You are cordially invited to attend the final public STIAS lecture of 2018. This presents an opportunity to academics, researchers and students at SU and in the Western Cape, as well as members of the public, to learn more about the work of STIAS fellows and associates.
On this occasion Professor Jian-Wei Pan Director: Division of Quantum Physics and Quantum Information University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei
will present a talk with the title:
From Einstein's Curiosity to New Quantum Technologies
Date Monday 5 November 2018
Time 18:00
Venue STIAS Auditorium, Wallenberg Research Centre, 10 Marais Street, Stellenbosch
We look forward to welcoming you at this event – not to be missed!
Seating for the event is limited and must be reserved in advance:
For more information, please visit stias.ac.za/news/ and stias.ac.za/events
Abstract
Quantum information science and technology are emerging and fascinating technologies formed by combining coherent manipulating of individual quantum systems and information technology. This enables secure quantum cryptography (quantum communication), super-fast quantum computing, revealing the laws of complex physical systems (quantum simulation), and improving measurement precision (quantum metrology) to beat classical limits. This presentation will highlight some of our progress with quantum communication, quantum computing, quantum simulation and quantum metrology, based on photons and atoms.
From a fundamental point of view one is led to the concept of quantum entanglement as applied to the quantum superposition principle for a multi-particle system. The associated 'spooky action at a distance' phenomena referred to by Einstein, is often explained by the seemingly reasonable assumptions of "local realism". In this context the inequalities proposed by John Bell and others provide immediate tests for the correctness of quantum mechanics.
Many efforts address loophole-free experimental tests of Bell's inequalities, attempting to close various loopholes; some are still to be settled, including the freedom of choice loophole.
Tests are on-going, but already developed ground-breaking technologies for coherent manipulation of quantum systems offer elegant and feasible solutions to the increasing needs for computational power and information security. Based on state-of-the-art fiber technology and rich fiber resources, we have managed to achieve prevailing quantum communication with realistic devices in a real-life situation. This includes developing a decoy state scheme over 100 km fibre, extending its employment to a metropolitan area network, as well as maintaining Measurement Device Independent Quantum Key Distribution (MDI-QKD) over 400km. We are also developing practically useful quantum repeaters that combine entanglement swapping, entanglement purification, and efficient and long-lived quantum memory for ultra-long distance quantum communication.
Another goal is to attain global quantum communication via satellite. We have spent the past decade performing systematic ground tests for satellite-based quantum communication. Our efforts finally ensured the successful launch of the Micius satellite which very recently was operated as a trustful relay for intercontinental QKD between Beijing and Vienna over a distance of 7600 km. Future prospects include building a global quantum communication infrastructure with satellite and fiber networks, quantum computing through coherent manipulation of more than 50 qubits to exceed the simulating power of the best current supercomputers, reaching “quantum supremacy", and a Bell-test experiment with a human as observer at a distance of the order of one light-second.
Jian-Wei Pan is Director: Division of Quantum Physics and Quantum Information at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei and holds a PhD from the University of Vienna (1999). During his early career in Austria as a PhD student and later as a senior scientist, Pan and his colleagues achieved a seminal series of breakthroughs in quantum communication. His first quantum teleportation experiment reported in 1997 was selected by Nature as one of the 21 classic papers in physics published by Nature in 20th Century. Pan performed the first entanglement swapping experiment, which was later selected by Science magazine as one of the top ten breakthroughs of 1998. These experiments established the fascinating scientific possibility of transferring quantum states of one object to another over arbitrarily long distances in a disembodied way, ie without physically transporting the object itself.
He has focused on developing experimental methods to coherently control multiple photons for the creation of multiparticle entanglement – a concept first recognized by Einstein, Schrödinger et al. and is at the heart of quantum physics. He has developed the world's first three- and four-photon entanglement, and used them to perform the first Greenberger- Horne-Zeilinger experiment that showed stark contradictions between Einstein's local hidden variable theory and quantum mechanics. He theoretically proposed, and experimentally demonstrated his own idea of entanglement purification of arbitrarily noisy entangled state using only linear optics. These work offers a powerful tool to beat the undesired abundant decoherence effects for achieving long-distance quantum communication and scalable quantum computation.
Pan was appointed as Yangtze Chair Professor of Physics by the Chinese Ministry of Education in 2002. There he brought research on quantum information science in China to a world leading level. He accumulated records for creating the world's first five-, six-, eight-, and ten- photon entanglement. Pan has developed the first s-shell pulsed resonant excitation method—the cleanest way—to generate single photons with near-unity indistinguishability, which is now adopted by nearly all the leading groups worldwide. By combining with solid- state cavity-QED, he created the first single-photon source that simultaneously combines near-perfect single-photon purity, indistinguishability, and efficiency (selected as Optics in 2016 by OPN), opening the way to multi-photon experiments with semiconductor quantum dots. These experiments gave rise to further technologies for new quantum information protocols, such as optical quantum computation.
Pan has authored more than 190 articles, including 14 in Nature/Science and 24 in Nature Physics/Nature Photonics/Nature Nanotechnology. His work in the field of quantum information and quantum communication has been selected by Nature in “A celebration of Physics" (1999), as “Feature of the year" (2012), and “the science events that shaped the year" (2016), by Science as “Breakthrough of the year" (1998), by the American Physical Society as “The top physics stories of the year" (5 times), by the Institute of Physics as “Breakthrough of the year" or “Highlights of the year" (6 times), and by Scientific American as “2016 World Changing Ideas".
Jian-Wei Pan is currently a Professor of Physics of University of Science and Technology of China, an Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and a Fellow of the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). He serves as the Director of the CAS Centre for Excellence and Innovation in Quantum Information and Quantum Physics, and the Chief Scientist for the Quantum Science Satellite Project, and the Beijing-to-Shanghai 2000-km Quantum Communication Backbone Project.
