Quantum Physics: A First Encounter
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Quantum physics is often perceived as a weird and abstract theory, which physicists must use in order to make correct predictions. But many recent experiments have shown that the weirdness of the theory simply mirrors the weirdness of phenomena: it is Nature itself, and not only our description of it, that behaves in an astonishing way. This book selects those, among these typical quantum phenomena, whose rigorous description requires neither the formalism, nor an important background in physics.
The first part of the book deals with the phenomenon of single-particle interference, covering the historical questions of wave-particle duality, objective randomness and the boundary between the quantum and the classical world, but also the recent idea of quantum cryptography. The second part introduces the modern theme of entanglement, by presenting two-particle interference phenomena and discussing Bell's inequalities. A concise review of the main interpretations of quantum physics is provided.
Valerio Scarani received his degree in 1996 in the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale, Lausanne (Switzerland), with a work in mathematical physics. He got his Ph.D. from the same institution four years later with an experimental research project in nuclear magnetic resonance. He moved to the group of Nicolas Gisin at the University of Geneva, where he started working in theoretical quantum information science. Since 2007 he has been at the National University of Singapore, where he is currently principal investigator at the Centre for Quantum Technologies and a professor in the Department of Physics.