Alexander Lvovsky
Associate Professor Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Calgary
The New Faculty program strengthens Alberta's research capacity by providing start-up support to high achieving independent investigators in their first academic career appointment.
Fifty years ago thieves stole furnishings from houses and robbed banks for cash. Today they steal identities and credit card information electronically. We are all aware of the critical role that secure transmission of data plays in keeping the daily business of society humming along.
Most of us sipping our morning coffee are not thinking about the anticipated revolution in information technology. However, “it will be here within a generation,” says Alexander Lvovsky, “and attended by dramatic consequences.” Alexander is a world expert in quantum optics. He and his team of researchers at the University of Calgary are working at the Institute of Quantum Information Science, preparing for this eventuality.
Alexander explains that as the computer chip’s capacity continues to increase exponentially while shrinking in size, information processing and transmission must at some point make the leap into the realm of quantum physics and quantum computing. This will shatter the world of information technology as we know it, instigating a technological revolution as significant as that born of the invention of a transistor in the twentieth century.
Quantum technology brings both new menaces and new hopes into information security. Alexander compares the potential destructive power of this technology to that of the atomic bomb some 60 years ago, as it will lead to the development of a quantum computer that will be able to quickly decipher modern cryptographic codes, leaving all information transmissions insecure and vulnerable.
Alexander points out that whoever first invents such a computer will be able to access all the money in all banks or all military secrets of all countries and more. On the other hand, the same technology will be able to generate a method of encoding information to ensure absolute security.
The race is on–who will get there first? The tension playing out between threat and promise is attracting many a brilliant scientific mind to this arena. Research groups from all over the world are investigating possible media for processing quantum information. In Calgary, Alexander and his team are focused on researching light, specifically photons, as potential carriers of quantum information. With the luxury of funding support and research space, Alexander expects the team’s research results to help propel the institute to world-leader status in quantum information research.
In Alberta, after sojourns in the U.S. and Germany, and a youth spent in Russia, Alexander is delighted to have discovered a friendly home and place of work, where he can indulge his passion for research and take it wherever it may go–which, he warns cheerfully, could always bring a different outcome than predicted. That’s the joy of research.
- Born in Moscow
- Graduate studies at Columbia University, New York
- Granted lifetime membership in the American Physical Society
- Postdoctoral fellow at University of California, Berkeley
- Postdoctoral fellow at Universität Konstanz, Germany
- Receives a major research award from the German Science Foundation
- Becomes an Associate Professor at the University of Calgary
- Becomes a Scholar of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
- Tier II Canada Research chair, Alberta Ingenuity New Faculty award
- In two years, presents 26 invited talks all over the world, at both seminars and conferences