Event Details

Fundamental Tests of Physics and Simulations of Exponentially Complex Many-Body Systems

The physical universe is not an assembly of mechanical parts, as envisaged classically. Instead, quantum mechanics tells us that the universe is a many-body state, described by an exponentially large Hilbert space of enormous size. The standard model indicates what the components are: but what emerges when they evolve, dynamically, in time? In this colloquium, I will give results of first-principles quantum simulations of many-body systems and relate these to fundamental tests.These will include accurate, experimentally tested quantum dynamical simulations of the world's most coherent Bose-Einstein atom interferometer. These simulations are fully quantum mechanical. They include both thermal and quantum noise, as well as linear and nonlinear collisional losses, in one, two and three space dimensions. Experiments that verify the theory were carried out at Swinburne University. Evidence is obtained for genuine entanglement and steering of up to 40,000 atoms.Methods to simulate novel technologies will include: opto-mechanical entanglement, quantum memories for 'on-demand' Schrodinger Cats, and mesoscopic bright solitons in ultra-cold gases. Entanglement predictions were confirmed in electro-optic experiments at JILA. The soliton experiments underway at Rice University using 7Li. I will also treat a proposal to simulate the early universe using an ultra-cold atomic laboratory model of the quantum fluctuations in the 'Big Bang'.Who needs a ship in a bottle, when you can have a universe on table-top?