CAP Medal Press Release - 2020 Brockhouse

The Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) is pleased to announce that the 2020 CAP/DCMMP Brockhouse Medal is awarded to Alexandre Blais, Université de Sherbrooke, in recognition of for his pioneering contributions to, and continued leadership in, the field of quantum information science. His theoretical research has greatly influenced the forefront experiments in this field. announcement

Professor Blais laid the theoretical foundations of a new field of research known as circuit quantum electrodynamics (circuit QED) that has dramatically changed the field of quantum information.

Quantum information is a new interdisciplinary research area at the interface of quantum physics, computer science and engineering, that promises exponentially more powerful computers than those offered by current technology. However, the development of such a quantum information processing system is a major challenge. Dozens of approaches have been put forward over the past decade, but only a few are now considered realistic and the approach developed by Blais is widely perceived to be the most promising.

Since his appointment at Sherbrooke in 2006, Blais has made several seminal contributions, including the introduction of a new superconducting qubit known as the 'transmon' that is now used by essentially all groups working on superconducting quantum circuits. Recently, he has applied Circuit QED to semiconducting spin qubits, showing that it is possible to develop a semiconductor-based quantum computer architecture with long-range qubit-qubit interactions.

For the past decade, Blais' theoretical work has been guiding experiments in top academic laboratories worldwide (Berkeley, CEA-Saclay, Chicago, Delft, ENS-Paris, ETH Zurich, MIT, Yale). Because it opened new ways of controlling quantum effects in engineered solid-state systems, the far-reaching impact of circuit QED is also felt in a wide range of fields such as quantum optics, atomic physics and mesoscopic physics. Moreover, Circuit QED is now the focus of the quantum computing strategy of major corporations such as Alibaba, Amazon, Google, and IBM. nominator citation

The CAP Brockhouse Medal, which is sponsored jointly by the Division of Condensed Matter and Materials Physics (DCMMP) and the Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP), recognizes outstanding experimental or theoretical contributions to condensed matter and materials physics. It is named in honour of Bertram Brockhouse, whose outstanding contributions to research in condensed matter physics in Canada were recognized by the 1994 Nobel Prize for Physics. The annual Brockhouse medal was introduced in 1999.

A series of virtual plenary medal talks will be organized to honour the 2020 medal recipients. The talk schedule will be posted on the CAP's website and notification of each talk will be issued once arranged. The medal will be forwarded to Prof. Blais with the congratulations of the community. medal description

ABOUT the Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP)

The Canadian Association of Physicists, founded in 1945, is a professional association representing over 1600 individual physicists and physics students in Canada, the U.S. and overseas, as well as a number of Corporate, Institutional, and Departmental Members. In addition to its learned activities, the CAP, through its charitable arm - the CAP Foundation, also undertakes a number of activities intended to encourage students to pursue a career in physics. cap description

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For more information, please contact:

Mrs. Francine Ford, Executive Director
Canadian Association of Physicists
Tel: 613-562-5614
E-mail: execdir@cap.ca
www.cap.cacap contact and joint contact

The 2020 CAP/DCMMP Brockhouse Medal

Alexandre Blais