Yoram Alhassid asked the question at the end of my Yale Quantum Institute colloquium last February. I knew two facts about Yoram: (1) He belongs to Yale’s theoretical-physics faculty. (2) His PhD thesis’s title—“On the Information Theoretic Approach to Nuclear Reactions”—ranks among my three favorit...
science - 3 weeks ago
You would hardly think that a quantum channel could have any sort of thermodynamic behavior. We were surprised, too. How do the laws of thermodynamics apply in the quantum regime? Thanks to novel idea...
Some research topics, says conventional wisdom, a physics PhD student shouldn’t touch with an iron-tipped medieval lance: sinkholes in the foundations of quantum theory. Problems so hard, you’d have a...
This post follows, more or less, the content of a talk I gave at the BBVA Fundation in Madrid in April 2019. You can see the video (in Spanish, with English captions provided by YouTube’s Autot...
Two things you should know about me are: (1) I have unbounded admiration for scientists who can actually finish writing a book, and (2) I’m a firm believer that exciting progress can be ignited...
Call me morbid, but, the moment I arrived at Yale, I couldn’t wait to visit the graveyard. I visited campus last February, to present the Yale Quantum Institute (YQI) Colloquium. The YQI occupies a building whose stone exterior honors Yale’s Gothic architecture and whose sleekness defies it. The YQI...
