Abstract
Long-range “entanglement” was initially pointed out by Einstein (who called it “spooky action at a distance”) as a strange property predicted by quantum mechanics that he felt was so contrary to common sense that experiments to test it would surely undermine the quantum theory. But when experimental tests eventually became possible, quantum mechanics was vindicated. In recent years, it has been realized that, instead of merely being an abstract and obscure philosophical issue in the interpretation of the quantum theory, entanglement is in fact perhaps its central feature, and in particular, plays an important role in the new “topological (quantum) states of matter” which have unexpected properties that have given rise to much recent excitement in condensed matter physics. In this lecture, the speaker will describe some examples of this that were featured in the 2016 Nobel Prize and how ideas from quantum information theory and condensed matter physics have fruitfully joined together.
About the speaker
Prof Duncan Haldane received his BA in 1973 and PhD in 1978, both from the University of Cambridge. From 1977 to 1981, he was a physicist at Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, France. He then joined the University of Southern California in 1981 and moved the University of California at San Diego in 1987. In 1990, he joined the Princeton University and is currently the Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics.
Prof Haldane’s current research focuses on developing a new geometric description of the fractional quantum Hall effect that introduces the “shape” of the “composite boson”, described by a “unimodular” (determinant 1) spatial metric-tensor field as the fundamental collective degree of freedom of FQHE states.
Prof Haldane was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics, jointly with Prof David Thouless of the University of Washington and Prof Michael Kosterlitz of Brown University, for their theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter. Prof Haldane used the concepts of topology, a branch of mathematics to describe the different phases and transition of matter occurs. During the 1980s, he explained magnetic properties of chains of atoms in certain materials. In the future, these results may contribute to the development of new materials and electronic components.
Prof Haldane was elected a fellow of the Royal Society (1996); fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1992); fellow of the American Physical Society (1986); fellow of the Institute of Physics (1996); and fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2001). He was also awarded the Oliver E. Buckley Prize by the American Physical Society (1993); the Lorentz Chair Award (2008); and the Dirac Medal (2012).
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