Fwd: From: Peggy Hui <[email protected]> Date: Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 3:54 PM Subject: Physics Department colloquia series
Physics Department Colloquia series TIME: 11am, Friday 4th February VENUE: E7B T5 SPEAKER: Professor Anthony Leggett, Nobel Laureate, University of Illinois. TITLE: Testing the limits of quantum mechanics : motivation,state of play,and prospects "I present the motivation for experiments which attempt to generate,and verify the existence of, quantum superpositions of two or more states which are by some reasonable criterion "macroscopically" distinct, and show that various a priori objections to this program made in the literature are flawed. I review the extent to which such experiments currently exist in the areas of free-space molecular diffraction, magnetic biomolecules, quantum optics and Josephson devices,and sketch possible future lines of development of the program." BIOGRAPHY: Sir Anthony J. Leggett is widely recognized as a world leader in the theory of low-temperature physics, and his pioneering work on superfluidity was recognized by the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences (foreign member), and is a Fellow of the Royal Society (U.K.), the American Physical Society, and the American Institute of Physics. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics (U.K.). He was knighted (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2004 "for services to physics." Professor Leggett has shaped the theoretical understanding of normal and superfluid helium liquids and other strongly coupled superfluids. He set directions for research in the quantum physics of macroscopic dissipative systems and use of condensed systems to test the foundations of quantum mechanics. His research interests lie mainly within the fields of theoretical condensed matter physics and the foundations of quantum mechanics. He has been particularly interested in the possibility of using special condensed-matter systems, such as Josephson devices, to test the validity of the extrapolation of the quantum formalism to the macroscopic level; this interest has led to a considerable amount of technical work on the application of quantum mechanics to collective variables and in particular on ways of incorporating dissipation into the calculations. He is also interested in the theory of superfluid liquid 3He, especially under extreme nonequilibrium conditions, in high-temperature superconductivity, and in the newly realized system of Bose-condensed atomic gases. -- Professor John Sutton Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia Email: [email protected] http://www.phil.mq.edu.au/staff/jsutton/ Phone: +61 (0)2 9850 4132 ASCS09: Proceedings of 9th conference, Australasian Society for Cognitive Science http://www.maccs.mq.edu.au/ascs09 Memory Studies (Sage journal): http://mss.sagepub.com/ _______________________________________________ SydPhil mailing list: http://sydphil.info 945 subscribers now served. To UNSUBSCRIBE, change your MEMBERSHIP OPTIONS, find ANSWERS TO COMMON PROBLEMS, or visit our ONLINE ARCHIVES, please go to the LIST INFORMATION PAGE: http://sydphil.info
