physics

Ignacio Cirac

Ignacio Cirac is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Ignacio Cirac rather than just read about it. In short: Juan Ignacio Cirac Sasturain (born 11 October 1965), known professionally as Ignacio Cirac, is a Spanish physicist. He is one of the pioneers of the field of quantum computing and quantum information theory.

Key takeaways

Ignacio Cirac belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Ignacio Cirac to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Ignacio Cirac from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Juan Ignacio Cirac Sasturain (born 11 October 1965), known professionally as Ignacio Cirac, is a Spanish physicist. He is one of the pioneers of the field of quantum computing and quantum information theory. He was awarded the 2013 Wolf Prize in Physics.

Early life and education Juan Ignacio Cirac Sasturain graduated from the Complutense University of Madrid in 1988.

Career Cirac moved to the United States in 1991 to work as a postdoctoral scientist with Peter Zoller in the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in University of Colorado at Boulder. Between 1991 and 1996, he was teaching physics in the Ciudad Real Faculty of Chemistry, University of Castilla-La Mancha. In 1996, Cirac became professor in the Institut für Theoretische Physik in Innsbruck, Austria, and in 2001 he became a director of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, where he heads the Theory Division. At the same time, he was appointed honorary professor at the Technical University of Munich. He is a distinguished visiting professor and research advisor at ICFO – the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona since its foundation in 2002. He has been a member of research teams at the universities of Harvard, Technical University of Munich, Hamburg, UCSB, Hannover, Bristol, Paris, CEA/Saclay, École Normale Supérieure, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research is focused on quantum optics, the quantum theory of information, and quantum many-body physics. His joint work with Peter Zoller on ion trap quantum computation opened up the possibility of experimental quantum computation, and his joint work on optical lattices jumpstarted the field of quantum simulation. He has also made seminal contributions in the fields of quantum information theory, degenerated quantum gases, quantum optics, and renormalization group methods. As of 2017 Juan Ignacio Cirac has published more than 440 articles in the most prestigious journals and is one of the most cited authors in his fields of research. He has been named among others as a possible candidate to win the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Other activities

Corporate boards Telefónica, member of the board of directors (since 2016)

Non-profit organizations Fundación La Caixa, member of the advisory council (since 2015) Annalen der Physik, member of the advisory board (since 2012) Fundación BBVA, member of the scientific committee (since 2010)

Honors and awards In 2003 Cirac was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society. In 2017 he became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He has been granted many awards, notable ones being the 2006 Prince of Asturias Award, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Basic Sciences category ex aequo with Peter Zoller, and The Franklin Institute's 2010 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics (jointly with David J. Wineland and Peter Zoller). He was awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics with Peter Zoller in 2013. In 2018 he received the Max Planck Medal of the German Physical Society and the Micius Quantum Prize. In 2023, he received the inaugural La Vanguardia Prize in the category "Innovation".

See also Cirac–Zoller controlled-NOT gate

References

External links

BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards Lectures and panels

Quantum Computing: Peter Zoller and Ignacio Cirac on the Quantum Revolution on YouTube Video of panel discussion, "Harnessing Quantum Physics" with Ignacio Cirac, Michele Mosca, Avi Wigderson, Daniel Gottesman, Peter Shor and Dorit Aharonov, at the Quantum to Cosmos festival "J. Ignacio Cirac: Quantum Optics and Simulations with Atoms and Photonic Crystals". youtube.com. IQOQI Innsbruck. 17 February 2016. Archived from the original on 19 December 2021. Retrieved 22 January 2018.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Ignacio Cirac

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Ignacio Cirac claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Ignacio Cirac before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Ignacio Cirac ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Ignacio Cirac

In research: Ignacio Cirac appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Ignacio Cirac in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Ignacio Cirac is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 20th-century Spanish physicists, 21st-century Spanish physicists, Academic staff of the Technical University of Munich, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Ignacio Cirac outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Ignacio Cirac in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Ignacio Cirac means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Ignacio Cirac out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Ignacio Cirac in simple terms?

Why does Ignacio Cirac matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Ignacio Cirac?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Ignacio Cirac.