NBIA Colloquium: Klaus Mølmer

Title: Quantum Foundations, Quantum Technologies, and the “Stuck-In-the-Elevator Talk”

Speaker: Klaus Mølmer (Niels Bohr Institute)

Abstract: I will offer a brief, non-technical introduction to the quantum mechanical revolution a century ago and explain why the physics community was and always will be divided over the interpretation of its two unique features: the superposition principle and the measurement postulate. We experience now a second quantum revolution with dreams of technologies that apply exactly these foundational elements and strange properties of quantum mechanics. I will illustrate this with examples from my own research on quantum measurements and sensors that attain quantum advantages in physical measurements. Quantum computing, communication and sensing are wonderful goals for research: they challenge our imagination, they pose completely new theoretical questions, and they deepen our understanding in many ways. But, I find it worrying to hear decision makers forecast - and build policies based on - near term threats and benefits with support only in brief and incomplete “elevator talks” about the achievements of quantum technologies. Hence, I will conclude with a “stuck-in-the-elevator talk” on the hard challenges, the fundamental limitations, the easy counter measures to threats, and non-quantum alternatives that may often outperform the so-called quantum advantages. 

Brief bio-sketch: Klaus Mølmer received his PhD from University of Aarhus. After a post-doctoral stay at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics as Alexander von Humbold Foundation Fellow he was appointed Associate Professor at Aarhus University in 1991 (promoted to Professor in 2000). Klaus Mølmer has held Visiting Professorships at Universite Paris Sud in Orsay and Institute for Theoretical Physics in Innsbruck and has been Professor at the Niels Bohr Institute since 2022. He has received a number of awards and distinctions for his work, including the Biennial Award of the Danish Physical Society (1999), the EliteResearcher Award from the Danish Ministry of Research (2007), the Villum Kann Rasmussen Award (2012), the Alexander von Humboldt Research Award (2023), and the Paul Dirac Medal (2023).