Sandu Popescu

Sandu Popescu FRS[3] (born 1956 in Oradea, Romania) is a Romanian-British physicist working in the foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum information.[4]

Sandu Popescu

FRS
Sandu Popescu at the Royal Society admissions day in London, July 2017
Born1956 (age 63–64)
Oradea, Romania
Known for
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsPhysics
InstitutionsUniversity of Bristol
Doctoral advisorYakir Aharonov
Websitesandupopescu.com

Career and research

Sandu Popescu has been Professor of Physics at the University of Bristol since 1999. He studied with Yakir Aharonov, followed by postdoctoral research positions with François Englert, and then with Abner Shimony and Bahaa Saleh. From 1996 to 1999 he was Reader at the Isaac Newton Institute, University of Cambridge. Popescu's main body of work is in the foundations of quantum mechanics and quantum information, where he was one of the pioneers of the field, and more recently in the foundations of statistical mechanics and quantum thermodynamics.

His most important contributions are in the area of quantum nonlocality. In collaboration with Daniel Rohrlich, simultaneously and independently from Nicolas Gisin, Popescu showed that non-locality is a generic property of nature: every entangled pure quantum state (i. e. almost every pure state) has nonlocal properties.[5] In collaboration with Charles Bennett, Herbert Bernstein, and Benjamin Schumacher, he established the quantitative theory of entanglement by the discovery of entanglement concentration[6] and dilution, and together with Bennett, Schumacher, Gilles Brassard, John Smolin, and William Wootters a method of entanglement purification (distillation).[7] These works introduced the idea of entanglement manipulation by local operations and classical communication (LOCC), and introduced the notions of entanglement of distillation and entanglement of formation. He also proved that there is a unique measure of entanglement for pure bi-partite quantum states[8] (the von Neumann entropy of the reduced density matrix).

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.[9] 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,[10] 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.[11] 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.[12] (A similar proof is due to Goldstein et al.[13])

With Yakir Aharonov and his group, Popescu discovered a number of quantum paradoxes, such as the quantum Cheshire Cat,[14][15] and the quantum pigeonhole principle.[16][17] They also introduced the idea of superposition of time evolutions.[18]

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.[19] 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.[20]

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,[21] and together with Skrzypczyk and Anthony J. Short, extended the laws of thermodynamics to individual quantum systems.[22]

Popescu is co-editor and co-author of the first textbook on quantum information and computation.[23]

In 2015, Popescu appeared on Science Channel's Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman.

Awards and honours

Popescu has won numerous awards and honours including:

gollark: USING it usefully requires, I think, rather good™ metalworking capabilities.
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gollark: A philosophy is a kind of monoid, in the category of endofunctors.
gollark: Am I REALLY going to have to use the random HP program™ with its accursed XML files™ to reset the password on this?
gollark: A warehouse of random modern trash, of course.

References
  1. "2011 John Stewart Bell Prize". Cqiqc.physics.utoronto.ca. Retrieved 22 December 2017.
  2. "2016 Dirac Medal". Iop.org. Retrieved 22 December 2017.
  3. Anon (2017). "Sandu Popescu". Royalsociety.org. Royal Society. Archived from the original on 5 May 2017.
  4. with H.-K. Lo, T. Spiller (Editor) Introduction to Quantum Information and Computation , World Scientific, 1998.
  5. Popescu, Sandu; Rohrlich, Daniel (June 1992). "Generic quantum nonlocality". Physics Letters A. 166 (5–6): 293–297. Bibcode:1992PhLA..166..293P. doi:10.1016/0375-9601(92)90711-T.
  6. Bennett, Charles H.; Bernstein, Herbert J.; Popescu, Sandu; Schumacher, Benjamin (1 April 1996). "Concentrating partial entanglement by local operations". Physical Review A. 53 (4): 2046–2052. arXiv:quant-ph/9511030. Bibcode:1996PhRvA..53.2046B. doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.53.2046. PMID 9913106.
  7. Bennett, Charles H.; Brassard, Gilles; Popescu, Sandu; Schumacher, Benjamin; Smolin, John A.; Wootters, William K. (29 January 1996). "Purification of Noisy Entanglement and Faithful Teleportation via Noisy Channels". Physical Review Letters. 76 (5): 722–725. arXiv:quant-ph/9511027. Bibcode:1996PhRvL..76..722B. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.76.722. PMID 10061534.
  8. Popescu, Sandu; Rohrlich, Daniel (1 November 1997). "Thermodynamics and the measure of entanglement". Physical Review A. 56 (5): R3319–R3321. arXiv:quant-ph/9610044. Bibcode:1997PhRvA..56.3319P. doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.56.R3319.
  9. Popescu, Sandu; Rohrlich, Daniel (March 1994). "Quantum nonlocality as an axiom". Foundations of Physics. 24 (3): 379–385. Bibcode:1994FoPh...24..379P. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.508.4193. doi:10.1007/BF02058098.
  10. Boschi, D.; Branca, S.; De Martini, F.; Hardy, L.; Popescu, S. (9 February 1998). "Experimental Realization of Teleporting an Unknown Pure Quantum State via Dual Classical and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Channels". Physical Review Letters. 80 (6): 1121–1125. arXiv:quant-ph/9710013. Bibcode:1998PhRvL..80.1121B. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.80.1121.
  11. Linden, Noah; Popescu, Sandu; Short, Anthony J.; Winter, Andreas (4 June 2009). "Quantum mechanical evolution towards thermal equilibrium". Physical Review E. 79 (6): 061103. arXiv:0812.2385. Bibcode:2009PhRvE..79f1103L. doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.79.061103. PMID 19658469.
  12. Popescu, Sandu; Short, Anthony J.; Winter, Andreas (29 October 2006). "Entanglement and the foundations of statistical mechanics". Nature Physics. 2 (11): 754–758. arXiv:quant-ph/0511225. Bibcode:2006NatPh...2..754P. doi:10.1038/nphys444.
  13. Goldstein, Sheldon; Lebowitz, Joel L.; Tumulka, Roderich; Zanghì, Nino (8 February 2006). "Canonical Typicality". Physical Review Letters. 96 (5): 050403. arXiv:cond-mat/0511091. Bibcode:2006PhRvL..96e0403G. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.050403. PMID 16486907.
  14. Aharonov, Yakir; Popescu, Sandu; Rohrlich, Daniel; Skrzypczyk, Paul (7 November 2013). "Quantum Cheshire Cats". New Journal of Physics. 15 (11): 113015. arXiv:1202.0631. Bibcode:2013NJPh...15k3015A. doi:10.1088/1367-2630/15/11/113015.
  15. "'Quantum Cheshire Cat' becomes reality".
  16. Aharonov, Yakir; Colombo, Fabrizio; Popescu, Sandu; Sabadini, Irene; Struppa, Daniele C.; Tollaksen, Jeff (19 January 2016). "Quantum violation of the pigeonhole principle and the nature of quantum correlations". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 113 (3): 532–535. Bibcode:2016PNAS..113..532A. doi:10.1073/pnas.1522411112. PMC 4725468. PMID 26729862.
  17. "Pigeon paradox reveals quantum cosmic connections". Newscientist.com. Retrieved 22 December 2017.
  18. Aharonov, Yakir; Anandan, Jeeva; Popescu, Sandu; Vaidman, Lev (18 June 1990). "Superpositions of time evolutions of a quantum system and a quantum time-translation machine". Physical Review Letters. 64 (25): 2965–2968. Bibcode:1990PhRvL..64.2965A. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.64.2965. PMID 10041860.
  19. Massar, S.; Popescu, S. (20 February 1995). "Optimal Extraction of Information from Finite Quantum Ensembles" (PDF). Physical Review Letters. 74 (8): 1259–1263. Bibcode:1995PhRvL..74.1259M. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.74.1259. PMID 10058975.
  20. Gisin, N.; Popescu, S. (12 July 1999). "Spin Flips and Quantum Information for Antiparallel Spins". Physical Review Letters. 83 (2): 432–435. arXiv:quant-ph/9901072. Bibcode:1999PhRvL..83..432G. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.83.432.
  21. Linden, Noah; Popescu, Sandu; Skrzypczyk, Paul (21 September 2010). "How Small Can Thermal Machines Be? The Smallest Possible Refrigerator". Physical Review Letters. 105 (13): 130401. arXiv:0908.2076. Bibcode:2010PhRvL.105m0401L. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.130401. PMID 21230755.
  22. Skrzypczyk, Paul; Short, Anthony J.; Popescu, Sandu (2014). "Work extraction and thermodynamics for individual quantum systems". Nature Communications. 5: 4185. arXiv:1307.1558. Bibcode:2014NatCo...5.4185S. doi:10.1038/ncomms5185. PMID 24969511.
  23. Popescu, editors, Hoi-Kwong Lo, Tim Spiller, Sandu (1998). Introduction To Quantum Computation And Information. Singapore: World Scientific. ISBN 978-981-238-525-3.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
  24. "Cozzarelli Prize". Pnas.org. Retrieved 22 December 2017.
  25. "Royal Society announces next round of prestigious Wolfson Research Merit Awards". Royalsociety.org. Retrieved 22 December 2017.
  26. "Sandu Popescu". Cqiqc.physics.utoronto.ca. Retrieved 22 December 2017.
  27. "Professor Popescu awarded ERC Advanced Research Grant". Bristol.ac.uk. Retrieved 22 December 2017.
  28. "Members, Institute of Quantum Studies, Chapman University". Chapman.edu. Retrieved 22 December 2017.
  29. "Award winners: Clifford Paterson Lecture". Docs.google.com. Retrieved 22 December 2017.
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