Quantum photonics and foundational research

As a new addition to the Heriot-Watt faculty, I will use the first part of my talk to present my past and future journey through quantum photonics and its application to foundational research and quantum information processing.

In the second part of my talk, I will discuss our recent study of the experimental reality of the wavefunction. The quantum wavefunction is at the heart of our best description of nature, yet we don't know what it represents. Assuming that objective physical reality exists, does the wavefunction correspond to it directly, or does it merely encode our limited knowledge of this reality? The knowledge interpretation offers intuitive explanations for many puzzling quantum phenomena, but it has long been questioned whether it is compatible with the predictions of quantum mechanics. We have now answered this question experimentally, and I will discuss our results and their implication.