Research

Since the seminal work of Shannon in 1948, information science has become a florishing field, with numerous applications ranging from error correcting codes used in space exploration to digital communication and storage systems. Its ramifications are incredibly broad as Shannon's theory is linked for example to communication engineering, statistics, thermodynamics, or even biology. Still, it was realized only one decade ago that it is also closely tight to quantum physics, as information theory and quantum mechanics merge very smoothly into a new theory, namely quantum information theory. This new field is fascinating for at least three reasons. First, it provides a method for realizing communication and computation tasks that are classically impossible, such as distributing a secret key over a vulnerable channel or factoring a large number in polynomial time. Second, it gives a new language to understand - and new tools to analyze - the peculiarities of quantum mechanics such as entanglement and nonlocality. And last but not least, the conceptual issues that it raises are interesting for their own sake!

The Centre for Quantum Information and Communication (QuIC) has been working on quantum information theory for several years, with research contributions ranging from fundamental questions such as quantum measurement, quantum entanglement, or quantum nonlocality to more information-flavored issues such as quantum cloning, quantum cryptography, or quantum algorithms. More recently, it has also started an experimental quantum information activity together with the ULB optics laboratory. It currently holds two patents and has published numerous scientific papers, among which two in the journal Nature, two in Nature Photonics, and one in Nature Communications.

A large fraction of QuIC research activities over the last few years has focused on quantum information with continuous-variable carriers. In particular, the QuIC has reported on the first demonstration of continuous-variable quantum key distribution in collaboration with the Institut d'Optique d'Orsay. The QuIC initiated in 2002 a series of conferences especially devoted to continuous-variable quantum information processing, which now runs on an annual basis, and has coordinated three European research projects on this topic since 2004.

Nicolas J. Cerf
Group leader

Publications - list of publications of the members of QuIC
Collaborations - list of our colleagues from the institutions we collaborate with
Funding - list of our research projects supported by various funding bodies
Conferences - list of international conferences we have organized
In the Media - QuIC in the media, tutorials