People

Current Members

Eduardo Martín-Martínez

Associate Professor

Did my Master’s and PhD in between Spain and England. Finished in 2012 and Canada was nice enough to award me a Banting Fellowship to develop my research on Relativistic Quantum Information. Canada seemed to like the deal since at the end of it they gave me the Polanyi Prize and kept me around doing this business of messing with General Relativity and Quantum Theory as a tenured professor. Concretely, I am a professor of Applied Mathematics and Mathematical Physics at the University of Waterloo, an Associate member of the Institute for Quantum Computing, and a Perimeter Institute Affiliate, faculty member of the Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics and I am the supervisor of this wonderful family of scientists at UW.

T. Rick Perche

PhD Student

Hi! I am Rick, a PhD student at the University of Waterloo, IQC and Perimeter Institute. I have been conducting research regarding general relativity and quantum information since my undergrad days at UNICAMP in Brazil, when I fell in love for differential geometry. During my two master degrees (one at IFT and the other at Perimeter Institute), I have applied these techniques to particle detectors, studying their behavior when coupled to fields of different spin in different spacetimes.

In general, I am very interested in both general relativity and quantum information, so that the field of RQI perfectly fits my research interests. Once I got to know about particle detectors and how to locally probe quantum fields, I was sure that this was the place I wanted to be, and I feel that Barrio is the best group for that.

I am currently exploring connections between gravity and quantum field theory using particle detector models, general features of particle detectors, connecting the different notions of measurements in quantum field theory and entanglement harvesting. You can check a list of my preprints and publications Here.

Bruno Torres

PhD Student

I graduated from Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (Recife, Brazil), and I am now completing both the PSI program at Perimeter Institute and a Master’s degree from IFT-UNESP (São Paulo, Brazil) thanks to the SAIFR/IFT-Perimeter Fellowship.

In the past few months, I have been working with Eduardo and my friend Rick on issues regarding the general formulation of finite-size Unruh-DeWitt detectors in curved spacetimes, and we are also working in parallel with George Matsas from IFT-UNESP on an Unruh-DeWitt approach to conceptualizing neutrino flavor oscillations without mentioning flavor states. In a broad sense, I am interested in the interplay between quantum theory and relativity, and how information-theoretic tools and concepts may be useful to understanding the structure of quantum field theories in curved spacetimes.

José Polo-Gómez

PhD Student

I got my BScs in Physics and in Mathematics at Universidad Complutense de Madrid in 2020, where I spent the last year and a half as an undergraduate collaborator studying algebraic QFT and QFT in curved spacetime in Prof. Luis J. Garay’s research group.

Starting my PhD in January 2021, my research interests lie both in QFT itself—its structure and foundations—and in its intersection with GR—through QFT in curved spacetime and RQI. My research combines tools from AQFT and RQI, and currently addresses three main topics, which will hopefully interact with each other eventually: measuring quantum fields, understanding the role of thermality and thermodynamics in QFT, and using local measurements to obtain global information.

Besides science, I’m a qualified violin player, and an amateur tennis player, with more than fifteen years of practice behind me in both. I also greatly enjoy writing, hiking and birdwatching.

Adam Teixidó Bonfill

PhD Student

I graduated in Engineering Physics and Mathematics at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (CFIS-UPC). For the final thesis of my undergraduate degree, I came to Barrio-RQI and developed a first law of quantum field thermodynamics. Afterwards, I did my Master’s in Astrophysics, Particle Physics and Gravitation at the University of Barcelona.

My PhD at Waterloo started on September 2021 and will be focused on elucidating the thermodynamics of quantum field theory. This increases my interest in quantum thermodynamics and in how to make its concepts compatible with quantum fields. Furthermore, I am curious about how to extract information from quantum fields using particle detectors and more in general, about quantum information, all of which can be useful to understand quantum field thermodynamics.

Personally, I enjoy learning anything science related and, outside science, practicing Judo. Also, I love strategy games, and during the pandemic, I really got to appreciate role-playing games.

Kelly Wurtz

PhD Student

I am interested in studying the information content of spacetime as a pathway to quantum gravity, particularly by way of the black hole information problem. Describing black hole evaporation is perhaps the most acute problem in quantum gravity, and fascinatingly, it has led physicists to find that information, entanglement, and non-locality seem to play fundamental roles. Before I die, I’d like to understand the degrees of freedom of the interior of black holes, the nature of singularities, and how information is encoded in outgoing radiation over the course of a black hole’s evaporation. During my PhD, I hope to make some progress in this direction.

I hold a BFA in Film and Television from NYU, and it was during this program that I decided to start taking physics classes, then get a second major in physics, and ultimately leave film to pursue a physics PhD. My film abilities are mainly in cinematography, editing, and motion graphics, and I still enjoy when opportunities arise to use these skills.

After my undergraduate degree, I spent two years working on an axion detection project at CU Boulder, then earned my master’s degree in Perimeter Institute’s PSI program, and finally, joined the Barrio RQI at the start of 2022.

Caroline Lima

PhD Student

I graduated from University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, in December 2020 and right now am a PSI student at Perimeter Institute. I have multiple interests: quantum information, general relativity, quantum gravity and quantum field theory. In particular, I’m drawn to applying quantum information theory to high energy physics. In my undergrad years, I also worked on experimental nuclear physics and quantum foundations. During my gap semester before coming to Canada, I found out about RQI and developed a project in entanglement harvesting (what got me fascinated by the field!) with Rick Perche, which resulted in a preprint (link here).

Curiosities: I also have a Bachelor’s degree in Biosciences and worked in Bioinformatics (human population genetics) research for a year and a half before starting my Physics degree. I love TAing Quantum Mechanics! I deeply care about equity in STEM and access to education to everyone, and have volunteered in outreach programs that promote them.

In my free time, I read political graphic novels and play board games.

Matheus Hrabowec Zambianco

PhD Student

I am Matheus Hrabowec Zambianco, a PhD Student at the University of Walterloo under the joint supervision of professors Eduardo Martín-Martinez and Achim Kempf.

I got my BSc in Mathematical Physics at State University of Campinas in 2018, where I was interested in topics related to Spacetime Physics like the twin paradox in different spacetime topologies and geometries, and the dynamics of extended bodies in curved spacetimes.

Afterwards, I obtained a Master degree in Physics at IFT-UNESP, Sao Paulo, where I did a project on the issue of time in Quantum Mechanics. After completing it in 2020, I decided to see how the world outside Physics/Mathematics looked like, and then I worked as a Data Scientist for a couple of Brazilian companies. During that time, I obtained experience with Machine Learning models.

Now, in a Hobbit’s “There and back again” phylosophy, I am starting a PhD at the University of Waterloo, looking forward to do research in topics that relate General Relativity and Quantum Information in a way that will hopefully shine some light in the road towards Quantum Gravity.

Boris Ragula

Master’s Student

I graduated from the University of Waterloo with a Bachelor’s of Mathematical Physics and Pure Mathematics. I spent my final term of my Undergraduate degree studying entanglement harvesting from the gravitational field with Rick and Eduardo. My current area of research is in studying the effects of spacetime backreaction on the stress-energy tensor as well as the effects of quantum fluctuations on the spacetime geometry. Our hope is to be able to “engineer” exotic spacetime geometries that allow for violations of the energy conditions, and construction of negative stress energies.

Aside from my research, I decided to not break out of the stereotypical mold of science and play classical piano in my free time. To really solidify the stereotype, I am an avid board game player and enjoy hosting game nights with my friends.

Daniel Grimmer

Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow

Daniel worked in the Barrio-RQI from 2015 – 2020 earning a PhD in Physics – Quantum Information. Daniel’s PhD thesis established the foundations of the Interpolated Collision Model formalism, a tool for studying the dynamics of open quantum systems undergoing generic repeated updates. This formalism has been applied to study purification, thermalization, friction and most recently the Unruh Effect. Daniel is a Postdoctoral Visiting Fellow in the group while simultaneously completing MSt in Philosophy of Physics at Oxford University. Dan’s personal website: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~pemb6003/index.html.

Former Members

Maria Papageorgiou

Former PhD Student (cotutelle with University of Patras)

Also known as a trouble maker, I particularly enjoy how things fall apart when one combines the most basic notions from quantum theory and relativity (and that is way before the question of how to quantize gravity). One of the most curious aspects of relativistic quantum theories is that notions of localizability cannot be maintained, so my current research has been about finding a way around this. I am generally interested in mathematical physics and foundations of quantum field theory.

Koji Yamaguchi

Former Postdoctoral Fellow

I am Koji Yamaguchi, a postdoctoral fellow in the Barrio-RQI and Achim Kempf’s research group. I got a PhD in Physics at Tohoku University in Japan, where I developed a method to identify the exact carrier of information in quantum fields, which is termed quantum information capsule. In this paper, we found a way to enhance the efficiency of communication by making use of correlations in the vacuum fluctuations of quantum fields.

I am interested in various topics in quantum information science, especially in RQI. I am planning to investigate how quantum fluctuations and the spacetime curvature affect the flow of information through quantum fields.

Erickson Tjoa

Former PhD & Master’s student

(Hardcore?) JRPG gamer. Badminton amateur. Anime/manga enthusiast. Cat person. Violin beginner.

During my PhD (Sep 2019-May 2023), I worked on topics at the interface of quantum information, quantum field theory and gravitational physics, within or outside the formalism of Unruh-DeWitt particle detector models. My more recent work shifted towards a more direct use of algebraic quantum field theory (AQFT) in relativistic quantum information (RQI) (see, e.g., here, here and here).

Before PhD, my Master’s research (Sep 2017-Aug 2019) revolved around using the Unruh-DeWitt detector formalism to study fields in cavity and other boundary-related setups (here, here and here). In my undergraduate research (May 2016-Dec 2016), I worked on extended thermodynamics of Lovelock black holes and we showed that Lovelock black holes conformally coupled to scalar hair exhibit rich thermodynamic behaviour (link here). We also discovered a novel lambda transition analogous to the phase transition found in the superfluid helium phase transition (link here).

As I was also co-supervised by another supervisor Robert Mann, some of my works are not listed in Barrio-RQI page — they are listed in my personal website (Google Sites) page here.

Héctor Maeso-García

Former Undergraduate Student

Hi! I am in the last year of my undergraduate studies in Engineering Physics and Mathematics at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC-CFIS), in Barcelona. Following my interests in general relativity and quantum information, I came to Barrio-RQI to make my final bachelor thesis.

Here, I am studying entanglement harvesting protocols which involve performing measurements on the quantum field in collaboration with José. Also, I do research with Rick on more fundamental properties of entanglement harvesting with massive fields.

When I am free, I enjoy playing the piano, swimming and playing trivia games.

Barry Cimring

Former Undergraduate Student

Hello!

I am currently in my third year of a BASc in Electrical Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Despite coming from an applied background, I am passionate about studying physics. My interests in quantum information, quantum field theory, and relativity led to my interest to study here at Barrio-RQI.

I am currently working with Daniel Grimmer and José Polo-Gómez to explore how machine learning models can be used to extract information from measurements of quantum fields. Specifically, I am interested in how localized measurements of a quantum field can be used to characterize global information, and in what contexts these techniques can transfer the burden of tomography from experimental design to computational models.

In my spare time I am an avid music lover and guitar player. I also enjoy playing sports such as hockey, soccer, snowboarding, and tennis.

Jose de Ramon Rivera

Former PhD Student

I did both my undergrad and my MSc in the Complutense University (Madrid, Spain). There my research was focused in the response of accelerated quantum systems interacting with the quantum vacuum, that is closely related to the so called Unruh effect.
In my study of the Unruh effect I have found several interesting problems. How much time does to thermalize with the vacuum take? Are detectors that thermalize with the vacuum genuinely thermal? How sensitive is the Unruh effect to deformations in the quantum field? Can we use finite time interactions for probing a quantum field state?
My current research interests are axiomatic quantum field theory, thermal field theory, quantum field theory in curved space-times, general relativity, open quantum systems and thermodynamics.

Nicholas Funai

Former PhD Student

Born and educated in Australia, I received a First Class Honours in Physics from the University of Sydney for work on continuous tensor networks and their potential applications to relativistic quantum information scenarios. This was followed by a Master’s degree at the Perimeter Institute, courtesy of the Perimeter Scholars International program. During this time I worked on Quantum Energy Teleportation and its ability to violate classical energy conditions. Currently I am a PhD student at the University of Waterloo and the Institute for Quantum Computing working on relativistic quantum optics and interested in non-perturbative methods for QFT.

Richard Lopp

Former PhD Student

In recent research, I worked on light-matter interactions where I am particularly interested in the flow of information, and in finding the boundaries of commonly used approximations and perceptions. For my Bachelor’s in Germany and the UK, I did research on the decay width of the Higgs boson, as well as on charge transfer along DNA. I then came to Canada to do my Master’s at Perimeter Institute where I started working on RQI.

Daniel Grimmer

Former PhD Student

Emma McKay

Former Master’s Student

Questions about entanglement, work, and thermalization make my eyes light up. My recent research with Nayeli Rodríguez-Briones shows concretely that work fluctuations are important to consider in protocols which generate correlations. My previous research interrogated the role of shape and ultraviolet cutoffs in the Unruh-DeWitt formalism applied to superconducting circuits.

I co-founded FemPhys, a feminist physics organization at UWaterloo. We work to develop community among marginalized people, facilitate education around equity issues, and share pleasant spaces on campus. I’m interested in feminist physics—methods of doing physics which incorporate critical analysis into education, collaboration, & choice and presentation of research. I love plants, insects, drawing both, all things small, and dancing.

Irene Melgarejo Lermas

Former Master’s Student

Hi there!
I was part of the Barrio RQI from 2017 to 2020. I first arrived in Canada to complete my bachelor thesis for the double degree of Mathematics and Physics Engineering at CFIS (Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain). During this time I mainly researched whether particle detectors were able to see area laws in quantum fields.

During my master’s I worked with Daniel Grimmer to figure out if we could extract general features of quantum fields by analyzing outcomes of local detectors using machine learning. I presented this research in the Three Minute Thesis Competition at the University of Waterloo and I became a finalist at the university level. I became really interested in data analysis and in September 2020 I’m going to start the MDSAI Master’s program at the University of Waterloo.
Besides doing physics and data analysis, I enjoy learning languages, singing and doing amateur karate chops!

Nick Olsen

Former Master’s Student

I’m a master’s student working on numerical relativity related to RQI, with the goal being to simulate the evolution of exotic and interesting spacetimes. In my spare time I enjoy riding and repairing bikes, as well as reading.

Alvaro Ortega

Former Undergraduate Student

I am a student of Mathematics and Engineering Physics at CFIS (UPC, Barcelona), and I have the pleasure of joining Barrio for my Bachelor Thesis. My work here is concerned with studying non-equilibrium processes occurring in quantum fields. For example, in here we give a definition of work distribution that is well-defined for quantum fields, and that satisfies the classical fluctuation theorems.

Before coming to Waterloo, I was first a Summer Fellow and then a student at ICFO (Barcelona, Spain), in the Quantum Information Theory Group. There I worked in projects related to the device-independent certification of random numbers, self-testing of mutually unbiased bases, and steering.

Alejandro Pozas-Kerstjens

Former Master’s Student

After a Bachelors in Physics from Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) I ended up in Canada thanks to the Perimeter Scholars International program (2014-2015). It is then when I met Eduardo and became part of the Barrio. During my time there, we worked on how the entanglement you could harvest from fields depended on the parameters of your setup (the shape of the detectors, their energy gap…). Not only that, I earned a reputation as a decent salsa dancer.

However, I couldn’t handle the cold and the geese, so I went back to Spain to do my PhD. I’m now at ICFO, and so far I have done works in Entanglement Harvesting, Quantum Thermodynamics, Quantum Nonlocality, Classical and Quantum Machine Learning, and combinations combinations between them.

Nayeli Rodríguez Briones

Former PhD Student

During my Master’s degree in the University of Waterloo, I explored how quantum information processing brings novel techniques for cooling physical systems by manipulating entropy at the quantum level, under the supervision of Raymond Laflamme.

Currently, I am doing my PhD, and I am very happy to be part of Barrio RQI. Together with Edu, we exploited quantum energy teleportation (QET) to improve cooling methods. We showed how a long standing upper bound on the limits of algorithmic cooling can be broken by using QET (now we are planning to do it in the lab!!). Also, we have been analyzing algorithmic cooling methods from a quantum thermodynamic point of view. In recent research, Emma McKay and I showed how work fluctuations play an important role in protocols which generate correlations.

Allison Sachs

Former PhD Student

I’m a PhD student in Applied mathematics and chair of the board of directors of the Graduate Student Association at the University of Waterloo. I also sit on the Equity and Inclusivity Committee at the Institute for Quantum Computing.

As for research: I’m into relativistic quantum information (obviously, if I’m in this group ;). Particularly I’m interested in entanglement structure of quantum fields and quadratically coupled Unruh-de Witt detectors. I’m also exploring the Fermionic side of thing with these detectors. Additionally, I do a bit of quantum optics (relativistic, of course) with folk at Perimeter Institute. Finally, I am working on the beginnings of an interest in AQFT and some of the more abstractly/mathematically motivated approaches to quantum theory (as apposed to the totally not abstract math I do right now /s).

While an undergraduate, I won the Chancellor’s Extraordinary Professional Promise award from the University of Tennessee and the David Rosebery award from the Department of Physics and Astronomy. I also did multiple internships at Oak Ridge National Lab and spent time researching at CERN. As an undergrad I also attended several national undergraduate-oriented conferences and the Division of Nuclear Physics APS General Meeting. Additionally, I was active in my local chapter of the Society of Physics Students and qualified for induction into ΣΠΣ and πμε honor societies.

My master’s thesis at the University of Waterloo won the Dean of Science award. Additionally, during my masters I was a representative of the Department of Physics and Astronomy to the Graduate Student Association at the University of Waterloo, after which I became a director of the organization. I also attended several international conferences as a master’s student and sat on an organizing committee for a local conference. I also had a less minor role in organizing an international conference.

~!~ They/Them/Their ~!~

Jose Sánchez Velázquez

Visiting PhD Student

Born in the Canary Islands. I graduated at Universidad de La Laguna with First Class Honours. My early research involved Gravitation, Quantum Field Theory and Light-Matter Interactions. I moved then to Madrid, where I coursed my MSc at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, where I deal with Effective Field Theories, namely Chiral Perturbation Theory for computing form factors for the B meson decays.
I am currently doing my PhD in Universidad Complutense de Madrid. My research includes: studying the gravitational particle creation in the Early Universe, studying exotic solutions to the Einstein equations and their stability when quantum fields enter in the picture.
In my free time (do I have free time?) I like to read, listening to classical music and watching good shows.

Petar Simidzija

Former Master’s Student

I started my master’s degree by studying the harvesting of entanglement by detectors from a quantum field. We showed that all coherent field states entangle detectors equally (1705.04341) and that certain detector-field interactions don’t entangle at all (1707.00016, 1803.11214)! I have also studied both classical (1608.05728) and quantum (coming soon) communication protocols through relativistic fields, as well as answered the question “does gravity suffer from a thermodynamic UV catastrophe?” (1905.06988).

Silas Vriend

Former Undergraduate Student

I recently completed my Bachelor of Mathematics degree in Mathematical Physics at the University of Waterloo, with a minor in Pure Mathematics, graduating With Distinction – Dean’s Honours List.

My senior research project was carried out under the supervision of Eduardo Martin-Martinez, in collaboration with Dan Grimmer. In this ongoing work, we are applying the toolkits of Rapid Repeated Interactions and Gaussian Quantum Mechanics to a novel particle detector scenario.

My interest in pure math with strong ties to physics has led me to the realm of geometry and topology, which I am excited to explore further through a Master’s degree in Mathematics at McMaster University.

In my spare time, I enjoy reading, biking, and singing in choirs. I am also a longtime origami enthusiast.