New paper in Nature Communications by Alessio and co-workers!

Congratulations to Alessio and co-workers on their recently accepted paper in the prestigious Nature Communications (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16013-1) on quantum clocks and the temporal localisability of events in the presence of gravitating quantum systems!!

In this recent work, with lead author Dr Esteban Castro-Ruiz, a team of physicists led by Professor Caslav Brukner from the University of Vienna and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) Vienna explored the temporal localisability of events when quantum systems influence space-time according to Einstein’s general relativity. Dr Alessio Belenchia, from Queen’s University Belfast, is among the authors of this new work.

The study develops a framework to operationally define events and their localisation with respect to a quantum clock reference frame, also in the presence of gravitating quantum systems. The major results are that the time localisability of events becomes relative, depending on the reference frame, and that for each event there exists always a (quantum) clock according to which that event occurs at a sharp, precise time. This is useful because, using this clock as a reference, the time evolution of quantum systems still can be described similarly as in the ordinary situations where all events are localised in time.