Chapman University is honrored to host a celebratory conference commemorating the 30th anniversary of the first paper on weak values by Aharonov, Albert, and Vaidman (click here to read it). The conference will be held from March 1st - 2nd, immediately to be followed by another Chapman conference on Quantum Simulation and Quantum Walks from March 3rd - 4th, 2018.

 

Also, note that the March Meeting of the American Physical Society takes place the following week (March 5 - 9) in Los Angeles, CA, which is near Chapman University, providing everybody with a third reason to come visit us in sunny Southern California.

 

Further details about the aims of the conference follow below:

 

The concept of a weak value, first formulated by Aharonov, Albert and Vaidman in their 1988 PRL paper "How the result of a measurement of a component of a spin-1/2 particle can turn out to be 100" (PRL 60:1351, 1988) has attracted widespread attention, which has only increased in recent years.  It has given rise to a lot of interesting thought experiments, many of which are now being implemented in the lab.  The mathematical formalism of weak values has also given rise to the related concept of superoscillations, which have been of great interest to mathematical physicists.

 

In recent years anomalous weak values have been shown to be related to quantum contextuality, and have attracted increasing attention for their possible application to quantum metrology, known as "weak value amplification".

This symposium will survey the development of weak values, and explore the current debates about their foundational significance and practical applications. We are also accepting abstract submissions for contributing talks and poster presentations, and strongly encourage students and young researchers to join us at this conference.