He attended the I Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. Mikołaja Kopernika (1st Secondary High School of
Mikołaj Kopernik
Nicolaus Copernicus (; pl, Mikołaj Kopernik; gml, Niklas Koppernigk, german: Nikolaus Kopernikus; 19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance polymath, active as a mathematician, astronomer, and Catholic canon, who formul ...
LANL
Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in ...
He was the leader of the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at Los Alamos from 1991 until he was made a Laboratory Fellow in the Theory Division in 1996. Zurek is currently a foreign associate of the ''Cosmology'''' Program'' at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. He served as a member of the external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute, and has been a visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Zurek co-organized the programs ''Quantum Coherence and Decoherence'' and ''Quantum Computing and Chaos'' at UCSB's Institute for Theoretical Physics.
He researches decoherence, physics of quantum and classical information, non-equilibrium dynamics of defect generation, and
astrophysics
Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline said, Astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the h ...
quantum
In physics, a quantum (plural quanta) is the minimum amount of any physical entity (physical property) involved in an interaction. The fundamental notion that a physical property can be "quantized" is referred to as "the hypothesis of quantizati ...
cannot be cloned (see the no cloning theorem). He also coined the terms einselection and quantum discord.
Zurek with his colleague Tom W. B. Kibble pioneered a paradigmatic framework for understanding defect generation in non-equilibrium processes, particularly, for understanding topological defects generated when a second-order phase transition point is crossed at a finite rate. The paradigm covers phenomena of enormous varieties and scales, ranging from structure formation in the early Universe to vortex generation in
superfluids
Superfluidity is the characteristic property of a fluid with zero viscosity which therefore flows without any loss of kinetic energy. When stirred, a superfluid forms vortices
In fluid dynamics, a vortex ( : vortices or vortexes) is a reg ...
. The key mechanism of critical defect generation is known as the Kibble–Zurek mechanism, and the resulting scaling laws known as the '' Kibble–Zurek scaling laws''.
He pointed out the fundamental role of environment in determining a set of special basis states immune to environmental decoherence (
pointer basis In quantum Darwinism and similar theories, pointer states are quantum states, sometimes of a measuring apparatus, if present, that are less perturbed by decoherence than other states, and are the quantum equivalents of the classical states of the ...
) which defines a classical measuring apparatus unambiguously. His work on decoherence paves a way towards the understanding of emergence of the classical world from the quantum mechanical one, getting rid of ad hoc demarcations between the two, like the one imposed by Niels Bohr in the famous Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The underlying mechanism proposed and developed by Zurek and his collaborators is known as quantum Darwinism. His work also has a lot of potential benefit to the emerging field of
quantum computing
Quantum computing is a type of computation whose operations can harness the phenomena of quantum mechanics, such as superposition, interference, and entanglement. Devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers. Though ...
.
He is a pioneer in information physics, edited an influential book on "Complexity, Entropy and the Physics of Information", and spearheaded the efforts that finally exorcised
Maxwell's demon
Maxwell's demon is a thought experiment that would hypothetically violate the second law of thermodynamics. It was proposed by the physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1867. In his first letter Maxwell called the demon a "finite being", while the ' ...
. Zurek showed that the demon can extract energy from its environment for "free" as long as it (a) is able to find structure in the environment, and (b) is able to compress this pattern (whereas the remaining code is more succinct than the brute-force description of the structure). In this way the demon can exploit thermal fluctuations. However, he showed that in thermodynamic equilibrium (the most likely state of the environment), the demon can at best break even, even if the information about the environment is compressed. As a result of his exploration, Zurek suggested redefining entropy and distinguishing between two parts: the part that we already know about the environment (measured in Kolmogorov complexity), and, conditioned on our knowledge, the remaining uncertainty (measured in Shannon entropy).
He is a staff scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and also a
Laboratory Fellow
A laboratory (; ; colloquially lab) is a facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific or technological research, experiments, and measurement may be performed. Laboratory services are provided in a variety of settings: physicia ...
(a prestigious distinction for a US National Laboratory scientist). Zurek was awarded the Albert Einstein Professorship Prize by the Foundation of the University of Ulm in Germany in 2010.
Honors
* 1996 Laboratory Fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory
* 2004 Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Lecturer
* 2005 Alexander von Humboldt Prize
* 2009 Fellow of the
American Physical Society
The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...
* 2009 Marian Smoluchowski Medal, highest prize of the Polish Physical Society
* 2010 Albert-Einstein Professorship, honorary professorship at the University of Ulm
* 2012 Order of Polonia Restituta, the Commander's Cross - one of Poland's highest Orders
* 2014 Los Alamos Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory
Books
* as editor with John Wheeler: ''Quantum theory of measurement.'' Princeton University Press 1983 2014 edition * as editor with A. van der Merwe, W. A. Miller: ''Between Quantum and Cosmos.'' Princeton University Press, 1988
* as editor: ''Complexity, Entropy and Physics of Information.'' Addison-Wesley 1990;
* as editor with J. J. Halliwell, J. Pérez-Mercader: ''Physical Origins of Time Asymmetry.'' Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1994
* as editor with H. Arodz and J. Dziarmaga: ''Patterns of Symmetry Breaking'', NATO ASI series volume (Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, 2003) ; e-book