Date/Time
Date(s) - 09/04/2008
3:15 pm - 4:15 pm

Title: Charting the Shape of Hilbert Space: A Bit of Quantum Foundations at PI

Speaker: Dr. Christopher Fuchs

Institute: Perimeter Institute

Location: ABB 102

Description:

As physicists, we have become accustomed to the idea that a theory’s content is always most transparent when written in coordinate-free language. But sometimes the choice of a good coordinate system is very useful for settling deep conceptual issues. This is particularly so for an information theoretic or Bayesian approach to quantum foundations: One good coordinate system may (eventually!) be worth more than a hundred blue-in-the-face arguments. This talk will motivate and chronicle the search for one such coordinate system for the space of quantum states—the so-called Symmetric Informationally Complete Quantum Measurements—which has caught the attention of a handful of us at PI, a handful of our visitors, and a handful of other colleagues around the world. By golly it’s a tough problem, but it’s a fun problem too!