Are You Learning Things From the Experiments?

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O levy: I would say that we are, a first of all, kind of developing a level of control right in the experiments. We can make things that look effectively like non local interactions by letting photons carry information very quickly from one atom to another. And so effectively, at the end of the day, what we have is what looks like the atoms interacting - even though they're a millimeter apart. That's our mechanism for generating what i would call sort of effectively non local interactions.

When it comes to thinking about quantum mechanics, there are levels. One level is shut-up-and-calculate: find a wave function, square it to get a probability. One level is foundational: dig deeply into the underlying ontology. But there’s a level in between, long neglected but recently coming to life. In this level you think about — or do experiments with — entangled quantum systems in the real world, putting entanglement to use. Monika Schleier-Smith is an experimental physicist specializing in cold atoms, which can be both entangled and manipulated. We discuss how to use such systems to study everything from metrology to quantum gravity.

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Monika Schleier-Smith received her Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is currently an Associate Professor of Physics at Stanford University. Among her awards are a MacArthur Fellowship, a Sloan Fellowship, and the I. I. Rabi Prize in Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics from the American Physical Society.

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