Cosmology and Quantum Information at the ETH-ITS
Gravitational waves in cosmology and foundations of quantum thermodynamics feature in the research of two fellows who joined the Institute in this semester.
Junior Fellow Johannes Noller, formerly at University of Oxford, came to the ETH Institute for Theoretical Studies last September. He works on modifications of Einstein's general relativity that may account for cosmological observations. In his newest research, he explores the implications of last August's spectacular simultaneous measurement of gravitational and electromagnetic waves for modified gravity theories. His work is described in external pagethis articlecall_made in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Gravitational waves were also the subject of a recent ITS Science Colloquium by Michele Maggiore.
Senior Fellow Sandu Popescu, of the University of Bristol, is Senior Fellow at the ETH-ITS until November 2018. His research interests are in various aspects of quantum mechanics, including quantum information theory, foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum thermodynamics. In the ITS Science Colloquium on 23 November, he will explain what his smallest refrigerator, consisting of a few qbits, tells us about the foundations of thermodynamics.