Nicolas Gisin was born in 1952. He is a Swiss physicist and a professor at the University of Geneva. He studies the basic ideas of quantum mechanics, quantum information, and communication. His work includes both doing experiments and developing theories in physics. He has contributed to research on experimental quantum cryptography and sending quantum information over long distances using regular telephone lines that use light. He also helped start a company called ID Quantique, which provides technologies based on quantum principles.

Biography

Nicolas Gisin was born in Geneva on May 29, 1952. He earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and a master's degree in physics before completing his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Geneva in 1981. His dissertation focused on quantum and statistical physics. After working in the software and optical communication industries for several years, Gisin joined the Group of Applied Physics at the University of Geneva in 1994, where he began working in the field of optics. Since 2000, he has been the Director of the Department of Applied Physics, leading a research group in quantum information and quantum communication. The European Research Council awarded him two consecutive ERC Advanced Grants. In 2009, he received the first John Stewart Bell Prize, which is given every two years. In 2011, he was honored with the Geneva City Prize. In 2014, Switzerland awarded him the Swiss Science Prize, which is sponsored by the Foundation Marcel Benoist and presented by the National Government.

On July 17, 2014, Gisin published his book, Quantum Chance: Nonlocality, Teleportation, and Other Quantum Marvels, in which he explains modern quantum physics and its uses without using math or hard ideas. The text was translated from French into English, German, Chinese, Korean, and Russian.

Gisin played field hockey at the top level in Switzerland and served as president of Servette HC from 2000 to 2015, helping the club become the largest in Switzerland. In 2010, Servette HC was named "Club of the Year" by the European Hockey Federation. In 2014, the team won the Swiss championship for the first time in its 100-year history.

Research

• In 1995, Gisin sent a quantum encryption signal over a distance of 23 km through a commercial optical fiber under Lake Geneva. Later, his team increased this distance to 67 km and then to 307 km using two different methods for quantum key distribution.
• In 1997, Nicolas Gisin and his team showed that quantum non-locality could be observed over a distance of more than 10 km. This was the first time quantum non-locality was demonstrated outside a laboratory. The distance was much longer than in previous experiments, and later experiments further supported the idea that quantum theory is correct by ruling out other possible explanations.
• In the early 2000s, Gisin was the first to demonstrate quantum teleportation over long distances. In one experiment, the receiving photon was hundreds of meters away when the process that started the teleportation was completed.
• Earlier achievements in quantum communication were not possible without single-photon detectors that work with telecommunication optical fibers. When Gisin began his research, such detectors did not exist. Today, thanks to Gisin and his team at the University of Geneva, these detectors are available for commercial use.
• Nicolas Gisin’s work brought optical fiber quantum communication very close to its maximum potential. To advance further, quantum memories and repeaters are needed. His team developed a new method for quantum memory using rare earth doped crystals and used it to create the first solid-state quantum memory. Recently, they entangled a photon with such a crystal, then two crystals, and finally teleported a photonic qubit into a solid-state memory over 25 km.
• Schrödinger’s equation is a fundamental rule in nature. However, future discoveries might change it. One possible change involves adding non-linear terms. A "Gisin theorem" shows that any deterministic non-linear changes to Schrödinger’s equation would cause true violations of relativity by increasing quantum non-locality.
• A key feature of quantum information is the no-cloning theorem. Nicolas Gisin found a limit on how accurately quantum cloning can be done based on rules about not sending signals faster than light.
• Nicolas Gisin helped connect non-locality to the security of quantum key distribution, working with Antonio Acín, Valério Scarani, Nicolas Brunner, and Stephano Pironio. This research created a new field called Device Independent Quantum Information Processing (DI-QIP).
• In 1984, Nicolas Gisin proposed stochastic Schrödinger equations. His later work with Ian C. Percival is now widely used to study how open quantum systems change over time.
• Gisin developed a method to measure Polarization Mode Dispersion (PMD) in optical fibers. This parameter was initially overlooked but is now critical for telecom fibers. His technique became an international standard and was adopted by industry. He also applied quantum weak values, a concept from quantum theory, to improve classical telecommunication networks.
• In 2019, Nicolas Gisin showed that a new type of nonlocality exists in quantum networks.
• In 2021, Nicolas Gisin proved that Real Quantum Theory, which uses real numbers instead of complex numbers, cannot explain all the correlations found in quantum networks. This work was done with Antonio Acín.

Awards

• Prize Dina Surdin, given by the Fondation Louis de Broglie, Paris, for his PhD thesis in 1982
• Product Performance Award, given by Magazine PC Publishing for his work at the software company CPI in 1988
• Selected by the MIT Technology Review as one of ten technologies that could change the world in 2003
• Descartes Prize for the European IST-QuCom project for "excellence in collaborative research," given by the European Commission in 2004
• Doctor Honoris Causa, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne in 2004
• Prix Science de la Ville de Genève in 2007
• Fellow of the European Optical Society for "contribution to the foundation of quantum mechanics and its application" in 2008
• ERC Advanced Grant on "Quantum Correlations" in 2008
• John Stewart Bell Prize Archived 2014-06-04 at the Wayback Machine for research on fundamental issues in quantum mechanics and their applications in 2009
• ERC Advanced Grant on "Macroscopic Entanglement in Crystals" in 2013
• Selected as a Thomson-Reuters Highly Cited Researcher in 2014
• Swiss Science Prize 2014, given by the foundation Marcel Benoist. This is the highest Swiss prize for all sciences, given once per year to a single person in 2014
• Quantum Communication Archived 2015-06-07 at the Wayback Machine, Measurement and Computing award, QCMC'14 in 2014
• Volta Medal from the University of Pavia, Italy in 2015