TOOLS OF SCIENCE
A series of meetings
hosted by The Physics Museum,
The University of Queensland
For students, scientists,
engineers, historians of science and technology, teachers,
collectors, and all those fascinated by old scientific instruments
| September
9 Andrew White |
Hanbury Brown and the birth of a new science |
The next Tools of Science meeting will be held at 6pm on Tuesday September 9 in Parnell (7) LR222 The speaker will be Prof. Andrew White and the topic Hanbury Brown and the birth of a new science Just over 50 years ago Robert Hanbury Brown and Richard Twiss published a short paper in Nature with the innocent title of "A test of a new type of stellar interferometer on Sirius". This paper immediately met with controversy, with critics claiming that both theory and experiment were wrong, violating variously the laws of thermodynamics or quantum mechanics: famously Feynman told Hanbury Brown "It can't work!" to which Hanbury Brown replied "Yes, I know. We were told so. But we built it anyway, and it did work". Hanbury Brown's work forced physicicsts to re-evaluate quantum mechanics and its application to electromagnetism, and led to the birth of the new science of quantum optics. Ironically, in many of its manifestations the Hanbury Brown effect can be understood via classical physics - many, but certainly not all, as recent experiments have highlighted. We will look at the physics behind this effect, and its applications in radio and optical astronomy, particle physics, atom optics, and of course, quantum optics. (Biographical note: Hanbury Brown worked at the University of Sydney from 1962, receiving an Order of Australia in 1986). Professor Andrew White graduated from UQ with First Class Honours in Physics and completed a PhD at the Australian National University. After some years overseas he returned to UQ as a lecturer. He is now a professor and Federation Fellow leading research in optical quantum computing. |
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