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Jonathan Oppenheim is a professor of physics at University College London. He is an expert in quantum information theory and quantum gravity.

Life

Oppenheim obtained a bachelor's degree at the University of Toronto in 1993 and PhD at the University of British Columbia in 2001. His PhD thesis titled Quantum Time, focused on time ordering in quantum mechanics and was supervised by Bill Unruh.

In 2004, he was a postdoctoral researcher under Jacob Bekenstein and a Royal Society University Fellow at the University of Cambridge before moving to University College London.

In 2005, together with Michał Horodecki and Andreas Winter, Oppenheim discovered quantum state-merging and used this primitive to show that quantum information could be negative. Following on this work, Oppenheim and collaborators have developed a resource theory for thermodynamics on the nano and quantum scale.

In 2017, Oppenheim and Lluis Masanes derived the third law of thermodynamics using quantum information arguments and set a bound to the speed at which information can be erased.

Oppenheim published a proposal in 2023 for a hybrid theory that couples classical general relativity with quantum field theory. According to this proposal, spacetime is not quantized but smooth and continuous, and is subject to random fluctuations.

Edible ballot society

As a student, Oppenheim was involved in the Edible Ballot Society which satirically advanced eating ballots to highlight the democracy gap in electoral politics. He was arrested at the 1997 APEC protests on University of British Columbia campus. He withdrew from the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP following the refusal of the Prime Minister to testify. His group was responsible for smuggling a siege catapult into the medieval city of Quebec during the Summit of Americas, 2001. It was used to lob teddy bears.

Selected publications

• Oppenheim, Jonathan; Horodecki, Michał; Horodecki, Paweł; Horodecki, Ryszard (11 October 2002). "Thermodynamical Approach to Quantifying Quantum Correlations". Physical Review Letters. 89 (18). arXiv:quant-ph/0112074. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.89.180402.
• Horodecki, Michał; Oppenheim, Jonathan; Winter, Andreas (August 2005). "Partial quantum information". Nature. 436 (7051): 673–676. arXiv:quant-ph/0505062. doi:10.1038/nature03909.
• Oppenheim, Jonathan (24 February 2006). "Implementing a Quantum Computation by Free Falling" (PDF). Science. 311 (5764): 1106–1107. doi:10.1126/science.1124295. Retrieved 18 March 2024.
• Oppenheim, Jonathan; Wehner, Stephanie (19 November 2010). "The Uncertainty Principle Determines the Nonlocality of Quantum Mechanics". Science. 330 (6007): 1072–1074. arXiv:1004.2507. doi:10.1126/science.1192065.
• Horodecki, Michał; Oppenheim, Jonathan (26 June 2013). "Fundamental limitations for quantum and nanoscale thermodynamics". Nature Communications. 4 (1). arXiv:1111.3834. doi:10.1038/ncomms3059.
• Brandão, Fernando G. S. L.; Horodecki, Michał; Oppenheim, Jonathan; Renes, Joseph M.; Spekkens, Robert W. (18 December 2013). "Resource Theory of Quantum States Out of Thermal Equilibrium". Physical Review Letters. 111 (25). arXiv:1111.3882. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.250404.
• Brandão, Fernando; Horodecki, Michał; Ng, Nelly; Oppenheim, Jonathan; Wehner, Stephanie (17 March 2015). "The second laws of quantum thermodynamics". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112 (11): 3275–3279. arXiv:1305.5278. doi:10.1073/pnas.1411728112.
• Masanes, Lluís; Oppenheim, Jonathan (14 March 2017). "A general derivation and quantification of the third law of thermodynamics". Nature Communications. 8 (1). arXiv:1412.3828. doi:10.1038/ncomms14538.
• Oppenheim, Jonathan (4 December 2023). "A Postquantum Theory of Classical Gravity?". Physical Review X. 13 (4). arXiv:1811.03116. doi:10.1103/PhysRevX.13.041040.

References

1. ^ "Jonathan Oppenheim". Simons Foundation. 22 January 2016. Retrieved 18 March 2024.
2. "Jonathan Oppenheim". IEEE. Retrieved 18 March 2024.
3. Horodecki, Michał; Oppenheim, Jonathan; Winter, Andreas (2005). "Partial quantum information". Nature. 436 (7051): 673–676. arXiv:quant-ph/0505062. doi:10.1038/nature03909. ISSN 1476-4687.
4. Horodecki, Michał; Oppenheim, Jonathan (2013-06-26). "Fundamental limitations for quantum and nanoscale thermodynamics". Nature Communications. 4 (1). arXiv:1111.3834. doi:10.1038/ncomms3059. ISSN 2041-1723.
5. Brandão, Fernando; Horodecki, Michał; Ng, Nelly; Oppenheim, Jonathan; Wehner, Stephanie (2015-03-17). "The second laws of quantum thermodynamics". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 112 (11): 3275–3279. arXiv:1305.5278. Bibcode:2015PNAS..112.3275B. doi:10.1073/pnas.1411728112. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 4372001. PMID 25675476.
6. Crane, Leah (14 March 2017). "Cooling to absolute zero mathematically outlawed after a century". New Scientist. Retrieved 4 April 2024.
7. Masanes, Lluís; Oppenheim, Jonathan (2017). "A general derivation and quantification of the third law of thermodynamics". Nature Communications. 8: 14538. arXiv:1412.3828. Bibcode:2017NatCo...814538M. doi:10.1038/ncomms14538. PMC 5355879. PMID 28290452.
8. Jonathan Oppenheim (2023). "A Postquantum Theory of Classical Gravity?". Physical Review X. 13 (4): 041040. arXiv:1811.03116. doi:10.1103/PhysRevX.13.041040. Retrieved 2024-04-03.
9. Hannah Devlin (2023-12-04). "'Wobbly spacetime' may help resolve contradictory physics theories". The Guardian. Retrieved 2023-12-17.
10. Pue, W. Wesley (2000). Pepper in our Eyes: the APEC Affair. Vancouver, Canada: UBC Press. ISBN 978-0-7748-0779-1.
11. Clark, Campbell (March 27, 2002). "APEC activists deserve an apology, RCMP told". The Globe and Mail.
12. Armstrong, Jane (March 1, 2000). "Protesters withdraw complaints from APEC summit inquiry". The Globe and Mail.
13. "University of BC timeline".
14. Mitchell, Dave. "Case Study: The Teddy Bear Catapult". Beautiful Trouble. Retrieved 13 May 2015.
15. Hanes, Allison (May 1, 2001). "The great teddy-bear turn-in". The Gazette (Montreal).
16. "Group Claims Responsibility". 10 October 2008.
17. "Quantum physicist helps travellers out of a hole". 26 September 2011.

External links

• Oppenheim's Homepage at UCL
• Oppenheim's Homepage at University of Cambridge
• Oppenheim's Homepage at Hebrew University
• Grossman, Lisa. "Universe's Quantum Weirdness Limits Its Weirdness". Wired. Retrieved 18 March 2024.
• "The Physicist Who Bets That Gravity Can't Be Quantized". Quanta Magazine. 10 July 2023. Retrieved 18 March 2024.

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