Antonio Acín

Institut de Ciències Fotòniques (ICFO)

Engineering Sciences

Antonio Acín is an ICREA Research Professor at ICFO-The Institute of Photonic Sciences. He has a degree in Physics from the Universitat de Barcelona (UB) and in Telecommunication Engineering from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. He got his PhD in Theoretical Physics in 2001 from the UB. After a post-doctoral stay in Geneva, in the group of Prof. Gisin (GAP-Optique), he joined ICFO in 2003. At ICFO, Acín leads the Quantum Information Theory group. He was awarded a Starting Grant and a Proof of Concept grant from the European Research Council (ERC), starting in 2008 and 2012, respectively. He has later been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant, starting in 2014.


Research interests

Most of the research work by Antonio Acín is in quantum information theory. This is a scientific area that studies how information is processed and transmitted when encoded on quantum particles. Using the quantum effects, new information tasks become possible: more powerful computers, unbreakable cryptography protocols and quantum teleportation. It is a very inter-disciplinary area combining tools and concepts from mathematics, computer science, physics and engineering. More recently, Acín’s research activity also covers aspects of foundations of quantum physics, quantum thermodynamics, many-body physics and quantum optics.

Selected publications

– Acín A, Cavalcanti D, Passaro E, Pironio S & Skrzypczyk P 2016, ‘Necessary detection efficiencies for secure quantum key distribution and bound randomness’, Physical Review A, 93, 1, 012319.

– Supic I, Augusiak R, Salavrakos A & Acín A 2016, ‘Self-testing protocols based on the chained Bell inequalities’, New Journal Of Physics, 18, 035013.

– Acín A, Pironio S, Vertesi T & Wittek P 2016, ‘Optimal randomness certification from one entangled bit’, Physical Review A, 93, 4, 040102.

– Mattar A & Acín A 2016, ‘Implementations for device-independent quantum key distribution’, Physica Scripta, 91, 4, 043003.

– Bendersky A, de la Torre G, Senno G, Figueira S & Acín A 2016, ‘Algorithmic Pseudorandomness in Quantum Setups’, Physical Review Letters, 116, 23, 230402.

– Augusiak R, Kolodynski J, Streltsov A, Bera MN, Acín A & Lewenstein M 2016, ‘Asymptotic role of entanglement in quantum metrology’, Physical Review A, 94, 1, 012339.

– Oszmaniec M, Augusiak R, Gogolin C, Kolodynski J, Acín A & Lewenstein M 2016, ‘Random bosonic states for robust quantum metrology’, Phys. Rev. X, vol. 6, pp 041044.

– Acín A & Masanes L 2016, ‘Certified randomness in quantum physics’, Nature, vol. 540, pp 213-219.