Despite there being a large community actively working on quantum foundations, and several specialized workshops for experts, there has been a lack of events directed at junior researchers entering the field, particularly in Europe. This summer school on quantum foundations comes to fill that gap, providing a solid introduction to different approaches and problems within foundations.
The school is mostly directed at PhD students and junior postdocs in quantum information and related fields who are interested on quantum foundations. Registration is also open to senior researchers, master students and others.
Lectures
All lecture videos are available here.
- Roger Colbeck, University of York, UK – Bell inequalities [partial lecture notes]
- Angela Karanjai, University of Sydney, Australia – Epistemic models [lecture notes]
- Matthew Leifer, Chapman University, US – No-go theorems [slides: first lecture, second lecture]
- Lluis Masanes, UCL, UK – Reconstructing quantum theory from operational principles [lecture notes]
- Renato Renner, ETH Zurich, Switzerland – Interpretations of quantum theory
[paper] - Katja Ried, U. Innsbruck, Austria – Causality [slides]
- Ana Belén Sainz, Perimeter Institute, Canada – Contextuality [slides: first lecture, second lecture]
- Robert W. Spekkens, Perimeter Institute, Canada – Experimental quantum foundations [slides: first lecture, second lecture]
Recommended reading
Our lecturers recommend the following additional resources.
Wherever possible we posted links to open access versions of the publications.
- Bell non-locality, a review by Nicolas Brunner, Daniel Cavalcanti, Stefano Pironio, Valerio Scarani and Stephanie Wehner.
- No return to classical reality, a review by David Jennings and Matthew Leifer. Extra: a review on psi-ontology theorems by Matthew Leifer, “for masochistic students.”
- Video recordings of the course on Foundations of Quantum Mechanics from Perimeter Institute. This lecture has been thought by different lecturers in different years; in reverse chronological order, you can watch the course as taught by Matthew Leifer, Lucien Hardy and Rob Spekkens. Each version covers different topics, with some core overlap.
- On the subject of generalized probabilistic theories and axiomatic derivations of quantum theory, see: Lucien Hardy, “Quantum theory from five reasonable axioms” , Jonathan Barrett, “Information processing in generalized probabilistic theories”, and Lluis Masanes and Markus P. Müller, “A derivation of quantum theory from physical requirements“. To see how to apply this formalism to the analysis of real experimental data, see: Michael D. Mazurek, Matthew F. Pusey, Ravi Kunjwal, Kevin J. Resch & Robert W. Spekkens, “An experimental test of noncontextuality without unphysical idealizations”.
- On the subject of contextuality, see: N. David Mermin, “Hidden variables and the two theorems of John Bell”, and Robert W. Spekkens, “Contextuality for preparations, transformations, and unsharp measurements”.
Student posters
Posters will be up all week, in the hall outside the lecture room, where the coffee breaks take place. There is no dedicated poster session, but there will be plenty of time to discuss the posters during the breaks.