ESP Biography

Earlier this year, Google's Quantum AI lab achieved "quantum supremacy", making a quantum computer that could solve a problem no classical computer reasonably could. This poses a future challenge for classical cryptography, because many forms of it only work as long as certain problems remain hard to solve. But just as quantum computers threaten classical cryptography, quantum mechanics itself offers a way out. In this class, we'll cover the basics of quantum cryptography, showing how one can send a message and have its secrecy guaranteed by the laws of physics themselves, against any adversary, classical or quantum.

CERN has found the Higgs boson, but nobody has ever seen one. The Higgs decays almost instantly, and its decay products are buried in the wreckage of a violent proton-proton collision. So how do we know there ever was a Higgs boson there at all? In this class, we'll talk about how the complex, noisy data of the LHC is turned into concrete results. We'll start with an overview of the LHC detectors, then describe how each fundamental particle leaves its own subtle mark on the data. At the end, you'll test your skills by identifying a few particles from real LHC data!