If Hamlet had been a system of noncommuting charges, his famous soliloquy may have gone like this… To thermalize, or not to thermalize, that is the question:Whether ’tis more natural for the ...
https://quantumfrontiers.com/2024/04/24/to-thermalize-or-not-to-thermalize-that-is-the-question/
Many people ask why I became a theoretical physicist. The answer runs through philosophy—which I thought, for years, I’d left behind in college. My formal relationship with philosophy origina...
Imagine a billiard ball bouncing around on a pool table. High-school level physics enables us to predict its motion until the end of time using simple equations for energy and momentum conservati...
https://quantumfrontiers.com/2024/03/24/my-experimental-adventures-in-quantum-thermodynamics/
Understanding a character’s origins enriches their narrative and motivates their actions. Take Batman as an example: without knowing his backstory, he appears merely as a billionaire who might ...
https://quantumfrontiers.com/2024/03/20/noncommuting-charges-are-much-like-batman/
Even if you don’t recognize the name, you probably recognize the saguaro cactus. It’s the archetype of the cactus, a column from which protrude arms bent at right angles like elbows. As my hu...
https://quantumfrontiers.com/2024/03/17/the-quantum-gold-rush/
Editor’s Note: This post was co-authored by Hsin-Yuan Huang (Robert) and Richard Kueng. John Preskill, Richard P. Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech, has been named the 2024 Jo...
https://quantumfrontiers.com/2024/02/19/a-classical-foreshadow-of-john-preskills-bell-prize/
My husband taught me how to pronounce the name of the city where I’d be presenting a talk late last July: Aveiro, Portugal. Having studied Spanish, I pronounced the name as Ah-VEH-roh, with a v...
https://quantumfrontiers.com/2024/02/18/the-rain-in-portugal/
This past summer, our quantum thermodynamics research group had the wonderful opportunity to visit the Dibner Rare Book Library in D.C. Located in a small corner of the Smithsonian National Mus...
https://quantumfrontiers.com/2024/02/06/discoveries-at-the-dibner/
Thermodynamics problems have surprisingly many similarities with fairy tales. For example, most of them begin with a familiar opening. In thermodynamics, the phrase “Consider an isolated box of...
https://quantumfrontiers.com/2024/01/31/the-noncommuting-charges-world-tour-part-1-of-4/
The most ingenious invention to surprise me at CERN was a box of chocolates. CERN is a multinational particle-physics collaboration. Based in Geneva, CERN is famous for having “the world’s la...
https://quantumfrontiers.com/2024/01/21/colliding-the-familiar-and-the-anti-familiar-at-cern/