The life and entangled adventures of Schrodinger's cat

Abstract

In this lecture, intended for a general audience, I describe Schrödinger's thought experiment which was designed to show the strange results of extending the formalism of quantum theory, particularly the idea of superposition, beyond the subatomic regime. I describe a way to understand superposition in the terms of formal logic. I trace the development of Schrodinger's ideas after this thought experiment, and briefly sketch some work which realises it in actual experiments, and proposals for taking it further.

13 pages. A lecture given at St. Cross College, Oxford, on 10th June 2017 in a conference on The Nature of Quantum Reality