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. His research has been awarded with 4 grants from the European Research Council: 1 Starting, 1 Proof of Concept, 1 Consolidator and 1 Advanced Grant, the latter starting in 2020. He also received an AXA Chair in Quantum Information Science in 2016. Finally, in 2024 Acín was awarded with the Rei Jaume I prize for Basic Research.
Research interests
Acín’s main research interest is in quantum information theory. This is a scientific area that studies how information is processed and transmitted when encoded on quantum particles. Using quantum effects, new information tasks become possible: more powerful computers, novel cryptographic protocols with unprucedented levels of security or more precise sensing devices. It is a highly inter-disciplinary area combining tools and concepts from mathematics, computer science, physics and engineering. Acín’s research activity also covers aspects of foundations of quantum physics, quantum thermodynamics, many-body physics and quantum optics.
Selected publications
– Wang J, Surace J, Frérot I, Legat B, Renou MO, Magron V & Acín A 2024, ‘Certifying Ground-State Properties of Many-Body Systems‘, Physical review x, 14 – 3 -031006.
– Parella-Dilmé T, Kottmann K, Zambrano L, Mortimer L, Kottmann JS & Acín A 2024, ‘Reducing Entanglement with Physically Inspired Fermion-To-Qubit Mappings‘, Prx quantum, 5 – 3 -030333.
– Zambrano L, Farina D, Pagliaro E, Taddei MM & Acín A 2024, ‘Certification of quantum state functions under partial information‘, Quantum, 8 -1442.
– Castellano R, Farina D, Giovannetti V & Acin A 2024, ‘Extended Local Ergotropy‘, Physical review letters, 133 – 15 -150402.
– Jansen D, Heightman T, Mortimer L, Perito I & Acín A 2024, ‘Qudit-inspired optimization for graph coloring‘, Physical review applied, 22 – 6 – 064002.
– Bäuml S, Pascual-García C, Wright V, Fawzi O & Acín A 2024, ‘Security of discrete-modulated continuous-variable quantum key distribution‘, Quantum, vol. 8, pp. 1418.
– Meng SY, Curran F, Senno G, Wright VJ, Farkas M, Scarani V & Acín A 2024, ‘Maximal intrinsic randomness of a quantum state‘, Physical review a, 110 – 1 – L010403.
– Farina D, Benazout B, Centrone F, Acín A 2024, ‘Thermodynamic precision in the nonequilibrium exchange scenario‘, Physical review e, 109 – 3 – 034112.