Sandu Popescu

Sandu Popescu
Born 1956
Oradea, Romania
Residence U.K.
Fields Physicist
Institutions University of Bristol
Doctoral advisor Yakir Aharonov
Known for

Quantum nonlocality
Quantum teleportation

PR Boxes
Notable awards 2011 John Stewart Bell Prize[1]

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

Academic Career

Sandu Popescu is Professor of Physics at the University of Bristol since 1999. He studied with Yakir Aharonov, followed by post-doctoral positions with François Englert, and then with Abner Shimony and Bahaa Saleh. From 1996-99 he was Reader at the Isaac Newton Institute, University of Cambridge.

Research

Popescu’s main research interests are 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 other physicists, he established the quantitative theory of entanglement by the discovery of entanglement concentration[2], dilution and purification (distillation)[3]. 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[4] (the von Neuman 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[5]. 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[6], 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[7]. 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[8]. (A similar proof is due to Goldstein et. al.[9])

With Yakir Aharonov and his group, Popescu discovered a number of quantum paradoxes, such as the quantum Cheshire Cat[10][11], and the quantum pigeonhole principle[12][13]. They also introduced the idea of superposition of time evolutions[14].

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[15]. 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[16].

More recently Popescu’s interest is in the thermodynamics of quantum systems. He described the smallest possible refrigerator[17] and extended the laws of thermodynamics to individual quantum systems[18].

Popescu is co-editor and co-author of the first textbook on quantum information and computation[19].

Prizes

Writings

References

  1. ↑ "2011 John Stewart Bell Prize".
  2. ↑ 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. doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.53.2046.
  3. ↑ 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. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.76.722.
  4. ↑ Popescu, Sandu; Rohrlich, Daniel (1 November 1997). "Thermodynamics and the measure of entanglement". Physical Review A 56 (5): R3319–R3321. doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.56.R3319.
  5. ↑ Popescu, Sandu; Rohrlich, Daniel (March 1994). "Quantum nonlocality as an axiom". Foundations of Physics 24 (3): 379–385. doi:10.1007/BF02058098.
  6. ↑ 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. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.80.1121.
  7. ↑ Linden, Noah; Popescu, Sandu; Short, Anthony J.; Winter, Andreas (4 June 2009). "Quantum mechanical evolution towards thermal equilibrium". Physical Review E 79 (6). doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.79.061103.
  8. ↑ Popescu, Sandu; Short, Anthony J.; Winter, Andreas (29 October 2006). "Entanglement and the foundations of statistical mechanics". Nature Physics 2 (11): 754–758. doi:10.1038/nphys444.
  9. ↑ Goldstein, Sheldon; Lebowitz, Joel L.; Tumulka, Roderich; Zanghì, Nino (8 February 2006). "Canonical Typicality". Physical Review Letters 96 (5). doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.050403.
  10. ↑ Aharonov, Yakir; Popescu, Sandu; Rohrlich, Daniel; Skrzypczyk, Paul (7 November 2013). "Quantum Cheshire Cats". New Journal of Physics 15 (11): 113015. doi:10.1088/1367-2630/15/11/113015.
  11. ↑ "'Quantum Cheshire Cat' becomes reality".
  12. ↑ 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. doi:10.1073/pnas.1522411112.
  13. ↑ "Pigeon paradox reveals quantum cosmic connections".
  14. ↑ 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. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.64.2965.
  15. ↑ Massar, S.; Popescu, S. (20 February 1995). "Optimal Extraction of Information from Finite Quantum Ensembles". Physical Review Letters 74 (8): 1259–1263. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.74.1259.
  16. ↑ Gisin, N.; Popescu, S. (12 July 1999). "Spin Flips and Quantum Information for Antiparallel Spins". Physical Review Letters 83 (2): 432–435. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.83.432.
  17. ↑ Linden, Noah; Popescu, Sandu; Skrzypczyk, Paul (21 September 2010). "How Small Can Thermal Machines Be? The Smallest Possible Refrigerator". Physical Review Letters 105 (13). doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.130401.
  18. ↑ Skrzypczyk, Paul; Short, Anthony J.; Popescu, Sandu (27 June 2014). "Work extraction and thermodynamics for individual quantum systems". Nature Communications 5. doi:10.1038/ncomms5185.
  19. ↑ Popescu, editors, Hoi-Kwong Lo, Tim Spiller, Sandu (1998). Introduction To Quantum Computation And Information. Singapore: World Scientific. ISBN 978-981-238-525-3.
  20. ↑ "Royal Society announces next round of prestigious Wolfson Research Merit Awards".
  21. ↑ "Professor Popescu awarded ERC Advanced Research Grant".
  22. ↑ "Members, Institute of Quantum Studies, Chapman University".
  23. ↑ "Award winners : Clifford Paterson Lecture".

External links

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