In the Quantum Bubble
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In the Quantum Bubble
Title of the project: The quantum Einstein's equivalence principle
Name of the VDSP student(s) & image credits: Carlo Cepollaro
Project supervised by: Caslav Brukner
About me/us: I'm a third-year PhD student, interested in the interplay between effects of quantum mechanics and gravity, in the low energy regime. My research focuses on quantum reference frames, and their application to scenarios where gravity cannot be treated classically.
Image: The light travels in circles on the surface of the soap bubble, with a seemingly classical trajectory. Upon closer inspection, nevertheless, we may see the quantum fluctuations of the atoms of the surface: we can imagine the light traveling and bending, following the quantum-fluctuating curvature of the soap bubble. The picture is a representation of a quantum gravity phenomenon, described by the Wheeler-DeWitt equation on the blackboard. This symbolizes my research on scenarios where quantum systems evolve in a quantum superposition of spacetimes.