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In this talk I will discuss how we might go about about performing a Bell experiment in which humans are used to decide the settings at each end.  The radical possibility we wish to investigate is that, when humans are used to decide the settings (rather than various types of random number generators), we might then expect to see a violation of Quantum Theory in agreement with the relevant Bell inequality.  Such a result, while very unlikely, would be tremendously significant for our understanding of the world (and I will discuss some interpretations).  

Possible radical implications aside, performing an experiment like this would push the development of new technologies.  The biggest problem would be to get sufficiently high rates wherein there has been a human induced switch at each end before a signal as to the new value of the setting could be communicated to the other end and, at the same time, a photon pair is detected.   It looks like an experiment like this, while challenging, is just about feasible with current technologies.  

Trine State discrimation solution, Quantum Money, Computing classical functions, Black and White boxes, Reversible circuits and cleaning the 'garbage', Quantum Key Distribution, One-time pad, BB84 Protocol.

The fact that in physics concepts such as space, time, mass and energy are considered to be foundational has been conveniently serving a set of higher-level physical theories.

However, this keeps us from gaining a deeper understanding of such concepts which can in turn help us build a theory based on truly foundational concepts.

In this talk I introduce an alternate description of physical reality based on a simple foundational concept that there exist things that influence one another.

A network of objects that influence one another form a partially-ordered set (poset) that is called the influence network is considered. By consistently quantifying such a network with respect to a distinguished chain of events that is called an embedded observer, I demonstrate in relevant special cases that influence events can only be quantified by the familiar mathematics of space-time (Minkowski metric and Lorentz transformations), influence gives rise to basic concepts in Euclidean geometry such as direction, dimension and subspaces as well as the Pythagorean theorem, the dot product and geometrical figures. Thus a discrete version of some of the Euclidean geometry’s fundamental concepts is derived in this picture. Finally I talk about the concept of influence in quantum mechanics and how the case of a free particle is identical to the Feynman checkerboard problem for the electron which is known to give rise to the Dirac equation.

The study of thermodynamics in the quantum regime has in recent years experienced somewhat of a renaissance in our community. This excitement is fueled both by the fundamental nature of the subject as well as the potential for heat machines designed with quantum advantages. Here, I will suggest the study of quantum thermodynamics restricted to a Gaussian regime, with two primary goals in mind. The first is to understand just how restrictive Gaussian states and operations are in a thermodynamic context; as such operations are often the most easily implemented in the laboratory it is pertinent to understand what limitations they impose on us. The second is to use the computational simplicity of Gaussian quantum mechanics to examine thermodynamics under less ideal but more realistic assumptions, such as with finite bath sizes and time scales. We will present two works in this seminar, one focusing on each of these motivations.