Thursday, Sep 23, 2021
Speaker: José Polo-Gomez, University of Waterloo
Place: The Cloud
Date: Thursday Sep 23nd
Time: 11am Central.
Date: Thursday Sep 23nd
Time: 11am Central.
Zoom Recording
Title: A detector-based measurement theory for quantum field theory
Abstract:
Abstract: Any physical theory needs to describe how observers gather information about the modelled systems, i.e., needs to describe measurements. In 1993, Rafael Sorkin pointed out that idealized measurements, as used in non-relativistic quantum mechanics, cannot be applied in relativistic quantum field theory, since the corresponding update leads to causality violations. This left quantum field theory without a measurement theory.
In this seminar, we will review the previous approaches to the problem, like the Fewster-Verch framework. Then, we will introduce particle detectors (like the Unruh-DeWitt detector) and review how they can be consistently used within QFT. After that, we will use them to propose a measurement theory for quantum fields, and to provide a relativistic analogue to the quantum mechanical Lüders update. Finally, we will argue that the measurement scheme along with the update rule that we propose have all the desirable characteristics of a proper measurement theory that can be applied to modeling measurements of relativistic quantum fields in experimental settings.
Bio
Jose is a PhD student at the University of Waterloo, working under the supervision of Prof. Eduardo Martin-Martinez on aspects of relativistic quantum information
