Abstract
The second quantum revolution, which may lead to a major technological breakthrough in science and technology with the creation of quantum computers, was the term coined by the French physicist Alain Aspect to describe changes in physics, the beginnings of which date back to the 1960s. To flesh out the new term he brought together two different threads. The first one embraced the emergence of the awareness of the importance of a new physical effect, entanglement. This refers to the quantum description of a composite system which is not reducible to the sum of its parts. It started a conceptual revolution, including the perspective of building quantum computers with calculation power exponentially greater than the best computers of today. The second thread derives from physicists’ ability to isolate, control, and observe single quantum systems such as electrons, photons, neutrons and atoms. Finally these threads merged into the creation of a new field of research entitled quantum information. In Aspect’s formulation, found in his introduction to John Bell’s papers (Speakable and unspeakable in quantum mechanics: collected papers on quantum philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2004), he posited two quantum revolutions taking place in the twentieth century. The first one, in the first half of the century, created the scientific theory that describes the behavior of atoms, radiation, and their interactions. The second one occurred in the second half and is still evolving, as the promise of quantum computers remains unaccomplished. This book deals with the origins of this alleged second revolution—from the early 1950s to the mid-1990s—and is a historical account of the context and intellectual aspects that arose from the renewal of research on the foundations of quantum physics. It roughly covers the period from the 1950s, when this research gained momentum with the appearance of new interpretations for the mathematical formalism of this physical theory, to the early 1990s, when research on these foundations was established as a promising topic on the agenda of research in physics. As “quantum information” became a new field of research in the middle of the 1990s, this narrative ends when quantum information as a blossoming field of research starts. This book can thus be regarded as a prehistory of quantum information.
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Notes
- 1.
On this interest, see The Washington Post, 2 Jan 2014, “NSA seeks to build quantum computer that could crack most types of encryption,” by S. Rich and B. Gellman, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-seeks-to-build-quantum-computer-that-could-crack-most-types-of-encryption/2014/01/02/8fff297e-7195-11e3-8def-a33011492df2_story.html, accessed on 30 Apr 2014.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
See also “Controversies”, the special issue of Science in Context 11(2) (1998), 147–325.
- 6.
For an updated and comprehensive review of the conceptual issues in foundations of quantum mechanics, see the book Do we really understand quantum mechanics?, by Franck Laloë (2012).
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Acknowledgements
I am indebted to the following colleagues who read and commented on parts of this book: David Kaiser, Joan Bromberg, Jeffrey Bub, Osvaldo Pessoa Jr., Thiago Hartz, Indianara Silva, George Musser, Saulo Carneiro, Jose Perillan, and Ileana Greca. I am also indebted to Angela Lahee, for editorial assistance, and to Stefano Osnaghi, Osvaldo Pessoa Jr., Fabio Freitas, and Alexis De Greiff, who were co-authors of papers I have used in this book. I acknowledge Denise Key and Shaun Akhtar for their help revising the English. For sure, deficiencies in the text are my entire responsibility. The research leading to this book was made possible due to the encouragement of a number of colleagues and students. When I began to consider writing this book I was encouraged by Sam Schweber, Michel Paty, Olivier Darrigol, Dieter Hoffmann, and Cathryn Carson. I am thankful for their support. In addition to these colleagues, I am indebted to other colleagues and students who read some of the previous papers, or commented upon them after my talks; thus I am indebted to Paul Forman, Abner Shimony, Alain Aspect, Anja Jacobsen, Alexei Kojevnikov, Cristoph Lehner, Jan Lacki, Finn Aaserud, Aurino Ribeiro, José Fernando Rocha, Nelson Studart, Jean-Jacques Szczeciniarz, Jean Eisenstaedt, Martha-Cecilia Bustamante, Michael Kiessling, Harvey Brown, Albin Volte, Michael Stöltzner, Peter Byrne, Cássio Vieira, Ana Maria Ribeiro de Andrade, Ademir Santana, Frederik Santos, Virgile Besson, Climerio Silva, Robert Robinson, Mayane Nóbrega, and Wilson Bispo.
This research would not have been possible without the aid from the following institutions and agencies: CNPq, the Brazilian federal agency for research, for the continuous funding and support and the distinction as its fellow; the Brazilian agencies CAPES and FAPESB; the American Institute of Physics and American Philosophical Society for funding and aid; the General Physics department at Universidade Federal da Bahia, for my leaves of absence; Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology, the institution which supported me with a Senior Fellowship in 2004–2005; Université Paris 7, where I stayed as a visiting researcher for some months in 2004 and 2012; MIT, Harvard University, and University of Maryland for the stays at those institutions as a guest researcher in 2005, 2009, and 2014. I am also indebted to the following archives for allowing me to consult their collections and authorizing citations from those sources: Niels Bohr Archive, Copenhagen (Aage Bohr Papers and Léon Rosenfeld Papers); Archivio Occhialini, Università degli studi, Milan; Arquivos do CNPq, Museu de Astronomia, Rio de Janeiro; Guido Beck Papers, Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Físicas, Rio de Janeiro; David Bohm Papers, Birkbeck College, University of London; Lancelot L. Whyte Papers, Department of Special Collections, Boston University; John von Neumann Papers, Library of Congress, Washington; John Wheeler Papers, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia; Center for History of Physics, American Institute of Physics, College Park, Maryland (Archives for the History of Quantum Physics, Bohr Scientific Correspondence, Physics Today Collection, and all the oral histories used in this book); Thomas Kuhn Papers, Institute Archive, MIT; and Archives of the Italian Physical Society, Bologna.
Finally I am thankful to the following journals for allowing me to republish papers or fragments of papers originally published in their journals: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, Foundations of Physics, and Physics in Perspective.
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Freire Junior, O. (2015). Dissidents and the Second Quantum Revolution. In: The Quantum Dissidents. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44662-1_1
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