UCL is creating an interdisciplinary analysis institute to analyze whether or not spacetime is ruled by quantum principle, backed by an £8 million reward from the David and Elaine Potter Basis.
The David Potter Institute for Quantum Info and Spacetime will deliver collectively researchers in quantum data principle, gravity and excessive vitality physics inside UCL’s School of Mathematical and Bodily Sciences.
Its central query considerations how quantum mechanics, which describes the smallest parts of nature, may be reconciled with gravity and its account of spacetime. Scientists have made progress in each fields, however don’t but know whether or not spacetime itself is quantum.
Many physicists argue that Einstein’s principle of gravity have to be modified, or quantized, to suit inside quantum theory. Professor Jonathan Oppenheim and colleagues are pursuing one other risk: that spacetime stays classical and isn’t ruled by quantum principle.
The institute will mix theoretical work with experiments meant to differentiate between these competing accounts.
“Quantum gravity analysis has traditionally been pure blackboard physics,” says Oppenheim, who will co-direct the institute. “We are actually within the place of having the ability to design and construct in the direction of experiments that might settle a query that generations of physicists have struggled with.”
Quantum sensors will take a look at competing theories
Researchers plan to develop quantum sensors able to measuring small forces at excessive ranges of precision. UCL says lots of the experimental approaches have already been developed and trialed on the college.
One experiment makes use of an interferometer to levitate nanospheres. It goals to position a small mass into quantum superposition, the place it exists virtually as if it have been in two locations concurrently, earlier than measuring how gravity impacts it.
Underneath the experimental premise described by UCL, quantum spacetime ought to enable gravity to entangle two particles, linking their habits in a manner that can not be defined classically. If spacetime is classical, that entanglement shouldn’t happen.
This system is subsequently meant to maneuver the query of quantum gravity past principle and into experiments that may produce testable outcomes.
UCL additionally expects the sensing analysis to tell doable makes use of exterior elementary physics, though these functions stay potential.
Institute researchers will work with the Quantum Biomedical Sensing Analysis Hub, often known as Q-BIOMED, which is led by UCL and the College of Cambridge. The collaboration will discover sensing know-how for healthcare settings, together with approaches that might allow extra delicate detection of cells, molecules and processes within the physique.
UCL additionally plans for the institute to help the event of spin-out applied sciences based mostly on its analysis.
Analysis program will embody college students and visiting scientists
The Potter Institute will host college students, visiting researchers and workshops whereas offering coaching in theoretical and experimental physics. Its researchers will come from UCL’s departments of Arithmetic, Laptop Science, Philosophy and Science & Know-how Research.
The reward continues the scientific and philanthropic work of Dr David Potter CBE, who died in June 2026. Potter studied Pure Sciences at Trinity School, Cambridge, accomplished a doctorate in mathematical physics at Imperial School London and later taught physics on the College of London and College of California.
He left academia to ascertain Psion in 1980. The corporate developed The Organiser, described by UCL as the primary handheld pc for private use, and Potter later led the creation of Symbian Restricted with Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola and Matsushita.
Elaine Potter, Co-Founding father of the David and Elaine Potter Basis, says: “The brand new Potter Institute is a car via which we will help present the educational freedom to pursue massive concepts, the influence of which can form the longer term in methods we can not but predict.”
Professors Jonathan Oppenheim and Sougato Bose will co-direct the institute, whereas Professor Peter Barker will lead its experimental program. UCL has not offered a gap date or particulars of how college students and visiting researchers will be part of the institute.
