OSC Colloquium: Abbie Watnik, "Controlling Light in Uncontrolled Environments"

Abstract: One of the outstanding remaining challenges in physics is the unification of general relativity and quantum mechanics. It appears that the issue might lie with our partial understanding of both gravity and quantum mechanics, despite the fact that both have well established theories and sets of equations and have never to date, failed any tests. It therefore makes sense to continue to ask foundational questions, some of which date back more than 60 years. I will give an overview of some of these questions and ideas, specifically those that involve rotation in one form or another - starting from Penrose superradiance and the Zel’dovich proposal for measuring amplification from a rotating absorber to our recent proposals for generating entanglement from rotational motion.