Programme Physics@FOM Veldhoven 2012

Complete programme
The full programme of Physics@FOM Veldhoven 2012 is available here.

Plenary programme 2012
Alain Aspect
The French physicist Prof.dr. Alain Aspect has made several breakthroughs in quantum physics (quantum optics, laser cooling of atoms, quantum degenerate gases). He is most famous for his 'Bell test experiments', for which he received the 2010 Wolf Prize in Physics. These experiments provide strong evidence that a quantum event at one location can affect an event at another location without any obvious mechanism for communication between the two points. This was termed 'spooky action at a distance' by Einstein (who doubted the physical reality of this effect). Aspect is CNRS senior scientist and Professor at Institut d'Optique and at Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau. He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences and French Academy of Technologies, and a foreign member of the National Academy of Science (USA) and of the Austrian Academy of Science.

Charles Kane
After his PhD at MIT in Cambridge and two years at the IBM T.J. Watson Center in New York, Prof.dr. Charles Kane started working at the University of Pennsylvania in 1991. His research focuses on the theory of quantum electronic phenomena in solids. This includes: theories of one-dimensional conductors, the fractional quantum Hall effect, carbon nanotubes, graphene, topological insulators and topological quantum computing. He has gained international fame for his work on topological insulators. These are special materials that behave as an insulator in the interior or bulk, while permitting the movement of charges on the surface. Kane became a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2006 and in 2010 he shared the Europhysics Prize, awarded by the European Physical Society.

Juan Maldacena
Theoretical physicist Prof.dr. Juan Maldacena was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He obtained his PhD at Princeton University (New Jersey) and then took up a postdoc position at Rutgers University (New Jersey). In 1997, he joined Harvard University as an associate professor and was quickly promoted to Professor of Physics in 1999. Since 2001, he has been a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He is well known for proposing a relationship between the quantum gravity and quantum field theories. With that, he suggests a direction for finding physic's Holy Grail: a way to combine quantum mechanics (which deals with the universe at its smallest scales) and Einstein's general theory of relativity (which deals with its very largest), two theories previously held to be incompatible.

The Tuesday evening lecture of Alain Aspect is available to watch via Archives.