Entanglement and the Second Quantum Revolution with Duncan Haldane, Princeton University

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Published 2022-08-03

Since the laws of quantum mechanics were discovered almost 100 years ago, they have remained unchanged and passed all tests. They describe accurately the micro-world of atoms but remain enigmatic in their implications for our everyday world. In early years, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle was taken to be the most remarkable feature of quantum mechanics, but the property of "entanglement", which Einstein identified as its most paradoxical feature, has recently come to be seen as central.

While Einstein felt that the implications of entanglement were so strange that quantum mechanics could not be the fundamental description of nature, it has passed all experimental tests. In combination with the development of modern quantum information theory, it is at the heart of what some are calling the "second quantum revolution," in which entanglement over distances larger than atomic sizes is viewed as the "fuel" that will drive future "quantum information processors" much more powerful than today's computers.