Yorkshire Philosophical Society

Event Information

Engineering Spookiness: entanglement, teleportation and the like
Dr Irene D’Amico, Dept of Physics, University of York

The well-travelled quantum engineers Alice and Bob arrive in York and experience the spooky world of quantum physics. They experience “superposition”, “entanglement” and “teleportation” – phenomena which, although weird, can be used in quantum engineering to do very useful tasks.
Dr Irene D’Amico will guide you through the strange situations that Alice and Bob encounter, including York’s quantum gardens and quantum pubs.

Report
by Carole Smith
In the everyday world measurements may be made without change or harm to the subject. In the quantum world even the act of looking represents measurement and has a random and unalterable effect on the particles observed. Particles in a quantum state are said to be entangled; each has multiple potential and measurement of one automatically fixes the state of the other. The application possibilities of this include encryption and cryptanalysis, which have security implications. The act of eavesdropping, for example, alters or destroys what is being observed (useful to governments and the military, as well as for personal privacy). Using entanglement and superposition, quantum computers may in the future be able to carry out an unimaginable number of functions simultaneously. Quantum teleportation offers the possibility of instantaneous transfer of properties of one quantum system (but not yet human beings) to another across distances, using entangled photons.