Volume 2, Issue 4, pages 137-148
Howard M. Wiseman [Show Biography], Eleanor G. Rieffel [Show Biography] and Eric G. Cavalcanti [Show Biography]
Howard Wiseman is a theoretical physicist known for his work in quantum foundations, quantum information, and quantum measurement and control. He did his BSc Hons (1991) and PhD (1992-4) with Gerard Milburn at the University of Queensland, and a postdoc (1994-6) with Dan Walls FRS at the University of Auckland. He has published over 200 refereed papers, and a 2010 Cambridge textbook (with Milburn). He has won the Bragg Medal (AIP), the Pawsey Medal (AAS), and the Malcolm Macintosh Medal (PM’s science prizes). He is a Fellow of the AAS, and of the American Physical Society. He has been Director of the Centre for Quantum Dynamics at Griffith University since 2007.
Eleanor G. Rieffel explores algorithm design and fundamental questions in quantum computation as a leader of NASA’s QuAIL team. After receiving her Ph.D. in mathematics from UCLA, and serving as a mathematics post-doc at USC, she joined FXPAL where she performed research in diverse fields including quantum computation, applied cryptography, bioinformatics, and robotics. She joined NASA Ames Research Center in 2012 to work on their expanding quantum computing effort. Her book, Quantum Computing: A Gentle Introduction, with coauthor Wolfgang Polak was published by MIT press in the spring of 2011, and has received stellar reviews.
Eric Cavalcanti is a theoretical physicist exploring the foundations of quantum theory and quantum information theory. After receiving his PhD in Physics from the University of Queensland in 2008, he has held postdoctoral positions at Griffith University and the University of Sydney, funded by single-author Australian Research Council grants for work on quantum foundations. Between 2013-2014 he was a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Computer Science in Oxford, and since 2015 he has been a Senior Lecturer at Griffith University.
We address Gillis’ recent criticism of a series of papers (by different combinations of the present authors) on formulations of Bell’s theorem. Those papers intended to address an unfortunate gap of communication between two broad camps in the quantum foundations community that we identify as “operationalists” and “realists”. Here, we once again urge the readers to approach the question from an unbiased standpoint, and explain that Gillis’ criticism draws too heavily on the philosophical inclinations of one side of that debate — the realist camp. As part of that explanation we discuss intuition versus proof, look again at Bell’s formalizations of locality, and correct misstatements by Gillis of our views, and those of Bell and Einstein.
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