Jeff Kimble
Professor HJ Kimble
Is much larger than a thimble
And a veritable symbol
Of the physicist today.
Could it be prodigious height
Explains his knack for squeezing light
Or is Jeff’s mind extremely bright?
I guess that’s hard to say…
Jeff wants to build a quantum net
It seems quite hard, but still I bet
Someday we’ll get there, just not yet.
There’ll be a slight delay.
At least they’ve made a quantum node,
That’s a start along the road.
They showed a photon could be stowed
And then released. Okay?
Jeff’s students stay up very late
And try to share a quantum state
Between two nodes. But when you wait
Entanglement decays.
Once entanglement is strong
And they can make it last quite long
One node could be inside
The other in
And once the quantum net’s begun
We’re going to have a lot of fun
Exploiting work that Jeff has done
Here’s what he has to say!
John Preskill
21
January 2009
Before saying good night, I want to be sure that all of you are aware that the second Watson lecture of the Obama Age will be four weeks from tonight, on February 18. Here in Beckman Auditorium at 8pm as usual, no tickets or reservations required. And again the topic will be a very appropriate one for the new Age: The speaker will Harry Gray, the Arnold O. Beckman Professor of Chemistry at Caltech, and his topic will be “Powering the Planet with Solar Fuel”. I’m sure we don’t want to miss this one, folks!
A wise man I know, Stephen Hawking, has said that scientific discovery is like sex, only it lasts longer. And we hope that you fell the same way about this evening’s program, which, sad to say, must come to an end. Jeff will stay here for a little while to answer further questions, if you choose to come forward.
So good night everyone, thanks for coming, drive carefully. And may we all do our part in this, the new era of responsibility.