Mechanical Systems for Exploring Challenges of Nanoscale to Cosmic Proportions

Mechanical systems across a wide range of size scales and technologies now exhibit uniquely quantum coherent behaviors. Researchers have already begun to harness these new resources for quantum information, sensing, metrology, and fundamental physics. Still, major challenges remain in understanding how dissipation, quantum coherence, and nonlinearity manifest in these wildly diverse systems. This meeting will bring together scientists to discuss the latest experimental and theoretical advances in mechanical, phononic, and related systems that can be used to address outstanding challenges of nanoscale to cosmic proportions – quantum information transduction and processing; sensors that utilize ideas from quantum technologies or need to operate beyond quantum limits; understanding the behavior of increasingly complex combinations of mechanical and other quantum degrees of freedom; and detecting extremely weak interactions from gravity, dark matter, and other fundamentally new physics.