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.

Listen to the full podcast episode with Silvia here or using your podcatcher.

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

While recording, Alex Jahn – who is not only a talented web designer and a great podcast editor but obviously a gifted illustrator – made this drawing of the recording session:

Previous ML4Q&A episodes:

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