Virtual Seminars

Identical quantum particles exhibit only two types of statistics: bosonic and fermionic. Theoretically, this restriction is commonly established through the symmetrization postulate or (anti)commutation constraints imposed on the algebra of creation and annihilation operators. The physical motivation for these axioms remains poorly understood, leading to various generalizations by modifying the mathematical formalism in somewhat arbitrary …

Borivoje Dakić
University of ViennaReconstruction of Quantum Particle Statistics: Bosons, Fermions, and Transtatistics Read More »

We will discuss an interpretation of physics named “potentiality realism”. This view, which can be applied to classical as well as to quantum physics, regards potentialities (i.e. intrinsic, objective propensities for individual events to obtain) as elements of reality, thereby complementing the actual values taken by physical variables. This allows one to naturally reconcile realism …

Flavio Del Santo
University of Geneva & Constructor UniversityPotentiality realism: Classical and quantum indeterminism Read More »

Following some observations of Howard Stein, I argue that, contrary to contemporary standard philosophical views of physical theories, one cannot understand the structure and nature of our knowledge in physics without an analysis of the way that observers (and, more generally, measuring instruments and experimental arrangements) are modeled in theory. One upshot is that standard …

Erik Curiel
Munich Center for Mathematical PhilosophySchematizing the Observer and the Epistemic Content of Theories Read More »

After ten years in science, wandering between quantum gravity and quantum foundations, I have entered l’Institut National du Service Public (ex-ENA) to pursue a career as top executive in the French administration. In this unusual talk, I will offer my personal take on the following questions: – Is there a life after academia? – What …

Pierre Martin-Dussaud
Institut National du Service PublicCan French Administration be more sexy than Quantum Gravity? Read More »

Modern physics has taught us that space and time are described by different “theories of geometry” in different regimes, from Galilean spacetime in Newtonian mechanics to semi-Riemannian manifolds in general relativity. In a very similar, but less well-known sense, classical probability theory and quantum theory (QT) are special cases in a large landscape of “theories …

Markus Müller
IQOQI Vienna How spacetime constrains the structure of quantum theory Read More »

Quantum mechanics is a theory of wave functions in Hilbert space. Many features that we generally take for granted when we use quantum mechanics — classical spacetime, locality, the system/environment split, collapse/branching, preferred observables, the Born rule for probabilities — should in principle be derivable from the basic ingredients of the quantum state and the …

Sean Carroll
Johns Hopkins UniversityExtracting the Universe from the Wave Function Read More »

In the standard Fock representation, the 1-photon Hilbert space is spanned by positive frequency, source-free solutions of Maxwell’s equations. The quantum information they carry corresponds precisely to the two radiative modes of the Maxwell fields.  However, this Fock representation is inadequate in a number of physical situations involving sources, and one then has to use appropriate non-Fock representations. …

Abhay Ashtekar
Pennsylvania State UniversityThe many faces of photons Read More »

It has been occasionally remarked, but insufficiently appreciated, that there are two distinct sorts of endeavour that have gone by the name of “thermodynamics”. The first, which is in line with how the founders of the subject thought of it, is a theory about how agents with limited means of manipulation and limited access to …

Wayne Myrvold
Western UniversityA Tale of Two Sciences, Both Called “Thermodynamics” Read More »

John Wheeler was the inventor of quantum gravity – not as a formal program for uniting general relativity and quantum mechanics, but as the potential key to a theory of everything. In this talk, I will show how he first imbued quantum gravity with this new role in the 1950s and then how (and why) …

Alexander Blum
Max Planck Institute for the History of ScienceJohn Wheeler and Quantum Gravity Read More »