Sandu Popescu
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Sandu Popescu | |
---|---|
Born | 1956 (age 67–68) Oradea, Romania |
Known for | |
Awards |
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Scientific career | |
Fields | Physics |
Institutions | University of Bristol |
Doctoral advisor | Yakir Aharonov[citation needed] |
Website | sandupopescu |
Sandu Popescu FRS[3] (born 1956 in Oradea, Romania[citation needed]) is a Romanian-British physicist working in the foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum information.[4]
Education and career
He studied with
Popescu has been Professor of Physics at the University of Bristol since 1999.[citation needed]
Popescu is co-editor and co-author of the first textbook on quantum information and computation.[5]
In 2015, Popescu appeared on Science Channel's Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman.
Research
His most important contributions are in the area of
With Daniel Rohrlich, Popescu showed that nonlocal correlations stronger than those allowed by quantum mechanics could exist without violating Einstein's principle of no superluminal signalling.[10] These correlations are now known as Popescu-Rohrlich correlations (PR boxes). This work started the intensive research program taking place at the moment to find new principles of nature that would limit nonlocality to only quantum correlations, and in this way recover quantum mechanics from general principles.
In 1997, he was one of the first researchers to implement quantum teleportation,[11] one of the landmark experiments in quantum information.
Another of Popescu's interests is the foundations of statistical mechanics. In collaboration with Noah Linden, Anthony J. Short and Andreas Winter he proved that virtually any quantum system interacting with a larger system (the "bath") reaches equilibrium.[12] Crucially, this is the first demonstration of equilibration – the most important aspect of statistical mechanics – directly from first principles, without any additional assumptions. The result holds even in situations in which the standard assumptions of statistical mechanics do not apply, such as systems with strong long-range, non-screened interactions where temperature cannot even be defined. In an earlier work with Short and Winter he showed that the so-called equal a priori probability postulate, one of the basic postulates of statistical mechanics, is redundant, and is simply a consequence of typicality.[13] (A similar proof is due to Goldstein et al.[14])
With Yakir Aharonov and his group, Popescu discovered a number of quantum paradoxes, such as the quantum Cheshire cat,[15][16] and the quantum pigeonhole principle.[17][18] They also introduced the idea of superposition of time evolutions.[19]
Together with Serge Massar, Popescu pioneered the study of optimal measurements and proved that in general they require collective (i.e. entangled) measurements on all of the particles in a finite statistical ensemble.[20] Among the counter-intuitive consequences of quantum theory is his discovery with Nicolas Gisin that two antiparallel spins contain more information about their direction than parallel spins.[21]
More recently Popescu's interest is in the thermodynamics of quantum systems. In collaboration with Noah Linden and Paul Skrzypczyk, he described the smallest possible refrigerator,[22] and together with Skrzypczyk and Anthony J. Short, extended the laws of thermodynamics to individual quantum systems.[23]
Awards and honours
Popescu has won numerous awards and honours including:
- 2017 Elected Fellow of the Royal Society[3]
- 2016 Dirac Medal from the Institute of Physics
- 2016 Cozzarelli Prize [24]
- 2012 Wolfson Research Merit Award[25] – awarded by the Royal Society
- 2012–2015 Templeton Frontiers Distinguished Visiting Research Chair – Perimeter Institute
- 2011 John Stewart Bell Prize[26]
- 2011 European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant on Nonlocality in Space and Time[27]
- 2011–present Distinguished Research Chair[28] – Chapman University
- 2010 The Ambassador's Diploma[citation needed] – awarded by the Romanian Embassy
- 2009–2011 Distinguished Research Chair – Perimeter Institute[citation needed]
- 2004 Clifford Paterson Lecture[29] – awarded by The Royal Society
- 2001 Adams Prize – awarded by the Faculty of Mathematics, University of Cambridge
References
- ^ "2011 John Stewart Bell Prize". Cqiqc.physics.utoronto.ca. Retrieved 22 December 2017.
- ^ "2016 Dirac Medal". Iop.org. Retrieved 22 December 2017.
- ^ a b Anon (2017). "Sandu Popescu". Royalsociety.org. Royal Society. Archived from the original on 5 May 2017.
- ^ with H.-K. Lo, T. Spiller (Editor) Introduction to Quantum Information and Computation , World Scientific, 1998.
- ISBN 978-981-238-525-3.)
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- S2CID 8032709.
- S2CID 8236531.
- S2CID 18480289.
- S2CID 120333148.
- S2CID 15020942.
- S2CID 29261455.
- S2CID 44243736.
- S2CID 2110805.
- S2CID 55422570.
- ^ "'Quantum Cheshire Cat' becomes reality".
- PMID 26729862.
- ^ "Pigeon paradox reveals quantum cosmic connections". Newscientist.com. Retrieved 22 December 2017.
- PMID 10041860.
- PMID 10058975.
- S2CID 55002749.
- S2CID 2707740.
- S2CID 205326939.
- ^ "Cozzarelli Prize". Pnas.org. Retrieved 22 December 2017.
- ^ "Royal Society announces next round of prestigious Wolfson Research Merit Awards". Royalsociety.org. Retrieved 22 December 2017.
- ^ "Sandu Popescu". Cqiqc.physics.utoronto.ca. Retrieved 22 December 2017.
- ^ "Professor Popescu awarded ERC Advanced Research Grant". Bristol.ac.uk. Retrieved 22 December 2017.
- ^ "Members, Institute of Quantum Studies, Chapman University". Chapman.edu. Retrieved 22 December 2017.
- ^ "Award winners: Clifford Paterson Lecture". Docs.google.com. Retrieved 22 December 2017.
External links
- Academic page University of Bristol
- Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman – Can Time go Backwards?