SEMINAR: Quantum gravity on a quantum computer?

Quantum information theoretic tools could be used to study the most basic physical phenomena. For example, measurements of quantum entanglement allow one, in principle, to detect curvature. If curvature can be expressed completely in terms of entanglement, this opens up the prospect that quantum gravity could be simulated on a quantum computer. Mathematical side results yield surprising answers to questions of the type famously described by Kac's as "Can one hear the shape of a drum?"

Achim Kempf is a professor in the Departments of Applied Mathematics and Physics at the University of Waterloo (near Toronto) in Canada. He studied physics in Germany, at the Universities of Heidelberg, Karlsruhe and Munich, obtaining his Ph.D. in 1993. From 1993 to 1998 he was a postdoc and a College Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. He then spent three years as an IFT postdoctoral fellow at the University of Florida until he joined the faculty at the University of Waterloo (UW) in 2001. He is an associate member of the Institute for Quantum Computing at UW and he is an affiliate member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Since 2004, he has held the Canada Research Chair for the Physics of Information.

Professor Kempf’s main research interest is the study of the interplay of information theory, quantum theory and general relativity. He showed that spacetime could be simultaneously continuous and discrete in the same way that information can be. His research interests also include inflationary cosmology as well as high temperature superconductors. He holds a patent related to data compression and has a patent on radar-related methods pending. He has also published in Mathematical Biology on the use of information theoretic methods in the study of the origin of life.