Josh Pilipovsky Research Extra Credit

Here, There, and Everywhere: The Next Quantum Leap

1. Where is the speaker from and what is his/her area of expertise (which you get from the

speakers introduction)?

The four speakers in this talk were Eleanor Rieffel, Seth Lloyd, Daniel Gottesman, and Artur

Ekert, all physicists ranging from specialties in quantum cryptography to quantum teleportation.

They are all extremely distinguished in their fields and have made several contributions to the

ongoing fight for understanding this arcane quantum world.

(ii) Beyond simply rephrasing the title, what is the overarching scientific question the speaker

is trying to address?

The main point of this talk is to discuss the modern applications and the researchers works of in

different fields in physics. Also, in the beginning, they discuss 4 main quantum elements:

Superposition, entanglement, coherence and decoherence, and measurements on quantum

systems.

(iii) Where does the data come from or how is it acquired?

In this case, data is trivial because it is just an informative talk on the modern developments.

(iv) What makes this particular work complex or what difficulties did the speaker encounter in

doing the work?

The mere fact that the researchers are dealing with the quantum world greatly makes everything

that they do harder. Despite this, they have made several advances in their fields. For example,

Seth Lloyd explained the power of quantum teleportation and how it can send instantaneous

signals for information. He also mentioned that this teleportation has already been done with

photons over quite a bit of distances.

(v) What does the speaker still not know about this area or what are the next steps in the

project?

All of these speakers have the knowledge that what they are doing can all be falsified if there is

another quantum theory that is made, specifically one that is compatible with Einstein’s theory of

relativity (quantum gravity). Regardless, they are making leaps to discover the underlying nature

of the microscopic world.

(vi) What was the most interesting aspect of the lecture?

To me, the most interesting part of the lecture was the talk on quantum teleportation because I’ve

always thought it to be the most fictitious idea that was in Star Trek. The whole essence of

quantum teleportation is that you take a pair of entangled states, doesn’t matter how many, and

you separate them. Since they are entangled, they still know where each other are because they

have the intrinsic property that if a measurement or something is done on one state, then because

of the spooky entangled world of QM, the fate of the second state is already laid out. Therefore,

if you, let’s say, make a measurement on one state, it will instantaneously make the same

measurement on the other state, hence the teleportation form one place to another.

(vii) What was the most confusing part of the lecture?

There weren’t many confusing parts in this lecture.

(viii) If you had a chance, what question would you ask the speaker?

I would ask the speaker to explain to me why we can teleport photons but not things with actual

mass as of yet.