17. Quantum Chaos: Silvia Pappalardi

Show notes

In this episode Mira and Chris talk to Silvia Pappalardi, who joined ML4Q as a junior professor in April 2023. Silvia heads the Qhaos group (spelled with a Q) and introduces our listeners to the topic of quantum chaos which might be a bit intimidating for many of us. So, join Chris and Mira as they get some intuitive explanations from Silvia about concepts like thermalization and ergodicity and understand how these concepts relate to entanglement.

00:00:00 Intro 00:00:52 Welcome Silvia 00:02:55 The decision to become a physicist 00:06:15 Fermi, Majorana, Parisi: working in the aura of notable mentors 00:10:04 Moving to Trieste to work on entanglement and many-body systems 00:13:45 Working on quantum chaos towards the end of the PhD 00:27:48 Talking about thermalization in a quantum system 00:34:11 What about quantum foundations? 00:39:33 What are many-body quantum scars and can they be used as qubits? 00:52:43 Moving on to Quantum Fisher Information 00:57:21 Transitioning to Cologne and starting an independent group 00:58:53 Talking about women in physics