> Electrical and Computer Engineering > Letter from the Chair > Distinguished Lectures Series 2007-2008 > David Wineland

David Wineland

"Quantum-mechanically Entangled Atoms and Raising Schrodinger's Cat"

Thursday, November 8, 2007, 3 p.m.
Sandford Fleming Building, Room 1105

Abstract: Already in 1935 Erwin Schrödinger knew that, when extended to the realm of our everyday experience, quantum theory permits rather bizarre situations. To illustrate his point, he introduced his well-known cat that can simultaneously be both dead and alive, correlated with the superposition states of a radioactive particle.

These days we can create situations that have the same attributes of this unfortunate cat, although so far only on the scale of a few atoms - a very small Schrödinger kitten. These experiments might be viewed simply as quantum parlor tricks, but we now see that they might actually be useful for something. For example, the entanglement generated in a system of trapped atomic ions can be used to enhance quantum limited-metrology or might eventually lead to a quantum computer, a mesoscopic realization of Schrödinger’s cat. Progress and future prospects in these areas will be briefly described.

Bio: DAVID WINELAND received a bachelor’s degree from Berkeley in 1965 and his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1970. After a postdoctoral appointment at the University of Washington, he joined NBS (now NIST), where he is the leader of the Ion-Storage Group (http://www.bldrdoc.gov/timefreq/ion) in the Time and Frequency Division at Boulder.

His research has concentrated on laser cooling and spectroscopy of trapped atomic ions with applications to atomic clocks, quantum-limited metrology, and quantum state control.

David Wineland

"Quantum-mechanically Entangled Atoms and Raising Schrodinger's Cat"Thursday, November 8, 2007, 3 p.m.Sandford Fleming Building, Room 1105

"Quantum-mechanically Entangled Atoms and Raising Schrodinger's Cat"

Thursday, November 8, 2007, 3 p.m.
Sandford Fleming Building, Room 1105