# Video Library

Since 2002 Perimeter Institute has been recording seminars, conference talks, and public outreach events using video cameras installed in our lecture theatres.  Perimeter now has 7 formal presentation spaces for its many scientific conferences, seminars, workshops and educational outreach activities, all with advanced audio-visual technical capabilities.  Recordings of events in these areas are all available On-Demand from this Video Library and on Perimeter Institute Recorded Seminar Archive (PIRSA)PIRSA is a permanent, free, searchable, and citable archive of recorded seminars from relevant bodies in physics. This resource has been partially modelled after Cornell University's arXiv.org.

## Composite systems and information processing

Tuesday May 10, 2011
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The talk will focus primarily on recent work with Alexander Wilce in which we show that any locally tomographic composite of a qubit with any finite-dimensional homogeneous self-dual (equivalently Jordan-algebraic) system must be a standard finite-dimensional quantum (i.e. $C^*$-algebraic) system.  I may touch on work in progress with collaborators on composites of arbitrary homogeneous self-dual systems.

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## Randomness amplification

Tuesday May 10, 2011
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I will discuss what we know about creating randomness within physics. Although quantum theory prescribes completely random outcomes to particular processes, could it be that within a yet-to-be-discovered post-quantum theory these outcomes are predictable? We have recently shown that this is not possible, using a very natural assumption. In the present talk, I will discuss some recent progress towards relaxing this assumption, providing arguably the strongest evidence yet for truly random processes in our world.

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## Astrophysical constraints on dark matter annihilation with Sommerfeld enhancement

Tuesday May 10, 2011
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In recent years, a number of observations have highlighted anomalies that might be explained by invoking dark matter annihilation. The excess of high energy positrons in cosmic rays reported by the PAMELA experiment is only one of the most prominent examples of such anomalies. Models where dark matter annihilates offer an attractive possibility to explain these

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## Quantum correlations with no causal order

Tuesday May 10, 2011
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Much of the recent progress in understanding quantum theory has been achieved within an operational approach. Within this context quantum mechanics is viewed as a theory for making probabilistic predictions for measurement outcomes following specified preparations. However, thus far some of the essential elements of the theory Ã¢ÂÂ space, time and causal structure Ã¢ÂÂ elude such an operational formulation and are assumed to be fixed.

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## Some Negative Remarks on Operational Approaches to Quantum Theory

Tuesday May 10, 2011
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Over the last 10 years there has been an explosion of Ã¢ÂÂoperational reconstructionsÃ¢ÂÂ of quantum theory. This is great stuff: For, through it, we come to see the myriad ways in which the quantum formalism can be chopped into primitives and, through clever toil, brought back together to form a smooth whole. An image of an IQ-Block puzzle comes to mind, http://www.prismenfernglas.de/iqblock_e.htm. There is no doubt that this is invaluable work, particularly for our understanding of the intricate connections between so many quantum information protocols.

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## Symmetry, Self-Duality and the Jordan Structure of Quantum Theory

Tuesday May 10, 2011
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This talk reviews recent and on-going work, much of it joint with Howard Barnum, on the origins of the Jordan-algebraic structure of finite-dimensional quantum theory. I begin by describing a simple recipe for constructing highly symmetrical probabilistic models, and discuss the ordered linear spaces generated by such models. I then consider the situation of a probabilistic theory consisting of a symmetric monoidal *-category of finite-dimensional such models: in this context, the state and effect cones are self-dual.

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## Electron star holography

Tuesday May 10, 2011
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What is the gravity dual of a strongly interacting state of matter at zero temperature and finite charge density? The simplest candidates are extremal black holes. The presence of charged matter in the bulk can often mean that extremal black holes are not the ground state. In this talk I will discuss the physics of a class of solutions, essentially charged neutron stars, that can be thermodynamically preferred over extremal black holes.

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## The logic of quantum mechanics - take II

Tuesday May 10, 2011
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It is now exactly 75 years ago that John von Neumann denounced his own Hilbert space formalism: I would like to make a confession which may seem immoral: I do not believe absolutely in Hilbert space no more.'' (sic) [1] His reason was that Hilbert space does not elucidate in any direct manner the key quantum behaviors. One year later, together with Birkhoff, they published "The logic of quantum mechanics". However, it is fair to say that this program was never successful nor does it have anything to do with logic. So what is logic?

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## Adding Spice to Your Research with Sage: Open Source Software for Mathematics

Tuesday May 10, 2011
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Sage is a collection of mature open source software for mathematics, and new code, all unified into one powerful and easy-to-use package.
The mission statement of the Sage project is: "Creating a viable free open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica and Matlab."
More information is available at www.sagemath.org. I will use the Sage notebook (a web interface) to demonstrate the use of Sage for a variety of mathematical problems and comment on its design and future direction.

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## Almost quantum theory

Tuesday May 10, 2011
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Modal quantum theory (MQT) is a discrete model that is similar in structure to ordinary quantum theory, but based on a finite field instead of complex amplitudes. Its interpretation involves only the "modal" concepts of possibility and impossibility rather than quantitative probabilities. Despite its very simple structure, MQT nevertheless includes many of the key features of actual quantum physics, including entanglement and nonclassical computation. In this talk we describe MQT and explore how modal and probabilistic theories are related.

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## Next Public Lecture

Check back for details on the next lecture in Perimeter's Public Lectures Series