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(Public Lecture) When nature entangles millions of particles: from quantum materials to black holes

(Public Lecture) When nature entangles millions of particles: from quantum materials to black holes
Date & Time
March 14, 2023 (Tuesday) | 4:30 - 5:30pm (HKT)
Venue
CPD - 3.28 (Central Podium Levels), Centennial Campus, HKU
Speaker
Professor Subir Sachdev
Herchel Smith Professor of Physics, Department of Physics, Harvard University

Public Lecture: When nature entangles millions of particles: from quantum materials to black holes
 
Entanglement is the strangest feature of quantum theory, often dubbed ''spooky action at a distance’’. Quantum entanglement can occur on a macroscopic scale with trillions of electrons, leading to "strange metals" and novel superconductors which can conduct electricity without resistance even at relatively high temperatures. Remarkably, related entanglement structures arise across the horizon of a black hole, and give rise to Hawking’s quantum paradox. This lecture will be designed to introduce these forefront topics in current physics research to a general audience.
 

Related link: https://quantummc.xyz/study-group/  

Professor Subir Sachdev

Speaker Professor Subir Sachdev

Herchel Smith Professor of Physics, Department of Physics, Harvard University

Subir Sachdev is Herchel Smith Professor of Physics at Harvard University specializing in condensed matter. He also holds a Distinguished Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. He obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1985. He was a Guggenheim Foundation fellow, and received the Apker Award from the American Physical Society. He was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 2014, and received the Lars Onsager Prize from the American Physical Society and the Dirac Medal from the ICTP in 2018. 
 
Sachdev's research describes the connection between physical properties of modern quantum materials and the nature of quantum entanglement in the many-particle wavefunction. Sachdev has made extensive contributions to the description of the diverse varieties of entangled states of quantum matter. These include states with topological order, with and without an energy gap to excitations, and critical states without quasiparticle excitations. Many of these contributions have been linked to experiments, especially to the rich phase diagrams of the high temperature superconductors. He is the author of the book Quantum Phase Transitions (Cambridge University Press, 1999). In recent years, he has applied the AdS/CFT correspondence to describe strongly interacting phases of quantum matter.