Thursday 3 March 1pm AEDT

Click here to watch the recording on the AIP YouTube channel.

Abstract: A major goal of modern physics is to understand and test the regime where quantum mechanics and general relativity both play a role. Until recently, new effects of this regime were thought to be relevant only at high energies or in strong gravitational fields. I will discuss how and why looking at composite particles — with internal dynamical degrees of freedom — opens new avenues and may finally enable laboratory tests of quantum and general relativistic effects.  I will also show that such particles have a natural interpretation as ideal quantum clocks, detectors, and even thermometers, and will highlight recent insights arising from this approach: e.g. that semi-classical states of free composite particles are not Gaussian but a  new class of states derived from a new uncertainty inequality — for configuration space rather than for phase space variables.