Quantum technologist, NASA-trained Commercial Astronaut Christopher Altman

Austrian Fellowship on Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality

I'm recently back from two resident Templeton fellowships on Quantum Mechanics in Higher Dimensional Hilbert Spaces and Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality at Austrian International Akademie Traunkirchen with Nobel laureate Anton Zeilinger.

Fruitful collaborations were borne from engaging discussions with inspiring pioneers in the field including Rupert Ursin, Marcus Aspelmeyer, Časlav Brukner, William Wootters, Christopher Fuchs, Daniel Greenberger and Michael Horne. 

Christopher Altman (front, center), Traunkirchen, Austria

Creative discussions were enhanced by the tranquil setting of the former monastery, surrounded by mountainous scenery and clear blue skies reflected off the mirrored waters of Lake Traunsée. Overlooking the lake are Mount Traunstein, Salzkammergut, and the alpine mountain ranges spanning Upper Austria.

Photos of the picturesque setting and the idyllic, crystalline lake in the Austrian Alps are available online here. 

Zeilinger's achievements are most succinctly described in his citation for the Nobel Prize in Physics (2022) and the Isaac Newton Medal of the Institute of Physics: 

“For his pioneering conceptual and experimental contributions to the foundations of quantum physics, which have become the cornerstone for the rapidly-evolving field of quantum information. He is a pioneer in the field of quantum information and the foundations of quantum mechanics.”

Zeilinger and his colleagues have demonstrated many world's-first achievements in the field, including quantum teleportation, entanglement swapping, dense coding, entanglement-based quantum cryptography, one-way quantum computation, multipartite quantum entanglement, and blind quantum computation. In addition, he has made many important contributions to the conceptual and experimental foundations of quantum mechanics, particularly in the areas of quantum entanglement and macroscopic quantum mechanics. 

IQOQI Deputy Director Rupert Ursin later joined up for a tour of Mauna Kea and the Big Island of Hawaii in close proximity to the IEEE Summer Topicals Meeting on Quantum Photonics and Communications in Waikoloa, where he spoke on The Next Frontier of Quantum Communications, sharing engaging discussions alongside long, meandering morning walks on the beach that gave birth to new collaborations with Richard Hughes, Chair of the USG Quantum Roadmap at LANL, Tim Ralph, Wolfgang Tittel, Jaewan Kim, and Masahide Sasaki. 

Soon thereafter I was fortunate to attend the inaugural NASA Quantum Future Technologoies Conference under the visionary leadership of USAF Gen. Pete Worden, PhD astrophysicist. Stimulating debates with longtime mentor Jon Dowling led to further research collaborations with Ursin, Williams, Sharma, Villoresi under the DARPA QUINESS Macroscopic Quantum Communications program through our team proposal, Astronaut Development and Deployment of a Secure Quantum Space Channel Prototype at the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems. 

— In tribute to pioneer of quantum reality Michael Horne.