Steven Girvin
Department of Physics, Yale University, USA
Steven Girvin (left) with Sebastian Schmidt
Date
25 March 2015
Host
Gianni Blatter
Title
Taming the World's Largest Schrödinger Cat
Abstract
A revolution is underway in the construction of ‘artificial atoms’ out of superconducting electrical circuits. Remarkably strong atom-photon coupling permits the realization of ‘Schrödinger cat’ states of microwave photons which likely represent the most macroscopic coherent quantum superpositions ever created. In addition to potential importance in quantum computation, this new technology allows counting individual microwave photons and so may soon be useful in the search for axion cosmological dark matter.