Boltzmann’s Brain is a science blog written by theoretical physicist Philipp Strasberg. It explores all sorts of questions related to quantum statistical mechanics such as: what happens if you build an EPR pair out of Schrödinger’s cat and Maxwell’s demon and throw one of them into a black hole? (awaiting answer). Beyond physics, it also explores serious problems related to academic culture and the scientific system in general (see, e.g., the first post) and not so serious problems related to making pancakes and Christmas cookies (coming eventually).
The primary goal of this blog is to make science accessible to a wider audience by writing about its content (what is done?) and its environment (how is it done?). Occasionally, some blogs are also technical (apologies but that is what science is about) and, hopefully, they will provide a stimulating source of discussion for scholars.
About Philipp Strasberg
The major driving question behind my research is: Can one make sense of living in a quantum Universe? Here, by “quantum Universe” I mean that unitary time evolution applies to everything, without a separate classical domain or any mind-matter separation. And by “making sense of” I literally mean everything that we experience, from the measurement of the cosmic microwave background to the sensation of free will…
But in reality, research proceeds in small steps—and currently I am focusing on two topics. First, I am investigating the emergence of classicality and the meaning of records, information and measurements using the decoherent histories formalism. Second, I like to overcome the use of ensembles and find a satisfactory foundation as well as useful tools for nonequilibrium thermodynamics based on results from pure state statistical mechanics.
Prior to that, I have worked on a variety of topics related to nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. Specifically, I would take some partial credit for…
- … building a thermodynamic framework that unites ideas from Boltzmann, von Neumann and Jaynes with modern quantum thermodynamics and allows to self-consistently treat finite baths [1,2],
- … proposing an operational approach to quantum stochastic thermodynamics, which—to me—still seems to be the most general framework in terms of the possible interventions it can treat [3,4],
- … pioneering the idea that Markovian embedding strategies (such as reaction coordinate mappings) give a consistent thermodynamics beyond the Markovian and weak coupling assumptions [5,6,7],
- … establishing repeated interactions as a versatile thermodynamic framework for nonequilibrium resources [8],
- … inventing a physical and fully autonomous Maxwell demon model [9].
Furthermore, I have some general expertise in open quantum systems theory, (quantum) stochastic processes, quantum many-body physics, and information theory.
Short CV. Born 1988 in (formally at the time) East Germany, physics studies until 2012 and PhD in 2015 at the Technical University of Berlin (supervisor Tobias Brandes), first postdoc in Luxembourg in the group of Massimiliano Esposito, from 2018 to 2024 part of the quantum information group at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona supported by independent postdoctoral research fellowships. Since September 2024 Ramon y Cajal fellow at the Cantabrian Institute of Physics (IFCA).
Academic genealogy. Philipp Strasberg (2015) — Tobias Brandes (1994) — Bernhard Kramer (1967) — Otfried Madelung (1950) — Werner Heisenberg (1923) — Arnold Sommerfeld (1891) — Carl Lindemann (1873) — Christian Felix Klein (1868) — Julius Pluecker (1823) — Christian Ludwig Gerling (1812) — Carl Friedrich Gauss (1799).