9–12 Apr 2018
Niels Bohr Institute
Europe/Copenhagen timezone

poster

This is the first meeting of our Simons Program for this spring, with meetings centered around the scientific interests of Simons Visiting Professor Charles Bennett. April 9-12 we are hosting a workshop on hot topics related to quantum information and cosmology.

The topics of the workshop include:

  • Emergence of classical phenomenology from quantum laws via decoherence (the "quantum Darwinism" or "spam" paradigm), which seems to require thermodynamic disequilibrium, but could perhaps occur without it.
  • Emergence of complex structures via fault tolerant error-correction and self-organization, again also seemingly requiring thermal disequilibrium, but perhaps possible without it
  • How to avoid the Boltzmann brain problem, which seems to plague cosmologies that equilibrate at nonzero temperature, either by finding a way to produce structures sufficiently organized to be anthropic observers even at equilibrium, or by finding  plausible cosmologies with a plentiful supply of disequilibrated places.
  • How to think about the experiences of an observer (Wigner's friend) within an unobserved superposition, which has become more than a philosophical conundrum because of its bearing on the Boltzmann brain problem.
  • How these problems might be complicated or mitigated by a mechanism for quantum emergence of spacetime.

The workshop is open, but participation is subject to invitation from the organizers. If you wish to participate, please send a mail to Anette Studsgaard (studsgaard@nbi.ku.dk).

 

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Europe/Copenhagen
Niels Bohr Institute
Auditorium A
Blegdamsvej 17 DK-2100 Copenhagen