Dinner Speech - Tobias Schätz: Einstein’s nightmare - new concepts to gain insight into the world of quanta

Direct experimental access to some of the most intriguing and puzzling quantum phenomena remains ultimately challenging. Their accurate simulation on conventional computers is impossible, since quantum behaviour is not efficiently translatable in classical language. However, one could gain deeper insight into complex quantum dynamics via experimentally simulating the quantum behaviour of interest in another quantum system, where the relevant parameters and interactions can be controlled and robust effects detected sufficiently well. I will discuss the prospects of building an experimental quantum simulator - atom per atom - based on trapped and laser cooled atomic ions, controlled on the level of individual quanta.