Quantum Foundations Podcast Conservation laws with Dr Chiara Marletto
10 snips
Jan 8, 2026 Dr. Chiara Marletto, a research fellow at Oxford, delves into the fascinating world of conservation laws in physics. She discusses how these laws have historically spurred theoretical breakthroughs and their critical role in thermodynamics. Marletto contrasts conservation principles with dynamics, emphasizing their utility in reasoning about future physics theories. She explores the implications in quantum mechanics and proposes novel experimental designs based on these principles, linking them to programmability in thermodynamics and the limits of quantum computing.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Conservation Laws Guide Theory Building
- Conservation laws act as general principles that guide and constrain possible dynamical laws.
- They can suggest new particles, constrain law forms, and re-derive effects like gravitational redshift.
Conservation Without Dynamics
- Constructor theory formulates conservation laws without relying on dynamics by forbidding certain tasks.
- It groups impossible forward/reverse tasks into equivalence classes that label conserved quantities.
Use Conservation To Test Hybrids
- When testing hybrid classical-quantum interactions, enforce conservation laws as constraints.
- Doing so often forces the 'classical' sector to be quantum or requires relaxing conservation assumptions.