[PhilPhys] Warsaw Spacetime Colloquium: Nick Huggett (8 April on Zoom)

[Antonio Vassallo]

(With apologies for cross-posting)

On Friday, 8 April, Nick Huggett (University of Illinois Chicago) will give
a talk titled "Gravity meets the Quantum in the Laboratory" (abstract
below).

The meeting will be online on Zoom (17:00-19:00 CEST). If you have not
registered yet, you can do so here <https://forms.gle/qpb8vVjtrF4y2nZ76>.

The Colloquium is organized by the Philosophy of Physics Group
<https://ans.pw.edu.pl/Nauka/Zespoly-badawcze/Philosophy-of-Physics-Group>
at the Faculty of Administration and Social Sciences, Warsaw University of
Technology. The program for this semester is here
<https://ans.pw.edu.pl/Nauka/Zespoly-badawcze/Philosophy-of-Physics-Group/Events/Warsaw-Spacetime-Colloquium-2021-2022-online>.
The videos of the previous meetings are available on YouTube
<https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM-1yNCyvJJC0KUgEqXTsFA38luoSiqXo>.

You can address any inquiry to antonio.vassallo at pw.edu.pl.

ABSTRACT
The characteristic – Planck – energy scale of quantum gravity is utterly
beyond current technology, making experimental access to the relevant
physics apparently impossible. Nevertheless, low energy experiments linking
gravity and the quantum have been undertaken: the Page and Geilker quantum
Cavendish experiment, and the Colella-Overhauser-Werner neutron
interferometry experiment, say. However, neither probes states in which
gravity remains in a coherent quantum superposition – unlike recent
proposals that have created considerable interest among physicists. In
essence, if two initially unentangled systems interacting solely via
gravity become entangled, then, according to a simple theorem of quantum
mechanics, gravity must quantum. Clearly there are formidable challenges to
creating such a system, but remarkably, tabletop technology into the
gravitational fields of very small bodies has advanced to the point that
such an experiment might be feasible in the next several years. In this
talk I will explain the proposal and what it aims to show, highlighting the
important ways in which it is theory-laden. (Drawn from joint work with
Niels Linnemann and Mike Schneider.)
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