Speaker: Prof. Daniel Brandenburg (Ohio State University)

The famous double slit experiment is an essential demonstration of wave-particle duality in Quantum mechanics. Modern versions of the quantum double slit experiment have demonstrated the buildup of interference patterns with single electrons, with individual positrons (anti-matter particles), and even with large molecules like C_60 fullerenes and biological molecules. Feynman famously noted that the double-slit experiment, "has been designed to contain all of the mystery of quantum mechanics, to put you up against the paradoxes and mysteries and peculiarities of nature one hundred percent". Indeed, the concept of wave interference is ubiquitous in quantum mechanics - but only for indistinguishable states. The famous which-way experiments have shown that if one tries to "look" at which path a particle takes, no interference is observed.

Seemingly at odds with a century of conventional knowledge about quantum mechanics, Frank Wilczek and collaborators recently proposed so-called "Entanglement Enabled Intensity Interferometry" (E2I2) - a way to regain interference patterns between *distinguishable* but *entangled* particles. In this talk I will discuss a realization of just such an interference effect between clearly distinguishable particles (of different charges) produced in high energy nuclear experiments. I will explore the fundamental quantum mechanical description of this new type of interference effect and discuss its broad applicability. After relating the nuclear experiment to similar cases in astro-physics, I will briefly describe the exciting new opportunities this technique provides to "image" high energy atomic nuclei at sub-diffraction limited scales -- revealing new secrets about their internal structures.