Questions and answers with Anton Zeilinger
DOI: 10.1063/PT.4.0736
By Jermey N. A. Matthews
Austrian-born quantum physicist Anton Zeilinger is widely known as a pioneer in experimental quantum mechanics. As a graduate student in the 1970s, he began using neutron interferometry to explore the foundations of the field. By the following decade he had become interested in quantum entanglement; he is best known for the first experimental proof of multiparticle entanglement states, with photons and later with atoms. That work opened the door for research in quantum teleportation, quantum computation, and quantum cryptography.
Zeilinger is a professor of physics at the University of Vienna and scientific director of the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. His book Dance of the Photons: From Einstein to Quantum Teleportation, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, provides a historical overview of quantum mechanics (including his role in its development), and discusses its real-world implications and applications. Physics Today recently caught up with Zeilinger to discuss the book.
PT : What motivated you to write Dance of the Photons, and what do you hope your readers will learn about quantum information from reading it?
Zeilinger : To me quantum physics is totally fascinating, and I want other people to know about what I find so interesting. When I began to learn quantum mechanics, I was immediately struck by its immense mathematical beauty and the counterintuitive predictions it made. So I was very happy to join Helmut Rauch’s neutron interferometry project [at the Technical University of Vienna] so I could do some of those experiments myself, and with colleagues.
PT : While writing, what was the greatest challenge you had to overcome?
Zeilinger : The great challenge always is how to present things as simply as possible but still in a correct way. Entanglement is the best example. How can you explain in common language that two systems are perfectly correlated but neither one enjoys its own properties before a measurement is made? The way to get around [the explanation] is to accept quantum physics as a source for new concepts and ideas about the world. It would be a big mistake to go back to pre-quantum ideas of reality.
PT : What does the title mean, and how was it conceived?
Zeilinger : The title of the German original was Einstein’s Spook. But my publisher thought that might sound too negative. The Dance of the Photons means that while a dancer can be rapidly moving and thus appear fuzzy, she always knows what she is doing.
PT : What books helped you in writing yours?
Zeilinger : Albert Einstein’s Autobiographical Notes [Open Court, 1999] and the lovely series of Mr. Tompkins books by George Gamow [for example, Mr. Tompkins Gets Serious: The Essential George Gamow, Pi Press, 2005]. The latter ones I recommend to every reader.
PT : What are you reading at the moment?
Zeilinger : A collection of short stories by Jorge Louis Borges: Collected Fictions (Penguin Books, 1999).
