A short introduction
Dr. Leifer is interested in quantum information theory and the foundations of quantum theory, especially in topics at the intersection of the two areas. He is an academic who straddles the line between mathematics, philosophy, and theoretical physics. Since January 2015, Dr. Leifer has been an Assistant Professor of Physics at the Schmid College of Science and Technology at Chapman University, and a member of the Institute for Quantum Studies. He received my bachelors degree in Theoretical Physics from The University of Manchester in 1999, followed by a Masters of Advanced Study in Mathematics (Maths Tripos part III) from the Department of Applied Maths and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge in 2000, where he was a member of Girton College. He studied for his Ph.D. in the School of Mathematics at the University of Bristol (2000-2003) under the supervision of Prof. Noah Linden, where he was a member of the Quantum Computing Group. After a brief stint as a research assistant at Bristol, Dr. Leifer arrived at the Perimeter Institute as a Postdoctoral Fellow in January 2004, where he worked until September 2006. From October 2006, he was a research associate in the Centre for Quantum Computation at the University of Cambridge for three months. In January 2007, he arrived back in Waterloo for a second postdoctoral position, in which he was affiliated with the Institute for Quantum Computing and the Department of Applied Math at the University of Waterloo, and with the Perimeter Institute. The latter was due to a research grant from the Foundational Questions Institute. Between April 2008 and August 2010, Dr. Leifer was on leave of absence from work due to illness, after which he returned to work on a part-time basis at University College London, in the Quantum Information Group of the Physics and Astronomy department. Between December 2011 and August 2013, he was off work again due to illness. From August 2013 to December 2015, he returned to the Perimeter Institute as a long-term visitor. You can also view Dr. Leifer's Google Scholar profile.Publications:
There is no absolute physical world independent of observation
Hans Busstra and Dr. Lídia del Rio talk to Dr. Matthew Leifer, Assistant Professor of Physics at Chapman University, about the epistemic interpretation of quantum mechanics. Classically, when physicists call themselves ‘realists’ they mean that we should assume that a physical, observer-independent universe is fundamental. But if this counts as realism, anti-realism is perhaps the more respectable position. Leifer points, for instance, to ‘Bell-Wigner mashups’: thought-experiments that entangle different observers to arrive at disturbing consequences; for instance, that there is no ‘absoluteness of facts’ for all observers, in a classical sense.
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