Plenary paper: Quantum information: The next frontier

Karl Svozil

Anton Zeilinger

For a long time the conceptually challenging predictions of quantum physics for individual experiments have been the issue of such bizarre discussions as Schrodinger's cat gedanken experiment. There, quantum superposition would imply the co-existence of the states of a live cat and a dead cat, quantum randomness would imply the fundamental unpredictability of the results of an observation of the cat's real and factual properties, and entanglement means that the state of the cat, dead or alive, is entangled with the state of an radioactive atom. Interestingly these same concepts, randomness, superposition, and entanglement, have become cornerstone concepts in a new quantum information technology. The most important applications are quantum cryptography, quantum computation, and quantum teleportation. Quantum cryptography permits the encoding of confidential information in a way that its security against eavesdropping is guaranteed by the laws of physics. A quantum computer would be able to operate in a quantum superposition of many different states thus enabling exponential speedup for some problems. Quantum teleportation allows transferring directly the quantum state of an individual system onto a distant one thus providing an ideal way for quantum computers to communicate with each other.

Dohyun Kim, Jungho Kang, Tae‐Woo Kim +2 more

Harry J. Kimble

A brief overview is given of the research activities in the Quantum Optics Group at Caltech related to the new science of Quantum Information.

Karl Hess

There was a follow-up to the Leiden conference organized in Prague (Frontiers of Quantum and Mesoscopic Thermodynamics), and Vaclav Spicka sent me an e-mail with an invitation to give one of the plenary presentations. Zeilinger was also to give one in the same session, and Hans and Kristel told me that they would attend and give a presentation too. Looking forward to see also Andrei Khrennikov, Theo Nieuwenhuizen, and many other friends, I accepted immediately and started to prepare a presentation in collaborationwith Hans and Kristel. I alsowanted to go to Prague for two personal reasons. My grandmother was Czech and I had never been in Prague, because of the problems with the “iron curtain” that fortunately did not exist anymore. The second personal reason was that Robert Basler, my best friend in Illinois who had died the previous year, had visited Prague, where he had lived in his youth, as his last travel wish and had told me how great this city was. I also was looking forward to visit my mother in Vienna on my way back to Hawaii. Sylvia had collected mileage upgrades so that I could fly first class. Going any other way from Hawaii is painful, because of the enormous distances involved; one travels around half the world. I flew from Hawaii to San Francisco and stayed there for a night, and the next day to Frankfurt and Vienna, from where I took the bus. When I finally arrived at the hotel in Prague after a total of two travel days, I was pretty tired, in spite of the fact that I had my own bed on the 380 Airbus from San Francisco to Frankfurt.

Diogo O. Soares-Pinto