Here I indulge in wide-ranging speculations on the shape of physics, and technology closely related to physics, over the next one hundred years. Themes include the many faces of unification, the re-imagining of quantum theory, and new forms of engineering on small, intermediate, and large scales.
We describe a procedure to create entangled history states and measurements that would enable one to check for temporal entanglement. The checks take the form of inequalities among observable quantities. They are similar in spirit, but different in detail, to Bell tests for ordinary entanglement.
It is commonly anticipated that gravity is subject to the standard principles of quantum mechanics. Yet some (including Einstein) have questioned that presumption, whose empirical basis is weak. Indeed, recently Freeman Dyson has emphasized that no c
onventional experiment is capable of detecting individual gravitons. However, as we describe, if inflation occurred, the Universe, by acting as an ideal graviton amplifier, affords such access. It produces a classical signal, in the form of macroscopic gravitational waves, in response to spontaneous (not induced) emission of gravitons. Thus recent BICEP2 observations of polarization in the cosmic microwave background will, if confirmed, provide empirical evidence for the quantization of gravity. Their details also support quantitative ideas concerning the unification of strong, electromagnetic, and weak forces, and of all these with gravity.
While many aspects of general relativity have been tested, and general principles of quantum dynamics demand its quantization, there is no direct evidence for that. It has been argued that development of detectors sensitive to individual gravitons is
unlikely, and perhaps impossible. We argue here, however, that measurement of polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background due to a long wavelength stochastic background of gravitational waves from Inflation in the Early Universe would firmly establish the quantization of gravity.
We show how changes in unitarity-preserving boundary conditions allow continuous interpolation among the Hilbert spaces of quantum mechanics on topologically distinct manifolds. We present several examples, including a computation of entanglement ent
ropy production. We discuss approximate realization of boundary conditions through appropriate interactions, thus suggesting a route to possible experimental realization. We give a theoretical application to quantization of singular Hamiltonians, and give tangible form to the many worlds interpretation of wave functions.
Vortices in the simplest superconducting state of graphene contain very low energy excitations, whose existence is connected to an index theorem that applies strictly to an approximate form of the relevant Bogoliubov-deGennes equations. When Zeeman i
nteractions are taken into account, the zero modes required by the index theorem are (slightly) displaced. Thus the vortices acquire internal structure, that plausibly supports interesting dynamical phenomena.
We survey observational constraints on the parameter space of inflation and axions and map out two allowed windows: the classic window and the inflationary anthropic window. The cosmology of the latter is particularly interesting; inflationary axion
cosmology predicts the existence of isocurvature fluctuations in the CMB, with an amplitude that grows with both the energy scale of inflation and the fraction of dark matter in axions. Statistical arguments favor a substantial value for the latter, and so current bounds on isocurvature fluctuations imply tight constraints on inflation. For example, an axion Peccei-Quinn scale of 10^16 GeV excludes any inflation model with energy scale > 3.8*10^14 GeV (r > 2*10^(-9)) at 95% confidence, and so implies negligible gravitational waves from inflation, but suggests appreciable isocurvature fluctuations.
