Some context

Quantum Physics was established at the beginning of the 20th century as the leading theoretical framework to describe light-matter interaction at the microscopic scale: light, atoms, and molecules. Throughout the century the theory has proven to be remarkably adaptable to different physical situations while remaining well-suited to explaining experimental data – from Quantum Field Theory with the Standard Model to Quantum Information and Computation Theory, to Quantum Thermodynamics, the principles of Quantum Mechanics have been a beacon of light in our search to understand nature.

Claude Shannon, an American engineer, and mathematician, at the end of the ’40s, conceived Information Theory as “A Mathematical Theory of Communication”. The main reason for its success is the intuition that the information content of a message does not depend on the underlying physical properties of the message itself. Today, 70 years after Shannon’s powerful insight, we live in a society that exploits heavily such intuition and its far-reaching consequences.

While we can trace the initial contributions to Quantum Information Theory back to the birth of quantum mechanics, various core results were derived in the 70s and early 80s (as the no-cloning theorem) and then the field started blossoming into a mature research field in the ’90s, when more and more people become involved in the study of how quantum systems store and process information. Today, simple concepts of quantum information, as the Entanglement Entropy and the No-Cloning Theorem, are part of our basic understanding nature at (and below) the nanoscale. The flexibility in describing the behavior of natural systems allows Information Theory to go beyond its original domain of use. This is particularly true in physics but, nowadays, scientists use its ideas and tools in other research areas as biology, neuroscience, cryptography, and many others.

My interests and contribution

I have always been fascinated by the most fundamental aspects of physics. Thus, equipped with some tools from Information Theory, during the D.Phil. I worked at the interface among statistical mechanics, quantum physics, and gravity. On the one hand, I investigated the conditions which lead a quantum system to exhibit thermal equilibrium properties. On the other hand, I used quantum information concepts and tools to study the properties of spin-networks. These are peculiar quantum systems which, in a tentative theory of quantum gravity called Loop Quantum Gravity, provide the basic tools to describe the quantum structure of space-time.

While during the D.Phil. I challenged myself against some long-standing foundational issues of physics (here you can find my thesis), my current work goes in a slightly different direction. I am investigating how different parts of a physical system can exchange information to perform computational  tasks as Information Processing. These processes have to occur away from thermodynamic equilibrium, thus we need a better understanding of the non-equilibrium phenomena of quantum systems. One paradigm to investigate these questions if that of Information Engines: systems that simultaneously manipulate energy matter and information, essentially leveraging environmental fluctuations to produce work and/or perform useful computation. Within this framework, I have been working on a new set of differential-geometric tools to describe non-equilibrium open quantum systems and, in particular, the interplay between their physical properties and information-theoretic features. 

One of the direction I believe to be most promising is to build  a theoretical framework to to understand how open quantum systems move information around their state space. This was constructively done in a series of papers on Geometric Quantum Mechanics here and here, which culminated in A kinetic theory of quantum information transport.

Macro, Meso, and Micro

These themes have a strong overlap with Quantum Thermodynamics and Stochastic Thermodynamics: newborn research fields aiming at understanding how the laws of thermodynamics have to be modified when, from the macroscopic regime, we enter the realm of mesoscopic and microscopic physics, where the number of particles is low and quantum effects can not be neglected. Taking a more general perspective, such kinds of investigations are rooted in our need to grasp the interplay between the microscopic laws, well understood for a small number of particles, and the emergence of the complex phenomenology which we observe and experience at larger scales.

Quantum Thermodynamics and Stochastic Thermodynamics are examples of such attempts to bridge between macroscopic and microscopic. I believe these unsolved issues are extraordinarily intriguing, being of both foundational character and practical relevance. If you are interested, here you can find a short digest about some ideas about thermalization in quantum systems, while here you can find a synopsis of my work in quantum gravity. 

I strongly believe in the social role of Science: bringing people together to investigate matters of common relevance. Thus, if you are willing to argue, debate, or dispute these and other ideas, both at the technical and at the non-technical level, please do not hesitate to contact me!!