Quantum technologies: from technological innovations to a better understanding of quantum theory

  • Dipartimento di Fisica - Aula Magna
  • Seminar

Speakers

Pascal Degiovanni

Details

Abstract

Over the last 30 years, a new field called «quantum technologies» has emerged which aims at harnessing the power of quantum interferences in order to communicate, compute, simulate physical systems, and perform measurements
more efficiently than with any available technology available today. While the technological revolution associated with the invention of the transistor and the laser have been possible thanks to our understanding of condensed matter 
and light/matter interactions based on quantum mechanics, the «second quantum revolution» goes beyond that by exploiting many-body quantum interferences.
In this seminar, I will discuss how many-body quantum interferences can be used for computing, emphasizing what a quantum computer can do and what it cannot do. I will also review some of the developments of quantum simulations as well as of quantum sensing, emphasizing once again the importance of many-body quantum interferences. Then, I will explain how this second 
quantum revolution has also lead us to a better understanding of quantum theory by reconsidering the basic problem of the emergence of a classical world within a quantum universe using ideas and concepts underlying quantum technologies.

Bio dello speaker

Pascal Degiovanni is a CNRS researcher director working on the Theoretical Physics team of the Physics Laboratory at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Lyon.
He did his PhD in the ENS Paris on Conformal and Topological Field Theory. In the first part of his career, his research was focused on Mathematical Physics and more precisely on the relation between geometry, topology and quantum field theory.
Towards the end of the 90s he shifted his research interests towards Mesoscopic Physics. Because of technological progresses in nano-fabrication and radio-frequency techniques, it became possible to explore the physics of 
microcircuits in the regime where quantum effects are dominant and even to prepare, manipulate and measure the quantum state of electric circuits.
His present research is mainly focused on electron quantum optics, an emerging field that aims at the manipulation of the quantum state of single to few electrons in a conductor.
He is author, together with N. Portier, C. Cabart, A. Feller and B. Roussel, of the book: "Physique Quantique, Information et Calcul. Des concepts aux applications".