What Does a QUANTUM PHYSICIST Do All Day? | REAL Physics Research at Cambridge University

In this video I'm joined by the amazing Dr Hannah Stern, who shows me the ins and outs of her research into Quantum Communication (new super secure form of communication) with the help of PhD students Simone and Gu. Dr Hannah is a real-life Quantum Physicist, and got her PhD in Physics at Cambridge University and is now a Junior Research Fellow at Cambridge.

Really excited to share my first video about research in the physics department at Cambridge, as this is where I'm also doing my PhD, and it's great to do it with Hannah as we share a lot of common background from New Zealand! As always, let me know in the comments what you think, and if you're an aspiring scientist I'm always open to take suggestions on what topic to look at next!

Massive thanks of course goes out to the legendary Professor Mete Atature (the Prof. Hannah works for) for making this all possible.

This video is student-produced content was made indepedently from the Cavendish Laboratory and Physics Department here at the University of Cambridge.

If it's not clear, the entrance scence is inspired by Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill: Vol. 1" (but just like 100x worse). Clips are taken from Ant-Man and the Wasp, and The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (fair use applies).

Music credits:
- HOTEI - Battle Without Honor or Humanity
- Wiener Philharmoniker - Swan Lake Suite II. Waltz

[lurr]

I suppose they are working and not working at the same time.

[pasha]

I feel a relief to see that the cable management isn't better in other labs

[admiralhyperspace]

well, finding a mentor. Thats the hardest part for someone in a third world country. Its really hard to find someone who can guide you :( I want a PhD in quantum simulation and learning all of it on my own with no guidance and resources :(

[Ian-lxiz]

Very good question - one that's quite tricky to answer.
A Quantum Physicist (QP in _the jargon_ ) exists simultaneously in a variety of states:

Sleeping
Eating cereal and milk { Hadronic states of activity
Eating cereal without milk {- being mutually exclusive
Tweeting
Watching 'Big Bang Theory' on TV,
Playing 'Angry Birds'
Scratching & Yawning { Baryonic activities which _can_ co-exist in the same space-time
Rearranging review papers (but not actually reading them)
Reading George RR Martin or JR Tokein books
E-mailing job applications and resumés to the LHC in Cern.

The above are collectively known as the 'Behave function' of Quantum Physicists, and QPs do ALL of them simultaneously, ALL of the time, EXCEPT::
...when the QP is observed, at which point the _Behave Function_ 'collapses' into:

Writing up their latest report or thesis, whilst emiting phonemes at random intervals eg. 'Can't talk - BUSY, BUSY!' and 'Sorry - gotta WORK!' and 'Go away - I'm NOT your tutor!'

[michaelzumpano]

That was awesome! You asked great questions and reframed them brilliantly. It was smooth and engaging - easy to watch to the end. You might have found a career… traveling to thousands of labs, each specializing in different fields of investigation. PI’s could attach your video to their grants :-). Anyway, I really got a clear understanding of the science that goes on in their lab - from material science to (descriptive) quantum mechanics. Great Job!

[haneen]

If your currently doing a physics PhD, it would be cool if you did a video on that process. Like what is it like being a physics PhD student, how long it takes, how to network, what is academia like...etc?

[Alex-nquh]

Really informative and approachable delivery of the science. I wish you all the best with you and your channel 👍

[yashsingh]

This is such a good video! Actually gives me insight into what actually happens in research, and what a day in the life of an experimental physicist actually looks like! A lot of the videos I've seen fail to show this accurately. Great job!

[oliverjuarez]

Hey this video was super cool to watch and understand a bit more on this physics subject. It would be really interesting to see more of a personal side of the scientist you get to talk to. It would be really cool to see their thought process and what their drive/ motivation is. Also I hope you start to upload more of these types of videos. Saludos desde mi familia en México ✌🏽

[untold_cambridge]

The most valuable video on YT for my curiosity of single photon emitter. Thumb up. Keep uploading.

[LookingGlassUniverse]

This is brilliant! Really liked the style and the clarity of the video. It looks like it was a blast to film too!

[yolanankaine]

This was an excellent and informative video. The ideas were explained very well and as someone who’s about to start a PhD in Quantum Computing and Engineering, it peaked my interest. Will definitely take the good advice on board and great interview questions!

[meetghelani]

I love the fact that she used Alice and Bob as examples.

[swapnilkatpally]

It was very nice to see this. More than that, the questions were asked in a neat way. The mix and variety of questions seemed like questions anticipated by viewers too. Thankyou for bringing this to us.

[haneen]

Not sure if you are able to travel for these videos, but it would be cool if you interviewed scientist at the Perimeter Institute, CERN, IBM… and such diverse places where you can find novel research being made by research scientists. It would be cool to see where they work and learn more about their job.

[kushdhuvad]

I am currently in my bachelor's.I am interested in quantum physics and technology, that' the reason I wanted to pursue physics.Great video, kind of time traveled me in my future lab.

[lucaenglishteacher]

I don’t know how I ended up watching this but boy! it was quite an eye opener 😳😱

[Andylophe]

Great video. Physical chemistry and Quantum physics might be entangled as well ;) Thank you!

[neilldn]

Wow, at the start of the video, I wasn't excited by the idea at all but when she explained near the end how it works, that blew my mind. If they can apply this to computers, it will make networks more or less completely secure. Governments will definitely going to be interested in this technology if it works. So will companies. The potential for its application is enormous. Maybe, I don't understand it properly though. Also, this is the first time I've ever heard of this. It's completely out of the main stream media.

[zoobi]

Hi, French Biologist here, I have quite a low knowledge with physics but I know a bunch of things about optics and microscopes, especially confocal microscopy.

I haven't had time to research about your lab in google scholar I'm sorry, but seeing quantum physics using confocal microscopy got me interested to say the least.. I have a few questions about your setup and what you want to do with it :

- Why do you use an open setup ? More precisely, what part do you need to change ? I was thinking detectors but I may be wrong.

- Talking about detectors, which ones do you use ? hearing the "takes quite some time to measure" immediately made me think about photon accumulation, just like FLIM imaging using Avalanche GaAsP / PMT-Avalanche-Hybrid kind of detectors ? Or maybe you are using additionnal modules that give you other values for physical properties of your emitted light ?

- Seeing that you ultimately do imaging makes me wonder that you are not only interested in spectral characteristics of your emitted light but also spatial information right ? If so, are you interested into generating highly XY-resoluted images ?

- Pursuing with my previous question : we know wide-field, and also confocal microscopes suffer - because of the diffracting nature of light - a resolution limit. Conventionnal setups with blue/green light can give about 180-220 nm res. in XY and 350-450 in Z-axial. Is that a problem for you ? If so how about going with super-resolution methods ? I am thinking PALM-STORM approach, or also SPT (single particle tracking) with techniques using dual face to face objectives setups and multiple focal plane study to better estimate a real Z sample position. Usually having open setup is the way (I had colleagues like this) physicists build their custom microscope for their very own experiment.

Now this is not a pure question, and I'm getting slightly more carried over... I know you can reconstruct your sample physical properties (shape, structure) using what's called Structured Illumination Microscopy (SIM). As you basically know what's used as illumination (Polarization and Wavenumber (if I recall my electromagnetics - optics courses correctly)), based on what you obtain as emitted light after passing the sample, you can deduce what was your sample 2-3D properties.
So here, given that you probably know very well how your material is (and probably even the different types of "holes" in the lattice, if you manage to...) maybe that you can accurately determine how is the emitted light properties ?

Sorry if that was a bit long, but again, this got me very interested. Also now, even in biology, the help of very advanced microscope setups and physics is starting to be mandatory to achieve "high-level" data and keep pushing science further...