SEMINAR: The Action Principle: From Virgil's Aeneid to Quantum Walks

Variational principles have proven to be surprisingly fertile in physics. The principle of stationary action originally arising out of a derivation of optics and mechanics, remains central in modern physics being applied to fluid mechanics, the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, and even string theory. In this talk we take a walkthrough of the various extensions of the principle encompassing many fields of physics before arriving at a new extension into the realm of discrete time quantum walks that in their continuous limit match the Dirac equation from quantum field theory.