L. Filter, Nature Communications
The latest edition of the podcast is up -- and you may notice there's a bit of a quantum animal theme. Listen to it here.
First up, we talk to Andrew Jordan of Rochester University about recent experiments that allow you to track and steer Schrodinger's metaphorical cat (or in this case a superconducting "transmon") between life and death, while it is locked in a box. The technique could be used to create a new kind of quantum control.
Other animals featuring in the main podcast are quantum pigeons. FQXi member Jeff Tollaksen chats about his theoretical analysis that suggests that there is a new type of quantum correlation that's even spookier than those we've come to know and love. We're used to talking about quantum entanglement, which continues to link two or more particles that have been specially prepared together, no matter how far apart they are separated. But Tollaksen and his colleagues have calculated that quantum particles can become united without having to ever have been in contact. And he illustrates this by talking about vanishing pigeons!
Both of these items described by Jordan and Tollaksen are based on pioneering theoretical work on "weak measurements" in the 1960s by FQXi member Yakir Aharonov and colleagues. These allow experimenters to measure some properties of quantum systems, without destroying them. You can read more about that program in the article, "The Destiny of the Universe" by Julie Rehmeyer.
That research program has also lead to the idea that it is possible to create what Tollaksen dubs a "Quantum Cheshire Cat." Just as the cat in Alice in Wonderland managed to slowly vanish leaving behind a grin without a cat, physicists have recently carried out experiments in which a neutron has been separated from its properties. Tollaksen spoke to me about these tests too, and you can hear that as a podcast extra on the website, but note that it is not in the main podcast. (The image above, by Leon Filter, appears in the team's paper in Nature Communications. Thank you to Gina Parry for suggesting a forum post based on this piece of research.)
We have also included some non-animal items too. For cosmology fans, and those hankering for a resolution of the black hole information paradox, check out the interview with FQXi's Carlo Rovelli. His latest analysis with Hal Haggard, based on the theory of Loop Quantum Gravity, predicts that when black holes die, they explode into white holes, spewing all the matter that they swallowed back out again. If he and his colleague are correct, then astronomers may be able to pick up signs of such exploding black holes -- which would also be the first observational support for this model, or indeed any candidate theory of quantum gravity.
But it's not all smooth sailing. Keen podcast listeners may remember an interview from the June 2013 podcast with Jorge Pullin, who carried out a similar analysis also using loop quantum gravity, but got a different answer. Pullin argued that at the center of black holes you will find wormholes that fast track you to other parts of the universe. Listen to the podcast to find out what Rovelli has to say about the conflicting results.
And, if you enjoyed reading Sophie Hebden's profile of Noson Yanofsky and his work using category theory to study whether Occam's Razor is really mathematically valid, then you can also listen to her interview with him.
Anyway, please tune in and listen to all the latest weird and wonderful experiments and models. As Alice would say, things are getting curiouser and curiouser.