Research Goals.
My research focuses on quantum systems, the tiniest things in the universe, and sometimes also the big things, like this nearly visible glass bead, and in principle even bigger objects like your body, my body or a mountain under special experimental conditions. Such systems can start behaving in strange ways, such as not having a definite existence at a specific location in space and occurring at a specific time, until we observe it. It's a sort of liminal situation between not existing at all and existing definitely as a piece of stuff at a definite place and time. This act of observation, technically called a quantum measurement, is one of the things I think about.
A chair has well-defined parts that are identifiable individually— such as the distinct pieces of wood and the screws—and those parts exist independently as distinct things in specific places. This picture also fails for quantum systems, where the parts of a system depend on how we choose to partition it and observe its parts. Until we do that, the parts don't exist as independently existing things. Technically, this is studied by the quantum tensor–product structures. I also think about that.
Finally, I have been thinking about the role that language— not necessarily English, but some meaningful language—plays in physical processes, not just in describing them. In more technical terms, I reinterpret the epistemic limits of language and classical concepts, as Niels Bohr introduced, as naturalistic constraints on any system capable of knowledge.
Outside of Quantum Theory, I am interested in Theoretical Chemistry, Complex system behavior such as Emergence, Self-Organization, Stuart Kauffman's idea of Adjacent Possible, Ernst Mayr's Philosophy of Science, and David Chalmers' idea of Property Dualism in the Brain.
