Please join us for coffee and cookies in the kitchen of Hill 705
at
11:45am before seminars
SPECIAL SEMINAR Speaker: Daniel Victor Tausk, University of San Paolo, Brazil
Date/Time/Place: Tuesday, May 5, 2009, 12:00pm, Hill
705
Title: What has the "experimental test of non local realism" really tested?
Abstract: More than 40 years after it's discovery,
Bell's theorem is still not understood by a substantial number of
physicists. The amazing discovery by John Bell that correlations
predicted by Quantum Theory for certain experimental setups imply
violation of local causality (i.e., the hypothesis that no interaction
is possible between events at spacelike separation) is often
misrepresented as a statement that locality is incompatible with
"hidden variables", "determinism", or with a more elusive hypothesis
called "realism". Such misunderstandings of Bell's theorem lead
Groeblacher et. al to perform an experiment whose result was published
(Nature 446, 2007, p. 871--875) under the provocative title "An
experimental test of non-local realism". The experiment shows that
(just as predicted by Quantum Theory), Leggett's inequality is
violated. In this talk, I explain what exactly is the assumption
necessary for the deduction of Leggett's inequality, thus making clear
exactly what assumption has been proven wrong by the experimental
confirmation of its violation.
SPECIAL SEMINAR Speaker: Angelo Bassi, University of Trieste, Italy
Date/Time/Place: Monday, May 18, 2009 - 12:00pm, Hill - Room 705
Title: Recent developments in models of
spontaneous wave function collapse
Abstract: We discuss recent developments in models
of spontaneous wave function
collapse, regarding the inclusion of dissipative and non-markovian
terms in the dynamics. These terms modify the physical predictions,
thus the scales at which collapse models can be tested against
standard quantum mechanics. In this connection, we discuss a recent
collaboration with the LNF-INFN
group in Frascati, aiming at devising a dedicated experiment testing
collapse models' predictions.
We finally speculate on the origin of the random field responsible for
the collapse of the wave function, its connection with a cosmological
field, and on the hypothesis that collapse models are phenomenological
models emerging from a yet-to-be discovered pre-quantum theory.