Davidovich, Luiz Research Professor

The theoretical contributions of Luiz Davidovich have led to new areas of research and groundbreaking experiments, of relevance to quantum information and, in particular, to the study of open systems, decoherence and the quantum-classical transition. The theme of decoherence has been frequently present in his work: he made important proposals of experiments on the role of environment in the emergence of the classical world from the quantum substrate. Some of his proposals in the area of cavity quantum electrodynamics, in collaboration with the group of Serge Haroche in Paris, were mentioned in the press release of the 2012 Nobel Prize. His work has had impact on laser theory, cavity quantum electrodynamics, quantum information, and quantum metrology. Examples are the theoretical analysis of the two-photon micromaser, confirmed by the experiment held at Ecole Normale Superieure, in Paris, in 1986; the introduction of the concept of quantum random walks; the first experimental proposal of teleportation; the proposal of an experimental demonstration of the dynamics of a "Schr?dinger cat" state of the electromagnetic field, also realized experimentally in Paris; developments on the theory of the laser; the work on the dynamics of entanglement under decoherence; and the theory of noisy quantum metrology, the last two developed with his group at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Theoretical results and experiments carried out in Rio de Janeiro, with his group, unveiled the subtle dynamics and the fragility of entangled states under noisy environments, and had a strong impact in the field of quantum information. Quantum sensing has been an important part of his work in the last few years, with theoretical contributions and experiments at the quantum optics lab of his group. An important paper published in Nature Physics by him and his collaborators derived an extension of the theory of quantum metrology to open systems. The theoretical and experimental work on entanglement has generated publications in Nature, Science, and Physical Review Letters, among other journals. He has also had an active role in the development of science in Brazil and in other developing countries. He has been Scientific Director of the National Institute for Science and Technology for Quantum Information, a Brazilian network that involves several institutions throughout the country, and contributed to the development and consolidation of this area of research in the country. He received the TWAS Physics Prize in 2001 and the Brazilian National Science Prize in 2010. He is foreign member of the USA National Academy of Sciences, the European Academy of Sciences, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is Fellow of the American Physical Society and of Optika (former Optical Society of America).