Dr. Damián Pitalúa-García
Quantum Money. I talked about my collaborative research in the University of Cambridge on this subject during an outreach event at London's Royal Institution in 2020.
I am Damián Pitalúa-García, a University of Cambridge PhD, with 15 years of experience in research and mentoring in quantum physics, including research and mentoring work in the University of Cambridge for over six years since mid 2018, and in Brussels and Paris for over 4 years.
I have many research publications in highly recognized scientific journals and two granted patents (in the US and Europe). I have given over thirty oral presentations about my work in international conferences and seminars.
I have mentored over thirty students in the University of Cambridge, and over thirty international high school students online.
Quantum position verification. During my talk on this subject at the Asian Quantum Information Science conference in Sapporo, Japan, August 2024.
I am passionate about research and mentoring in quantum physics, with many areas of expertise including quantum information, quantum cryptography, relativistic quantum cryptography, quantum foundations and connections between spacetime (gravity) and quantum physics (see details below).
Having excelled at all stages of my studies, I can successfully guide students on their learning and development journeys. I obtained a PhD in the University of Cambridge, doing research in quantum theory and information for four years, supervised by Professor Adrian Kent. Before that, I obtained a Distinction (the highest of the possible marks) in the Cambridge Part III of Mathematics, a one-year Master's course taught at the University of Cambridge which is recognized as one of the most difficult and intense courses in mathematics and theoretical physics in the world. I also got a physics degree at UNAM, Mexico, with a GPA of 9.84 in a scale 0 to 10.
During high school, I won the first gold medal by a Mexican competitor in an international physics olympiad, in the VIII Iberoamerican Physics Olympiad in Havana, Cuba, 2003. That year I won my place to participate in the International Physics Olympiad in Taiwan with the Mexican team. However, the delegates of the Mexican team decided that we would not participate due to the risks of the SARS pandemic that was affecting Taiwan and othe countries at the time.
My Research
Quantum tokens. I talked about this subject in 2021 at QCrypt, the leading annual conference on quantum cryptography (organized by the University of Amsterdam; the conference was online due to the Covid-19 pandemic). I was the second speaker of the session (introduced at 8:05).
Quantum cryptography. I talked about some of my papers in this area in a seminar at the University of Cambridge in 2022.
Quantum hacking. I talked about a paper of mine in this area online in 2022 at QCrypt, the leading annual conference on quantum cryptography (organized in Taipei, Taiwan; the conference was hybrid due to the Covid-19 pandemic).
Quantum hacking. I talked about a paper of mine in this area during a seminar at the University of Toronto, Canada in 2023.
Relativistic quantum cryptography. I presented an online poster in 2021 about a paper of mine in this area at QCrypt, the leading annual conference in quantum cryptography (organized in Taipei, Taiwan; the conference was hybrid due to the Covid-19 pandemic).
Quantum tokens. I talked about this subject (in Spanish) in 2021 at Quantum Latino (an online quantum event in Latin America).
Videos of my research
You can see some videos of my research on the left (above if using smartphone). Below there is a link to another video.
Quantum foundations. I gave a talk in this area at Perimeter Institute, Canada, in 2015 (click the link to see video): How much information can a physical system fundamentally communicate?
Media coverage
“New principle sets maximum limit on quantum information communication”, Phys.org, June 4, 2013. This is a featured story on my paper D. Pitalúa-García, “Quantum information causality”, Physical Review Letters 110, 210402 (2013).
My areas of research
Quantum information science studies the properties of information arising from quantum phenomena. At a fundamental level, information is described by quatum physics. This is because information is encoded in physical systems (for example, electical currents encoding bits) and physical systems are fundamentally described by quantum theory. Exmaples of quantum information properties are quantum teleportation, which allows us to teleport quantum states from one location to another using quantum entanglement; the quantum no-cloning theorem stating that unknown quantum states cannot be copied; quantum cryptography, which exploits the properties of quantum physics to guarantee higher degrees of security in communication and information processing than would otherwise be possible; quantum computing, which uses the principle of quantum superposition to perform many computations in parallel and in this way perfrom computations much faster than with standard (classical) methods.
Quantum cryptography guarantees the security of information manipulation from the laws of quantum physics. Examples of quantum cryptography include quantum key distribution, establishing secure communication channels; and quantum money, guaranteeing no double spending and other security properties.
Relativistic quantum cryptography exploits no-superluminality, the relativistic physical principle stating that information cannot travel faster than the speed of light, in addition to quantum phsyics to guarantee security. Interestingly, several cryptographic tasks that were believed to be impossible to achieve with unconditional security in standard (non-relativistic) quantum cryptography have been shown possible in relativistic quantum cryptography, for example, bit commitment, coin flipping, die rolling, oblivious transfer with relativistic constraints, etc.
Quantum foundations studies the most intriguing aspects of quantum theory. Examples of open problems considered important by researchers in quantum foundations are 1) the quantum measurement problem, that is, understanding what happens fundamentally during quantum measurements; 2) reconstructing quantum theory from fundamental physical principles; 3) reasonably closing all loopholes in Bell experiments in order to achieve reasonably definitive experimental tests of Bell's theorem; etc.
Quantum physics and gravity is a very interesting area of research with important open problems. For example, phycisists do not currently know, does gravity has any quantum properties? The field of quantum information science has addressed this question in the past few years from various perspectives. In particular, the ground-breaking Bose et al.-Marletto-Vedral experimental proposal suggests quantum entanglement as a mechanism to test wether gravity is fundamentally quantum.
Create Your Own Website With Webador