Beecroft Building, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3PU
Professor Nicole Yunger Halpern, Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science
'Quantum steampunk: The physics of yesterday’s tomorrow'
Nicole Yunger Halpern
Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science (University of Maryland).
An event organised by The Oxford Quantum Information Society and Physics Society at the University of Oxford. The talk will be followed by a conversation in a pub nearby, to be confirmed on the day.
Abstract:
A genre of science fiction is coming to life at the intersection of quantum physics,
information science, and thermodynamics. Steampunk literature and film juxtapose
futuristic technologies with Victorian settings. Automata, dirigibles, and time
machines populate Sherlock Holmes’s London; the American Wild, Wild West; and
Meiji Japan. Outside of fiction, technology has advanced far beyond the steam
engine to quantum computers, which will be able to solve certain problems far
more quickly even than supercomputers can. Quantum computing has melded with
thermodynamics, which dates to the Victorian era, in an emerging field nicknamed
quantum steampunk. Can quantum phenomena benefit engines as they benefit
computation? How would a quantum engine, refrigerator, or battery look? What
fundamental insights can we gain by scrutinizing time’s arrow more and more
minutely? I will introduce this real-world science fiction.