Physics Professor Vijay Balasubramanian: PI in New Simons Foundation Collaboration

The Simons Foundation has selected for support the Simons Collaboration entitled, "It from Qubit: Quantum Fields, Gravity and Information", from hundreds of proposals that they received. Professor Vijay Balasubramanian is the Penn PI on this collaboration, which aims to use insights from quantum information theory and quantum computing to make progress on the deep question of reconciling the laws of quantum mechanics and of gravitation. Perspectives gained from two decades of study of terrestrial quantum phenomena, in particular the recognition of the importance of quantum mechanical entanglement, are providing new insights into quantum field theories and the quantum gravity problems. The collaboration brings together string theorists, computer scientists and quantum information specialists from the United States, Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, Israel and Argentina to examine the entanglement properties of quantum field theories and their dual descriptions in gravitational theories.