. . . To encourage the growth of any science, the best thing we can do is to meet together in its interest, to discuss its problems, to criticize each other's work and, best of all, to provide means by which the better portion of it may be made known to the world. . . .
Henry A. Rowland, the first president of the American Physical Society
Physics Colloquium
Title:
Physics Colloquium:"Testing the limits of quantum mechanics: motivation, state of play, prospects"
Speaker:
Professor Anthony J. Leggett, Physics Department, University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign
I will present the motivation for experiments which attempt to generate,and verify the existence of,quantum superpositions of two or more states which are by some reasonable criterion "macroscopically" distinct, and show that various "a priori" objections to this program made in the literature are flawed. I will review the extent to which such experiments currently exist in the areas of free-space molecular diffraction, magnetic biomolecules, quantum optics and Josephson devices, and sketch possible future lines of development of the program.
Undergraduates
