UU Mathematics colloquium: Twisted perspectives on quantum mechanics

Coffee and “fikabröd” is served at the lecture hall at 15.15 and the talk will start roughly 15.30.

Abstract: With this year's Nobel prize in physics we have clearly started to appreciate and explore the deeper logical aspects of quantum mechanics, such as entanglement and non-locality. In this talk, coming from a mathematician's viewpoint, I aim to discuss how core concepts of quantum mechanics may be illustrated geometrically using impossible figures such as in the works of Escher, Penrose and Reutersvärd. Namely, while a classical deterministic or probabilistic system may be viewed from a coherent global perspective ("reality"), a quantum system may describe information which is locally coherent but not necessarily globally coherent because the wave function could be twisted in a geometric sense. Its degree of twisting or departure from classicality can be measured using the relatively recent concept of "contextuality". Apart from bringing up possibly fundamental societal issues concerning objective reality, simultaneity and free will, there are also a number of practical applications within cooperative game theory such as "pseudo-telepathy".