslav Brukner. Previously, he studied at the Free University of Berlin, Uppsala University in Sweden and at the University of California Santa Barbara. In 2014 Igor received the ITAMP postdoctoral fellowship and in 2016 he became a Branco Weiss Fellow. Igor’s main research interests are quantum optics, opto-mechanics and gravitational effects in low-energy quantum theory that can be accessed in experiments.