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. After a post-doctoral stay in Geneva, 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 prize Rei Jaume I in the category of 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
- Barberà-Rodríguez J, Zambrano L, Acín A & Farina D 2025, 'Boosting projective methods for quantum process and detector tomography', Physical review research, 7 - 1 -013208.
- Pascual-García C, Bäuml S, Araújo M, Liss R & Acín A 2025, 'Improved finite-size key rates for discrete-modulated continuous-variable quantum key distribution under coherent attacks', Physical review a, 111 - 2 - 022610.
- Rivera-Dean J, Steffinlongo A, Parker-Sánchez N, Acín A & Oudot E 2025, 'Device-independent quantum key distribution beyond qubits', New journal of physics, 27 - 5 - 054512.
- Mortimer L, Farina D, Di Bello G, Jansen D, Leitherer A, Mujal P & Acín A 2025, 'Certifying steady-state properties of open quantum systems', Physical review research, 7 - 3 - 033237.
- Heightman T, Jiang E & Acín A 2025, 'Solving the quantum many-body Hamiltonian learning problem with neural differential equations', Quantum science and technology, 10 - 4 - 045072.
- Macarone-Palmieri A, Zambrano L, Lewenstein M, Acín A & Farina D 2025, 'Deep neural network-assisted improvement of quantum compressed sensing tomography', Physica scripta, 100 - 11 - 115106.