Tag Archives: meetings

Update: I am informed that the Oxford Everett meeting will be in the summer rather than in September and is invitation only.  Also, there will be a Symposium on the Foundations of Modern Physics in Vienna 7th-10th June.  Registration for that is open until the end of March.

I haven’t been contemplating too many quantum quandaries recently because I was away at a workshop on Operator Structures in Quantum Information in Banff (a very interesting meeting and a highly recommended location) and am currently visiting Caltech. My brain is mostly full of mathematics and non-foundations oriented physics. In the meantime, here are some interesting foundations events coming up this summer.

Firstly, Perimeter Institute is organising its first Summer School on Quantum Foundations August 27th-31st. There have been several summer schools in other locations in the past, which have mostly been philosophy/interpretations oriented. The PI School will have a distinctly “physics” flavor, e.g. it will include lectures on experiments amongst other things. I’ve seen the list of speakers and it looks like it’s going to be really interesting. For grad students and postdocs interested in foundations, summer schools are highly recommended because of the sparsity of experts in the subject at most institutions. It’s how I became reasonably competent in the subject at any rate. Please don’t write to me requesting further details because I can’t help you. All the information is going to be posted on your favorite quantum websites/mailing lists very soon. Alternatively, you’ll be able to get to the school website via this link once it is up and running.

Secondly, the Institute for Quantum Computing and Perimeter are jointly running a series of quantum oriented workshops this summer under the banner Taming the Quantum World. There’s lots of interesting events for quantum information folks, so check out the website, but the workshop on Operational Quantum Physics and the Quantum-Classical Contrast, June 4th-7th, organized by Paul Busch and Lucien Hardy will be of special interest to readers of this blog.

Since I’m plugging foundations meetings at my own institutions, I should also mention Many Worlds at 50, organized by Jonathan Barrett, Adrian Kent and David Wallace, taking place September 21st-24th.

Given the number of meetings in Waterloo this year, it is somewhat surprising that the foundations community has also found time to organise some events at other locations. Here’s the rundown of the rest:

– March 5th-9th: APS March Meeting, Denver – Two focus sessions on quantum foundations have been organised.

– March 29th-31st: 15th UK and European Meeting on the Foundations of Physics, Leeds.

– April 13th-15th: New Directions in the Foundations of Physics, Maryland. It’s invitation only (and full) I’m afraid.

– June 11th-16th: Quantum Theory: Reconsideration of Foundations 4, Vaxjo.

– July 2nd-13th: Operational probabilistic theories as foils to quantum theory, Cambridge. It’s invitation only (and full).

– Sometime in September: Everett at 50, Oxford.

If I’ve missed any meetings or you have any new info on any of these then please leave a comment.

Here’s what this year’s foundational conference calendar looks like at the moment:

• November 2-5: PSA 2006, Vancouver, Canada. This is the Biennial meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association and there are a few sessions on quantum theory.
• November 28 – December 3: QCMC 2006, Tsukuba, Japan.  This is really a quantum information, computation and optics meeting, but there are often a few talks relevant to foundations.
• March 5-9: APS March Meeting 2007, Denver, Colorado.  The Topical Group in Quantum Information organized special sessions on the foundations of quantum theory last year, so I imagine it won’t be a major focus this time round.  However, I haven’t seen the list of sessions for this year yet, it’s a good opportunity to find out what’s going on in the rest of physics, and at least there will be some quantum information.
• March 26-28: Quantum Interaction, Stanford, USA.  This is a bit of an oddball meeting aimed at applying ideas from QM to Artificial Intelligence.
• March 29-31: 15th UK and European Meeting on the Foundations of Physics, Leeds, UK.  With a special session on quantum information.
• April: Operational Probabilistic Theories as Foils to Quantum Theory, Cambridge, UK.  This one is an invitation only 2-week event, so please don’t write to the organizers asking to come or they will get very annoyed with me.
• June 11-16: Quantum Theory: reconsideration of foundations-4: The 80 years of the Copenhagen Interpretation, Vaxjo, Sweden.  This will be the last in this conference series.  Apparently, you can only reconsider the foundations so many times.  No info on the website yet, but it will probably appear soon.
• I haven’t seen any official announcements yet, but apparently there will be TWO meetings in celebration of 50 years since the publication of Everett’s paper on the relative state interpretation of QM, better known as many-worlds, one at Perimeter Institute and one at Oxford University.

If anyone knows of any other relevant meetings then please let me know and I’ll post an update.

Here’s my list of the highlights of the conference season for foundations this year:

• March 24th-25th: Boston Colloquium for Philosopny of Science – Boston University.

• Foundations of Quantum Information and Entanglement.

• This is annual meeting is usually interesting. Unfortunately, attendance is by invitation only.

• The big “quantum logicy” meeting.

• This is really a quantum info./optics meeting, but it’s a big one and there’s usually some foundationsy talks as well.

Personallly, I’ll definitely be at Vaxjo, Malta and Tsukuba, so I’ll see you there if you’re going.