Renato Renner

The role of randomness in experiments

Institute for Theoretical Physics, ETH Zurich   

The ability to make choices at random is crucial for experiments.  For example, if the choices of measurement directions in a  Bell-type experiment were predetermined, the usual conclusion (that quantum theory is classically non-local) could not be reached. This raises several basic questions: How can we make random choices in practice? And what does it even mean that a choice is “random”? In this talk, I will answer these questions, drawing from recent work in quantum information theory and quantum foundations.