The last decade has seen wonderful progress on fundamental physics, including both the discovery of the Higgs boson by the LHC and the direct detection of gravitational waves and black holes by LIGO. These successes increasingly highlight other fundamental challenges in physics ranging from understanding the nature of dark matter to unraveling the quantum physics of spacetime itself. At the same time, there have been dramatic improvements in our ability to manipulate complex quantum systems and a concomitant explosion in our theoretical understanding of the nature of information in a quantum universe. An exciting possibility raised by these two parallel developments is that quantum information and systems could provide a powerful new approach to questions in fundamental physics. Nevertheless, efforts in this direction are still nascent.
One set of ideas revolves around using engineered quantum systems to make ultra-precise measurements to directly detect faint dark matter signatures. Another set of ideas attempts to decode the way spacetime emerges from microscopic degrees of freedom using the language of entanglement, complexity, and computation. Given these and other early developments, the time is ripe for a meeting across communities to share ideas and look forward. This Aspen Winter Conference will bring these communities together in a focused meeting to identify common goals and look for new opportunities. Such a meeting should be more productive than previously possible thanks to the new common language of quantum information and a new set of experimental tools of broad interest.
The application deadline is November 30, 2019.
Please complete your application at https://aspenphys.org/physicists/winter/winterapps.html
