Nicolas Gisin

Nicolas Gisin (born 1952) is a Swiss physicist and professor at the University of Geneva working on the foundations of quantum mechanics, and quantum information and communication. His work includes both experimental and theoretical physics. He contributed work in the fields of experimental quantum cryptography and long distance quantum communication in standard telecom optical fibers. He co-founded ID Quantique, a spin-off company that provides quantum-based technologies.

Biography

Nicolas Gisin was born in Geneva on 29 May 1952. He received a degree in mathematics and a master's degree in physics, before receiving his Ph.D. degree in Physics from the University of Geneva in 1981 for his dissertation in quantum and Statistical physics. After several years in the software and optical communication industries, Gisin joined th
Group of Applied Physics at the University of Geneva
in 1994, where he started working in optics. Since 2000, he has been Director of the Department of Applied Physics, ⁣ leading a research group in Quantum information and quantum communication. Europe recognized his leadership by awarding him two successiv
ERC Advanced Grants
In 2009 he received the first biennial John Stewart Bell Prize. In 2011 he received the prize of the Geneva City. In 2014, Switzerland recognized his impact by awarding him the Swiss Science prize sponsored by the Foundation Marcel Benoist and delivered by the National Government.

In September 2014, Gisin published his book, calle
Quantum Chance
where he explains modern quantum physics and fascinating applications without using mathematics or difficult concepts. The text has been translated from French into English, German, Chinese, Korean and Russian.

Gisin's main hobby is field-hockey. He played at the top Swiss level and was president o
Servette HC
from 2000 to 2015, furthering his club to become the largest in Switzerland. In 2010 Servette HC was awarded the title “Club of the year” by the European Hockey Federation. In 2014 the team won the Swiss championship for the first time in the century long history of the club.

Research

* The era of long distance quantum communication was effectively started by Nicolas Gisin’s experiment of 1995 in which a quantum cryptographic signal was transmitted at a distance of 23 km over a commercial optical fiber under Lake Geneva. Next, he co-invented the so-called Plug-&-Play and Coherent One Way configurations for quantum key distribution thanks to which world records distances of 67 km and 307 km could be demonstrated.
* In 1997, Nicolas Gisin and his group demonstrated Bell inequality violations at a distance of over 10 km. This was the first time when quantum non-locality was demonstrated outside the lab; the distance was increased by about three orders of magnitude with respect to all previous experiments. This was followed by further experiments, ever strengthening the conclusion by excluding more and more sophisticated alternative models to quantum theory.
* In the early 2000s he was first in demonstrating quantum teleportation over long distances. In the latter experiment the receiving photon was already hundreds of meters away when the Bell state measurement that triggers the teleportation process was performed.
* The previous breakthroughs would not have been possible without single-photon detectors compatible with telecommunication optical fibers. When Gisin entered the field such detectors did not exist. Today, thanks to Gisin and his group at the University of Geneva, single-photon detectors at telecom wavelengths are commercially available.
* Nicolas Gisin’s work pushed optical fiber quantum communication almost to its limits. To go further one needs quantum memories and repeaters. His group invented an original quantum memory protocol using rare earth doped crystals and used it to demonstrate the first solid state quantum memory. Recently they entangled, first a photon with such a crystal, next two such crystals Heralded quantum entanglement between two crystals, I. Usmani, Ch. Clausen, F. Bussieres, N. Sangouard, M. Afzelius and N. Gisin, Nature Photonics 6, 234-237 (2012). and finally teleportated a photonic qubit into a solid-state quantum memory over a distance of 25 km.
* Schrödinger’s equation is a basic law of nature. Yet one may envisage that at a certain moment in the future novel discoveries may lead to its modification. The most natural such modification is introduction of non-linear terms. Another “Gisin theorem” states however that all deterministic nonlinear modifications of the Schrödinger equation necessarily activate quantum non-locality, leading to true violations of relativity.
* One of the most important characteristics of quantum information is the no-cloning theorem. Nicolas Gisin derived a bound on the fidelity of approximate quantum cloning from the relativistic no-signaling constraint.
* Nicolas Gisin contributed to relating non-locality to the security of quantum key distribution. This opened an entirely new field of research known as Device Independent Quantum Information Processing (DI-QIP).
* In 1984 Nicolas Gisin’s proposed stochastic Schrödinger equations and his subsequent work together with Ian C. Percival is now widely used in the study of the dynamics of open quantum systems.
* Before becoming a quantum engineer, Nicolas Gisin worked as a classical telecommunication engineer, first in industry, next at the University. In particular he invented a technique to measure Polarization Mode Dispersion (PDM) in optical fibers. This turned out to be an extremely important parameter of telecom fibers whose importance was initially underestimated. The technique was adopted as an international standard and was transferred to industry (first to a spin-off, next to the Canadian company EXFO). Still today it is the most used technique to characterize PMD. Being both a classical and quantum engineer, he applied the abstract concepts of quantum weak values to the field of classical telecommunication networks. Optical Telecom Networks as Weak Quantum Measurements with Post-selection, N. Brunner, A. Acin, D.Collins, N. Gisin et V. Scarani, Physical Review Letters, 91, 180402 (2003).

Awards

* Prize Dina Surdin, awarded by the Fondation Louis de Broglie, Paris, for his PhD thesis (1982)
* Product Performance Award, granted by Magazine PC Publishing for his work at the software company CPI (1988)
* Selected by the MIT Technology Review as representative of one of th
10 technologies that should “change the world”!
(2003)


for the European IST-QuCom project for “excellence in collaborative research” awarded by the European Commission (2004)
* Doctor Honoris Causa, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne (2004)

Prix Science de la Ville de Genève
Every 4 years the city of Geneva honours one Scientist living in Geneva. (2007)
* Fellow of the European Optical Society for “contribution to the foundation of quantum mechanics and its application” (2008)

ERC Advanced Grant
on “Quantum Correlations” (2008)


for Research on Fundamental Issues in Quantum Mechanics and their Applications (2009)

ERC Advanced Grant
on “Macroscopic Entanglement in Crystals” (2013)
* Selected as
Thomson-Reuters Highly Cited Researcher
(2014)

Swiss Science Prize 2014
awarded by th
foundation Marcel Benoist
This is the highest Swiss prize for all sciences, awarded once per year to a single person (2014)

Quantum Communication
Measurement and Computing award, QCMC’14 (2014)

Volta Medal
from the University of Pavia, Italy (2015)

References

External links

Group of Applied Physics
University of Geneva.
IDQ
ID-Quantique Cie.
Quantum Chance
non-locality, teleportation and other quantum marvels, Springer 2014.
Servette Field Hockey Club

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gisin, Nicolas
Scientists from Geneva
Swiss physicists
1952 births
Living people
Rare earth scientists